Verified purchaser
A Few Tweaks Away From The BIG League...
TLDR version: For now I'm rating it 3/5, but it could become a solid 5/5 if some fundamental PM concepts are handled correctly.
OK, so here goes...
I am a LONG, LONG time user of teamwork.com. I do not claim to have experience with basecamp et al, because several years ago I was evaluating JIRA and Teamwork, and TW took the cake. Especially with their one year free full-featured plan for a startup. We signed up, and never left. I manage a team of about 11 FT people right now, and we are deeply entrenched into TW. I can safely say I am something of an expert on PM.
That brings me to Nifty.
I bought 5 codes. Created an account. Created a few VERY simple projects. And like I said... a solid 3 out of 5.
Here's why...
1. I love that it is simple enough to use. But not too simple, so it does have most of the feature set a fully functional team would require.
2. It is intuitive and easy, and integration with sheets as many have said is beautiful.
3. Full marks for the swimlane view. I can see it becoming even more useful than basic Kanban for those who love Trello, which I have several clients who can't stop humblebragging about how trello changed their business life. Swimlane is just flat out better, especially when you use unique tasklists for milestones. Beautifully done, Nifty.
4. For most teams, this is just ALL you need. Workflow management is awesome, and "shtuff jusht worksh" as my accountant would say.
5. Deal is generous enough. And I love that team Nifty promises the possibility of adding more users down the line for a reasonable (hopefully lifetime) pricing. Those asking for more are just being greedy and don't realize how compute intensive this PM stuff gets. I'd happily pay $99 for a code and still not have overpaid, so well done Appsumo. heh.
So why the three stars? Why not five?
I'll explain, and hopefully Team Nifty is paying attention:
1. Dependencies are VERY severely lacking.
=> Forget cross project dependencies (which we use all the time) you can't even have cross-milestone dependencies. SERIOUS FLAW from a PM perspective. Projects don't work linearly. Nor do milestones. It's usually a combination of series and parallel implementations/executions.
NIFTY as it is today won't allow it. Your tasks can only be dependent upon ONE of the other tasks within the same milestone within the same project.
Here's how teamwork handles it (and this is THE ONLY RIGHT WAY to handle it)
==> One task dependent upon one OR MORE other tasks: https://support.teamwork.com/projects/project-sections/setting-task-dependendency
==> Cross project dependencies: https://support.teamwork.com/projects/tasks/setting-cross-project-dependencies
2. Dependencies are SEVERELY lacking. So you can only set task dependencies (or milestone dependencies) in the AFTER format. As in "this task can only be done after the other task this one is dependent upon is complete.
There is NO way to set that A can be started after B has BEGUN.
To be continued...
Sky_Nifty
May 9, 2024Hey Lackshay!
Thanks so much for your passionate, detailed review of Nifty. That you'd spend this much time on your review indicates to us that we've got a product that's worth obsessing about over the tiny details until its just right.
Needless to say, we feel the same way.
Some of the feedback is only a matter of "when" as far as finding its way into Nifty, such as more integrations, customizable permissions, enhanced project budgeting, and task templates.
Your dependency feedback is well received, though milestones can run in tandem upon the completion of their shared dependent milestone. While this is not exactly the "Begun" example you gave, it may serve as a workaround for you in the meantime.
A few points of yours that I'd like to refute for other Sumo-lings:
• While permissions are not customizable, Portfolio and Project invitations allow teams to control who should be involved in (and thus see the content of) a project as a whole. Additionally, the ability to Hide Tasks and Milestones (and the tasks within them) allow you to create visibility walls within a project amongst Guests and fellow teammates. Lastly, Docs bear similar invitation-based permissions to restrict access when desired. To reiterate, your claim that "You can't decide who gets access to what. Nifty decides that for you" is false (and quite frankly, somewhat damaging).
• Our Task Timer saves clocked time as time stamps based on the user or users who clock time on it. The resetting clock does not indicate that no time has been tracked on a task, as a task's time log will show all of the people who have logged time on that task, and will even leave notes if a time is entered manually.
Project time logs can be downloaded as a CSV and will show per-task time logging. Additionally, our Budget Custom Field does in fact sync with the time logged on a task to reflect a calculation of a budget multiplied by the time logged.
I appreciate you sharing your confusion here, and we'll be sure to check out Teamwork's time and budget tracking to see if we can't make our UX more explicit. I have to say, similar to our point above, we're a little bummed that you didn't reference our Help Center or open a Support Ticket before jumping to a public conclusion that our tool is flat-out broken, as these claims can be fairly pivotal when another Sumo-ling considers purchasing Nifty.
In all, I'd like to sincerely thank you for your immersive response. We're always looking to improve Nifty, and many of your insights, especially around other ways to execute dependencies, are extremely valuable.