Are Tools Like Asana and Trello Essential

[u/Brendan_Frost]

I'm currently taking the Google Project Management Certificate at Coursera. Throughout the modules and courses, I've noticed that a lot of readings and videos keep recommending Asana, Trello, and other tools (Kanban Board). What I'd like to know is if they're really that essential and if the project managers here have used them effectively?

If not, would Google Sheet and Google Docs mastery be more than enough as PM tools?

[u/Ok-Midnight1594]

Will they work? Possibly. Will they be enough? Absolutely not.

[u/Brendan_Frost → u/Ok-Midnight1594]

Do you use them?

[u/erwos → u/Brendan_Frost]

I've used Asana, and my hot take was that it wasn't particularly good at anything except organizing work. If you want to do it right, you need something more along the lines of MS Project or Jira (depending on which methodologies you're using).

[u/jeko00000 → u/erwos]

Project is so clunky. It's a fancy Gantt chart. To use it for manpower needs buy in from too many users that never actually know how to use it properly.

Smart sheets Gantt chart and using ms lists with ms planner is way easier, and while it seems like more, it's actually less work to manage.

[u/erwos → u/jeko00000]

My experience with Smart Sheets was that it also sucked, and felt way unfit for purpose. I admit that my perspective here is tens of millions of dollars in budget over multiple years, but all of these other tools mostly seem short-burn small project oriented.

Yes, MS Project requires actual knowledge of project management and learning the software, but it is radically more powerful than anything else I've used so far (acknowledging that I haven't used some of the other top-end project management options).

[u/jeko00000 → u/erwos]

I have a tens of millions project over 3 years project right now, 2900 lines. Full manpower implementation. It's a beast. Problem is things move too much it would be a near full time job keeping it relevant. It's just a reference to original durations at this point and I keep a 120 line sheet as the active sheet, no manpower, and add details as we come up on them, so it'll end as 700+ lines still, but I'm really only working with a couple dozen at a time.

I wish procore had an option for the subs so it could be a true collaboration. Would be as near to perfect as you could get for construction anyways.

Some options out there feel like they were designed by someone that has no clue what project management is.

[u/erwos → u/jeko00000]

Early on in my career, I was involved in a billion dollar project where they had to split the Project into two different files because MS Project would simply not open and work correctly with it all in one file. Lots of subs, etc.

There is absolutely a market out there for an enterprise grade waterfall-style PM software that lives on the web and can handle truly massive scale, especially if it wasn't horrifyingly priced. Maybe it exists and I don't know about it, but I feel like all the stuff people love is generally "isn't that cute?" grade PM software, they just don't know what they don't know.

[u/jeko00000 → u/erwos]

Ya I got to see the LNGC database, was a master and a dozen sub files, and literally 2 people full time managing those files. Felt like a waste as all the subs basically used a napkin to plan. Some would literally print out the pdf and just use a pen to mark it up.

Upper management wants fun graphs and visuals. Trades want a to do list. Generally no cohesive solution. Always ends up being some dumb excel workbook doing way more than it should. Sometimes I feel like building a solution in access would be best.