Remote employees managed correctly deliver better output, work longer hours, and gain a better work/life balance.Īs with other project management solutions, Merlin Project appears to provide a powerful software tool to enable successful management of such distributed teams. As recognition of the need for tools of this type grows, it seems inevitable we’ll see some interesting evolutions in this space, particularly around remote workplace ergonomics and employee health. While this is more challenging - perhaps impossible for hidebound traditional managers - the rewards in terms of employee autonomy, job satisfaction and retention are recognizable. There’s little doubt that one of the big human resources challenges of the remote enterprise is the fast-emerging need for a new approach to management. The shift in working habits means managers must work harder to break projects down, planning and executing them for sometimes asynchronous distributed teams. Individuals and small business users don’t need to invest in the full-scale app, as Merlin project Express is also available, optimized for small projects and available on a pay-as-you-need basis. That’s something that likely blunts the product's potential, as enterprises running multiple platforms are likely to require a solution that supports all of them. Enterprises that have standardized around the iPhone, iPad and/or Mac, however, will be right at home with this powerful project planning solution. Perhaps the biggest challenge with Merlin Project is its lack of Windows support. The ability to implement changes in the project plan is invaluable, given that almost every project slips. Schedules, budgets, costs, progress, and change management can all be implemented within these plans, which can output project detail in a variety of reporting and workflow charts and templates. In use, the it to help project managers build procedural structures that reveal the dependencies between all the activities within a project. That’s very useful as it empowers management to make more effective estimates around project duration, key targets, and strategic project deliverables. It costs $149/user/year, or $69.99/user/year for the iPad/iPhone version, and you get access to almost every single feature on both iOS and Mac. The latter mean you can bring things in from MS Project, Microsoft Excel, MindManager, XML, OPML, and more (and export in those formats, too). Natively written for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, key features of the software include work breakdown (gantt chart, netplan, and so on), Kanban boards for agile thinking, mind mapping, resource management, and resource pool tools. Merlin also offers employee assignment report generating, grouping, styling, and export/import tools. It boasts powerful sync, synchronizing changes made by multiple users without data going missing, becoming over-written or generating conflicting files. The solution also seems to scale effectively, making it accessible to both entry-level users and experienced project managers. Merlin Project customers work in the US and EU space industries, specifically at marketing, telecoms and media companies. The software is also used in architecture, construction - and even one of the biggest software companies uses it “in their Mac business unit," Cherif said, though he declined to name names. The latter is good news for the developer, given that Merlin Project is designed to support project planning, executio,n and communication – in other words, it’s made for the specific challenge of managing remotely distributed teams and is already in use in critical enterprises. This has helped us during the pandemic, and we think there will be a greater shift toward working from home in future,” he said. “Since we use Merlin Project ourselves, we developed it to best suit our needs. “We’ve been a remote company since 2002 and therefore we are very experienced in working from home,” he said. Almost 20 years working remotelyĬherif claims one serious advantage of his recently updated solution, in that his company eats its own dog food. I’m planning to take a closer look at project management solutions (including Merlin) in future, so if you develop professional project management software for both Mac and iOS, let me know. It’s a segment of the market expected to hit a CAGR of 10.67% into 2026, jumping from $5.37 billion in 2020 to$ 9.81 billion. Software to support project management and team collaboration is benefiting from the move to remote enterprise. Merlin Project isn’t the only game in town for Apple users you can look to Wrike, MeisterTask, Zoho Project, and other solutions already jostling for your attention.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |