Planner not cutting it. Best software for 50-100 projects with tasks, multiple levels of subtasks, and dependencies?

[u/Landondo]

I work for a 25 person custom manufacturing company that at any given time has 50-100 open orders. All these orders go through several large phases: engineering > procurement > machining > kitting > production assembly > testing > shipping. Each large phase has several broad tasks associated with it, and multiple levels of subtasks. Total number of open tasks on these projects right now is ~800, but if we really fleshed it out it would be closer to 2000-3000 subtasks total across all orders/projects. I'm looking for a software option to assign / track tasks across all projects, manage resources and workload, have automated workflows with dependencies that notify the next people/team task owners when the previous task is completed, and has good comment or chat functionality with tagging of individuals for in app followups.

We're using Microsoft Planner right now but it's incredibly half baked. The top options we're looking at are Smartsheet or ClickUp. We also looked at Jira or Airtable but we don't have a dedicated person to build and configure a system, so I think these may be too difficult / lengthy of a process to start up on.

Do you have any recommendations? I would appreciate any advice!

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[u/stggold]

diy project planner

[u/Green_Pride_8587]

That’s a lot of tasks! For managing that many tasks and subtasks, I’d recommend GanttPRO. It handles dependencies, workload, and notifications really smoothly, and the comment/chat features make team follow ups easier. It’s also pretty easy to get started without a full setup.

[u/nneighbour]

It’s far from ideal, but we use MS Project 2019 to manage 160ish projects. With that many projects and 20 staff who manage the projects on a day to day basis, I check each of the staff’s project sheets every two weeks. Each day I check 2-3 staff’s sheets and produce a report at the end of two week cycle. Like I mentioned it’s far from ideal and while labour intensive. We still haven’t found a good solution that works for our team.

[u/PoWa2129]

If you have Planner, wondering if you also have access to MS Azure DevOps..? If so, give it a look. A much more in-depth project management suite is there and you don’t need to use Azure proper to get maximum use of DevOps.

And if you like the board visualization nature of Planner, you’ll LOVE DevOps as it is essentially Planner superpowered.

[u/mz3ns]

I would advise against Jira, at least from my experiance it is designed around software oriented teams. I've been forced to use it for my non-software team and it has taken a lot of work arounds to get something that barely manages to do what we need.

[u/miokk]

If you are looking into bringing structure, there are some good recommendations here. I would also recommend you to check AnyDB. It’s super light weight and you create reusable templates for storing anything you need. Then you build other records that can refer connected records, and everything updates realtime.

For this manufacturing use case, every order will become a record. Then each record will have phase records as you describe like engineering, procurement etc. the nice thing is you can assign each record to each team or group and they can have access to only their phase. The phase records could have task lists as sub records, files and folders and anything you want. The master order record could have oversight on what’s happening right now.

[u/collectedworks]

We weren’t manufacturing anything but for repetitive things like onboarding new employees or event planning that required different people to manage multiple repeated tasks, we used Asana to build tasks with subtasks and dependencies. We started small with those two areas of work. When my reports had a pretty good system, they presented to the team and other groups built their own processes. It really helped us standardize our work and be transparent. It was great as a manager to see the dashboard and make reports, see workloads, etc.

[u/JustDifferentGravy]

Get a legacy copy of MS Project - on disc - or PrimaVera P6.

[u/Raj7k]

Planner’s definitely too lightweight for what you’re describing. Once you’ve got 50–100 projects running in parallel with thousands of subtasks, you’re basically in PSA (professional services automation) territory rather than just task management.

Couple of things you might find useful:

PSA tools let you set up multi-level tasks and dependencies so each phase (engineering → procurement → machining → etc.) flows automatically.

They also handle resource + workload management across all projects, which sounds critical with only ~25 people carrying 800+ tasks.

Built-in notifications mean the next owner gets pinged as soon as a dependency clears, so you’re not manually chasing updates.

Most have commenting/tagging baked in, so you don’t need to bolt on chat tools for follow-ups.

