SpiraPlan is an agile venture administration system designed to assist small and mid-sized companies handle duties, workflows, tasks, and dangers from one platform. It contains options like objective setting, price range administration, job project, customizable workflows, and dashboards. On this assessment, we break down SpiraPlan’s finest options, and the locations we felt might use some enchancment.

SpiraPlan brand logo for Crazy Egg SpiraPlan review

SpiraPlan In comparison with the Greatest Challenge Portfolio Administration Instruments

Beneath, you’ll discover our Golden Eggs, the very best venture portfolio administration instruments based mostly on all those we tried. SpiraPlan didn’t make it onto our record, however that doesn’t imply it couldn’t be an excellent match for you, so don’t depend it out earlier than studying this assessment. 

The instruments in our record are wonderful for venture group, collaboration, and customization. Read our full review to see how we chose our favorites

Monday.com is our favourite instrument as a result of it’s versatile, intuitive, and provides highly effective customization throughout groups. You can get started for free today, no credit card required

Hive is our high advice for groups, because of its vary of collaboration options, together with digital chat, tagging, and venture sharing. You can try Hive free for yourself.

Asana is our high choose for these in search of a simple studying curve and a give attention to simplicity that permits you to prioritize particular duties. You can try their basic plan for free.   

SpiraPlan: The Good and the Unhealthy

Challenge administration portfolio instruments virtually all the time have job administration options, like calendars, tagging, job assignments, and venture estimates. Nonetheless, they don’t all have the identical options past these fundamentals, and a few deal with even the fundamentals higher than others. We’ve damaged down what we predict SpiraPlan does finest and what may very well be improved on. 

What SpiraPlan Is Good At 

SpiraPlan is nice in relation to customization and collaboration options. It permits groups to work collectively and talk simply and understands that each venture and shopper is exclusive. It’s additionally very simple to study, in keeping with customers, and intuitive when sending venture reminders. 

Versatile and Customizable Interface: One of many predominant strengths of SpiraPlan is that it’s simple to make use of and customise, even for workforce members that aren’t significantly tech-savvy. All of the dashboards and workflows are customizable with drag-and-drop configurations, with no coding or scripting required, making it simpler for larger groups to make modifications.

Customers continuously cited these options as one among their favourite issues about SpiraPlan, saying that the versatile customization made it simpler to handle a number of shopper workflows or tasks concurrently. 

Sturdy Time Administration Capabilities: One other energy of SpiraPlan is its time-tracking instruments, like job updates and venture supply timeline forecasts. For instance, SpiraPlan provides customers a centralized view of all tasks, making it simple to determine what’s essential and which duties needs to be prioritized and assigned in a timeline. 

Time-tracking is one thing you’ll anticipate from any venture administration instrument, however SpiraPlan customers particularly point out that SpiraPlan is extra intuitive with the way it updates customers about deadlines and that the visible tree diagrams for workflows made it simpler to remain on monitor as a workforce. 

Nicely-supported Collaboration: With instruments like an immediate chat function for groups, an inside wiki that’s simple to edit, and simple doc collaboration, SpiraPlan is simple for groups to make use of. A planning board function additionally breaks up duties and assigns them to particular person workforce members to assist full tasks effectively. 

There’s additionally a function known as Scrum Activity Boards, which provides customers a transparent view of who has been assigned to which job and the way they’re progressing with it. SpiraPlan can also ship computerized venture updates to customers through electronic mail and lets groups increase points or give suggestions instantly by means of electronic mail or chat. 

Detailed On-line Tutorials and Help: SpiraPlan is nice in relation to on-line assist and tutorials for brand spanking new customers. Evaluations continually talked about that they discovered SpiraPlan simple to arrange and intuitive to make use of, and lots of credited the FAQ and YouTube tutorials for that.

SpiraPlan additionally has a assist workforce through electronic mail and telephone and provides all customers one yr of free devoted assist once they purchase SpiraPlan or every other Inflectra product. 

Versatile Gadget Deployment: One thing else that makes SpiraPlan simple to make use of is that it integrates and can be utilized on virtually any system. Some Challenge Administration platforms are restricted to desktops, however SpiraPlan can be utilized on Cloud, Desktop, iOS, and Android, making it one of many extra versatile techniques available on the market. 

What SpiraPlan Is Missing

SpiraPlan is nice in some ways, however a couple of issues may very well be improved, particularly reporting and technical reliability. Listed here are the locations we discovered SpiraPlan had some room for enchancment: 

Restricted/Advanced Reporting Capability: Reporting usually doesn’t appear to be a energy of SpiraPlan. Some customers complained that they want a deeper degree of report customization and that the experiences generated lacked element. This may very well be as a result of SpiraPlan provides a lot of customization choices for reporting, a few of that are pretty technical, so customers could be struggling to work out easy methods to make the reporting work for them. If you happen to’re not tremendous technical however want detailed experiences, that is one thing to remember. 

