From Do to Podio a bit of Wrike, team acceptance was difficult of Podio tasks and project manager


podiowrike
As you grow from a one person company into a small team of 5 colleagues you will soon notice that it gets challenging to keep track of tasks, projects and who is working on what and how is progress. It took me months of research to find a tool appropriate in handling tasks. The first tool I used was Chandler which wasn’t in development any more and didn’t prove ideal for team work. Then I finally found Do. Do was very easy to grasp. You can make sections and input tasks. Delegate them, leave comments and click on done when you are done. Team acceptance of this tool was all right even though it required an adaptation period of around 2 weeks, moving from Chandler to Do. Of all tools we used so far Do proved to be the best due to its simplicity when it comes to team adoption.

Then Do, a program by salesforce was shut down!
We then found Podio which my colleague who was responsible for improving intern processes of the company adored. He is a number and algorithm person, he fell in love with Podio. So we took Podio!
Podio is free for upto 5 users and gives you access to ALL functions. They do not switch off functions so that you feel forced to pay so that you can work. I like their approach, love their blogs and videos. Seriously, they are doing an awesome job.
You can create your own applications called apps, you can make department sections, for each section you will have its own dashboard which you can adapt in so many ways to suit your needs, a home feed where you can just post like on a social media page and a possibility to chat with colleagues. There is so much you can do with Podio. My colleague that was fascinated by Podio then built various apps and we shifted all our tasks and team into Podio for our Isla-Mauricia agency. At one point we were even trying to have all our bookings processed through Podio. At Isla-Mauricia we handle bookings for holiday rentals in Mauritius.

…but there is also Wrike that is very nice to!
I must say that I’m also a great fan of Wrike, of its design and structure. Wrike comes closer to Do. Wrike simply clicks better with my logic and habits.
But Wrike comes with less goodies price wise (for free) compared to Podio which offers you all functions for free. Realistically Podio makes more sense for a small company in my opinion, except design wise and colour wise I would have liked it to be a bit different. For the makers of such software, the world is big, there are many small companies out there who start up with very small budgets, getting access to a tool like Podio with no cost entry is really going to help many small companies around the globe to structure better their tasks and projects.

Podio is vast, and has so many functions and places to click at. When you are new to Podio you can get lost in there. It takes a while to understand the logic of Podio. Podio is actually yet SO SIMPLE but requires a mind change. Its like when you switch from windows to Ubuntu Linux, it takes a while until you get used to it. It’s fun!

Part of my team didn’t adopt Podio ever…
A part of my team had great trouble in adopting Podio. Actually they never adopted it, even after months of using it. We did various trainings, wrote our own instructions and assisted various team members personally on a lot of occasions on how to input tasks and share it with the team. We did presentations rounds, showed the videos and more.
The chat tool for instance found great acceptance but not the rest.
Most team members ended up using only the employees department section and avoided using all the other departments. They were lost on where to input what. We kept tweaking and simplifying the department sections and had only a few apps remaining.

This is where the program Do was easier as it didn’t have departments with nested sections. Maybe it was a more plain version of GTD (Getting Things Done) concept.
This is also where Wrike appears slightly more similar to Do.
I can understand my team. Still as of today, after using Podio more than 2 years, I still feel lost and overwhelmed in Podio at times. There is just so much stuff to click on and you want to click on all of it wondering what it all does!
I actually feel irritated by its design. Yet, I totally agree that it’s an excellent tool and I will continue using it. The difference with Podio is that you must THINK.
Usually when I get used to a program, I don’t feel that much the effort of thinking but in Podio, I still need to make that extra effort. Maybe I’m just formatted more old school and certain old structures are difficult to remove.

I didn’t test Wrike with my team if acceptance would have been better. It was quite frustrating at times to see employees still end up NOT using Podio for their tasks and still using a diary again. Somehow we didn’t achieve what we intended.

A bit of Wrike and Podio
I conclude that design wise I prefer WRIKE as it is fast, make folders on the fly, no need to reload constantly the page, saves automatically. Wrike is constantly improving and bringing in new improvements. Support is excellent. I dislike its limitations of the Dashboard, and hope the release a calendar function like Google Calendar and they should have like Podio a free package for 5 persons with all functions at least until they grow bigger, it would be a supportive move for start ups.

When it comes to functions, create departments, projects, sub sections, databases, creating your own applications how data is handled, work flows, calendar, various filters, price wise PODIO is the better deal for a small company because with a team of up to 5 persons you can get started for free.

I would have liked a Podio with the design of Wrike and its speed plus the Gant chart of Wrike is excellent.
Did you test with your team various tasks and project manager programs?
Which one did they prefer?
Which one do you prefer and why?


2 thoughts on “From Do to Podio a bit of Wrike, team acceptance was difficult of Podio tasks and project manager

  1. Dan.G.

    My current favorite is Bitrix24. Essentially free, it’s Basecamp+Dropbox+Skype in one. One of the best collaboration platform IMHO.

     
    Reply
    1. Dietmar Reigber

      Hi Dan,
      thanks for sharing this awesome program with us. Can you tell us a bit more how it has revolutionized how you get things done? How do you like its calendar? Does it match that of Google Calendar?
      Nice that they also enter a free entry package.

       
      Reply

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