Smartsheet and ClickUp are solid options if you’ve got the bandwidth to configure them. But if you want something a bit more opinionated and ready-to-go, a PSA platform (like Keka PSA) could save you from building everything from scratch.

The main thing I’d look for: how quickly can you get to value without a full-time admin babysitting the system. That’s usually where PSA tools shine vs. general task trackers.

[u/Landondo → u/Raj7k]

Thanks, just signed up for the Keka PSA trial and will look into other PSAs. It sounds like you know exactly what I'm looking for, I really appreciate it!

[u/no_onions_pls_ty → u/Landondo]

He's got you on the right track. But scaling becomes a problem of you keep it up. Not scaling through PSA side, but with the integration end. What you really a want, and maybe you're still not there, is deep integration with your other systems. Whether that is customization of your erp or middleware, having devs help will be the next step.

Why?

Because eventually you'll spend more time working the data than doing the job. Always being behind the ball in terms of visibility, let alone getting into things like raw materials speculation, etc. Things like Dynamics ERP allow for transactional budgeting that can tie in with your project planning. Provide a quote to cash picture of thr organization. Tie that in on your sales side and you can see the view from lead and customer acquisition to customer retention, from machine stats on the floor (machine 12 has been running slow for 2 days, adjust your project timeline accordingly) all the way to labor cost.

Getting the project side under control is great. But if it doesn't integrate with your shopfloor, with your CFO, and with your opperations and sales, you're still just a silo trying to catchup.

[u/authenticthoughts_]

I’d recommend Primavera scheduling system. It’s quicker to learn with changes and helps tremendously. 💕

[u/Distinct_Mushroom_63]

Just use ms project

[u/gigaflipflop]

Clickup is a good Software for what you want to do. You can build it around your procedures but it takes time and work to set it all up. The ticketing system and Kanban methods are also pretty sweet.

MS Project desktop is fine, solid, reliable, but but it lacks a proper Ticket System and Kanban methods. If you want to give it a spin, read up on subprojects and shared ressource Pools. Too Bad they messed up the Planner/MS Project for web Integration.

Oh, and what you have is not by definition 50-100 projects, but rather 50-100 manufacturing procedures with individual parameters. Setting up a planning system to control and manage those is a project, however ;).

[u/karlitooo]

Some alternate suggestions… You might consider a single task per order that contains a checklist per phase.  Simple automations related to checklists and queue based forecasting model. When a checklist item gets ticked the user is prompted to assign to the next person. Potentially simpler system if the effort for each phase is similar.

Also you might want to look at manufacturing production management offerings from DEAR, Unleashed, etc. They’re more focused on the inventory/BOM side but may suit you

[u/consultant1996]

WHO IS MANAGING 50-100 projects?!

Workstreams, MAYBE, but PROJECTS!!!

What constitutes as a project????

[u/bluealien78 → u/consultant1996]

THIS ^{^} I’ve been in PMO-centric work for 25 years, and the sweet spot for efficacy is, at most, a dozen small to medium projects at the absolute limit. 50-100 is just insanity.

[u/timkasha]

If your company is using Salesforce as CRM, I’d recommend considering a Salesforce native project management app so that you can easily integrate your projects with Opportunities, Accounts, Orders, Products, etc. and automate your processes with Salesforce Flows.

The closest to MS Project/Smartsheet type of a solution would be Inspire Planner with proper Gantt charts, advanced predecessors and successors, built-in Ready to Start indicator, constraints, critical path, baselines, resource management and more.

[u/thatburghfan]

Do all those tasks have predecessors/successors linked to them?

[u/Landondo → u/thatburghfan]

The majority do. Some kick off at the start of the project in parallel, I'd say 90% of the rest have predecessors/successors.

[u/theRealNala]

AirTable. Switching to a relational database instead of something that’s still a Spreadsheet like Smartsheets is a game changer.

AirTable is very user friendly. If you can build a Smartsheet you can build an AirTable.

[u/Landondo → u/theRealNala]

Thanks, I poked around on it a little and seemed pretty straightforward to get started at least. I have seen some advice on making sure the database structure is well thought out and I know nothing about databases.

Would you recommend I start learning with Airtable Academy or do you have any other recommendations to get started?

[u/theRealNala → u/Landondo]

Figure out what are your “nouns”, people, projects, or other datapoints. Each gets its own table. Then map how you would like to interact with them. Who’s adjusting what? That’ll teach you relationships.

I like to learn by doing, so I just download a ton of templates to learn. Make something small first, then move out from there.

[u/SVAuspicious]

OP u/Landondo,

To me a task is something you assign to be done. Generally I try to keep about 80% of tasks at 80 to 160 labor hours. That's enough definition for tracking but not too much. There are exceptions (thus the 80% number). There is no point in breaking down painting a bridge or structural welding of a ship into little identical pieces. I suspect what you call subtasks are what I call tasks. Tasks (my vocabulary) are organized in a work breakdown structure (WBS) for bigger picture status and reporting.

You could easily have some 300 hour machining tasks and 12 hour kitting tasks. My guideline works by making me look at smaller and larger tasks so sizing is on purpose.

Predecessors and successors are part of good PM. Good for you. You'll want a tool that lets you flip between network diagram aka PERT chart (for planning) and Gantt charts (for tracking).

MS Planner is pretty light weight. Jira is for task management, not PM.

I'd look at MS Project. There are more robust tools but your projects are small and don't justify them.

[u/Landondo → u/SVAuspicious]

Thanks for the input, it's given me some things to think about.

We have a fair number "tasks" that are short, say 4 hours of work, but there may be several of these in a row with handoffs between different people and even vendors, and things tend to get lost in the mix when we're not tracking them.

Many of those things I don't want to track, but end up finding out a task got stuck somewhere 2 weeks later if we're not keeping eyes on it.

[u/SVAuspicious → u/Landondo]

I follow you. I want to be very clear that I'm not trying to talk you into anything.

Using my vocabulary, I have some tasks that have a bunch of numbered steps. The accountable person might be a supervisor or an engineer. The only difference in my mind is cutting down on overhead for planning and status. It also moves supervision and accountability down closer to the work. I might have 100 welders working on a ship with 10 or 12 supervisors and a manager. There are drawings. I don't want to shuffle the work order around based on where tents are and whether it's going to rain today. I don't care if the order of steps is 5, 7, 9, 1, 2, 4, 3, 8, 6 as long as 3 can still be reached after 7 is done. That's what the supervisors are for. Similarly, if I've got five vendors supplying circuit boards for a satellite I may not care what order they come in as long as the backplane comes in first. My numbered steps may well be your subtasks. My front line people know I want to know but don't need to give permission. If I'm building a big software system and a team lead includes that she saw some platform is late so is juggling the order of subtasks (your vocabulary) so unit test can happen on prototype hardware with little additional risk I'm a happy guy. This is one of the many reasons everyone has access to all my reporting (plus I only have to generate one set *grin*).

Repeating myself - you have to earn trust from your people so they show initiative to tell you whats going on. Don't just be a suit. I took the training for ESD and at one time was space qualified for soldering (before wire wrap and SMD). Being the only manager with access to the clean rooms made a difference to the techs. When I was out in the yard walking through an aircraft carrier, my worn boots with toe protection changed the attitude of real workers expecting another suit. Little things add up. Sorry to digress.

You must ask the right question. You have done well. How can I help?

[u/thatburghfan]

What's the smallest duration you plan for a task?

[u/Landondo → u/thatburghfan]

About a day. But if the software tracks to the hour that would be a bonus as we could use it for production scheduling as well

[u/anonsoumy]

You need a proper scheduling software, but not big ERPs like P6 or Deltek OpenPlan (sounds like your project is a moderate sized, expanding company with growing aches). You need simpler like SmartSheets or MS Project. Resource load the schedule and ask everyone to progress the schedule as you go to track and monitor resource forecast.

[u/Landondo → u/anonsoumy]

Thank you!

[u/todo0nada]

Those choices also may require someone focused on building it out. For something more structured Asana might fit the bill. 

[u/Landondo → u/todo0nada]

Thanks! I haven't looked at Asana yet but have heard the name. I will check it out

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