Occasional Technical Glitches: A number of customers reported that they’d skilled latency points, particularly when making an attempt to load exams or massive venture workflows. To be truthful, glitches like these are widespread with venture administration instruments the place a number of workforce members or tasks are being managed, however it’s nonetheless good to concentrate on with SpiraPlan. 

SpiraPlan Choices and Pricing

In terms of plans and pricing, SpiraPlan does issues somewhat otherwise than different venture administration techniques. As a substitute of getting completely different plans with completely different options, SpiraPlan provides one plan that features all options, with pricing that goes up based mostly on the variety of customers. That is nice for smaller groups that need entry to all the advantages of SpiraPlan however don’t essentially have the identical price range as a big company or enterprise. 

It’s additionally essential to notice that SpiraPlan provides customers a 30-day free trial with full entry to all options and no bank card requirement to enroll. Not like different firms we’ve reviewed (like our Golden Eggs) SpiraPlan doesn’t have a free plan, so the trial is an effective manner for customers to see if the funding is smart for his or her wants.

Regardless that SpiraPlan solely has one plan with greater pricing for extra customers, it does have options and options focused towards completely different industries and makes use of. Let’s take a look at a few of the industries SpiraPlan caters to and the way it’s focused towards them.  

Vitality & Industrial

SpiraPlan QA & Testing webpage snippet

For vitality and industrial firms, plenty of probably the most important issues customers face revolve round testing techniques, defining necessities, and guaranteeing compliance with business requirements and rules. SpiraPlan comes with threat administration and monitoring options designed to assist customers on this business keep on schedule with testing and hold clearly outlined targets, workflows, and timelines.  

SpiraPlan’s bug monitoring function additionally maintains a safe audit log of all actions made within the system, which is beneficial in relation to making compliance experiences. This function contains monitoring, bug administration, decision project, and defect workflows so groups can determine and resolve points with detailed experiences exhibiting the method. This makes SpiraPlan a robust system, not only for venture administration, however for compliance in an business the place it’s so essential. 

Monetary Companies

SpiraPlan webpage snippet with header that says "Programs, Planned" and example of program management interface

Groups within the monetary companies business want to have the ability to adapt to ongoing modifications in know-how and shopper wants, so SpiraPlan’s planning and collaboration options are particularly essential for these customers. The moment messaging and dashboards with a number of workflows actually come into their very own right here, as a result of they permit groups to make quick choices and modifications for tasks in an business that requires plenty of innovation. 

It’s additionally value noting that, like many different industries SpiraPlan is focused at, threat administration by means of SpiraPlan’s bug-tracking instrument is essential to monetary administration. What’s nice about SpiraPlan is that it comes with over 55 integrations, together with 9 for bug and defect monitoring. This makes it simple for groups to make use of SpiraPlan even when they already depend on different defect-tracking instruments like Jira or Axosoft. 

Healthcare & Life Sciences

SpiraPlan webpage with header that says "Everything, Organized" and example of real-time charts

Healthcare and life sciences is one other business the place compliance is vital, and so the identical bug monitoring and threat administration instruments that can be utilized for vitality or monetary companies are invaluable right here too. 

The place SpiraPlan actually shines for healthcare and life sciences, although, is with real-time traceability and customization. Customers on this business want to have the ability to entry and customise a dashboard with a number of workflows, in addition to make quick modifications and updates with out disrupting their groups. SpiraPlan even has an electronic mail integration function that ensures all customers are notified about modifications within the system, making it a lot simpler for groups to adapt shortly to business regulation modifications or bug fixes. 

Authorities & Protection

SpiraPlan project management webpage snippet

Authorities and protection industries face the problem of delivering safe and efficient techniques which might be simple to make use of whereas staying inside a price range. One of many predominant SpiraPlan options that profit this business is its planning instruments for safe traceability and testing for optimizing IT investments and techniques portfolios. 

SpiraPlan additionally has a planning board function designed to assist groups break down tasks and make modifications based mostly on price range. Its monitoring options monitor the place that price range is throughout a venture’s life cycle, and customers are up to date when bills are operating over or have to be reallocated.

SpiraPlan in Abstract

SpiraPlan is taken into account a stable venture portfolio administration instrument for a purpose. It has subsequent to no studying curve, nice assist, good collaboration choices, and is absolutely customizable.

It additionally comes with all the same old options you’ll anticipate from a venture administration instrument, like budgeting, and makes these accessible to any plan, not simply the highest ones. However as nice as it’s, SpiraPlan isn’t the one venture administration instrument available on the market, and in case you’re nonetheless purchasing round for one, there are loads extra fish within the sea. 

We nonetheless suppose Monday.com is the most suitable choice for companies that want quick tech and templates, and that Hive is ideal for groups that want collaboration to be a precedence. And, as simple as SpiraPlan is, Asana continues to be our high choose for ease of use and ease for brand spanking new groups and customers. 

You’ll be able to read our full article to see what we preferred, and didn’t like, about all the opposite venture administration portfolio instruments we reviewed. 


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