Friday, November 22, 2013

Wrike

Letter I sent to the people at Wrike:

I've had a quick look at Wrike, and like what I see.
Wrike seems to conceptualise a project as a set of tasks, rather than an information flow. Thus information about a task seems to have to be stored at second hand, in an attached document, and is not directly accessible from a task or a folder.

Incidentally, the use of folders for multiple representations of the project is very flexible.  I would use this to organise a project by phase, static element list (e.g. 'design'), by dynamic element (e.g. WBS element, where I'd like to be able to see hierarchical summaries), supplier, functional component, etc

But, back to the information content of a task. A task will have a number of basic information parameters: obviously name, description, WBS number, cost code, RAM nominations, antecedents and dependencies, which are metadata-like, then substantial data such as performance and acceptance criteria, issues, progress notes, risks (derived from a separate 'risk breakdown structure'), Requests for Information, Answers to Requests, decisions, pending antecedents, change requests, etc, each of which will have a status and need to be tracked and reported upon.
Being able to review a project on any of these items could then be facilitated. For example, the number of pending tasks with outstanding change requests, or overdue decisions, or unresolved issues could be looked at anywhere in the WBS hierarchy, or by project element, assigned manager, etc.
I didn't see how Wrike managed communications, including logging emails, which I would guess would be possible, maintaining project requirement sets, meeting  minutes and review lists that were linked to project components and not as binary blobs (ie attached text, spreadsheet or tabular documents that need their own viewing application). In complex projects tracking document issue, receipt and revisions is  vital. I couldn't see how I could do this in Wrike, nor how even simple configuration management could be done.

Project context may be a factor here. My project area is multi $100m property development projects that might take a few years. The illustrations on your website seem to be in other domains.