Introduction
There is an interesting quote from “An inconvenient truth” which rings true more often than we’d like to admit. “What gets us into trouble is not what you don’t know, but what you think you know that just ain’t so.”. In my case, this ended up being true when it came to project management on Mac.
Coming from Windows, I grew up believing that MS Project was the best project scheduling tool on the market, and that anything on Mac would pale in comparison, because Mac just wasn’t designed for project management. Mac just doesn’t seem like the type of platform that would offer anything substantial from a project management perspective, but I’m the first to admit I made a huge mistake in making that assumption. Perhaps its exactly these types of assumptions that have forced software manufacturers on the Mac platform to really up their game to show they can legitimately compete. To be honest, I probably would have happily continued using Project had it not been all the hassle I had with migrating Outlook to Entourage which made it clear to me that Microsoft were going to make it as difficult as possible for me to migrate anything to Mac in future so I might as well migrate sooner rather than later. This was probably the best thing that could have happened to me or I wouldn’t have realised how many great Mac products there are out there.
In my case, the answer to my stories came from a recommendation from one of the Mactalk members to look at Merlin. I did download a couple of packages, but Merlin definitely seemed to stand out, although I did test it far longer than the other products because I became involved in Beta testing on their 2.6 Beta.
Last week, I purchased a copy of the software. The fact that I’d spend $200 on Merlin when I can access MS Project at the same price should give an indication of my thoughts on the product, because $200 is quite steep. One of the highlights of the Merlin is the new web publishing tool which allows for exporting to a web format that users can manipulate.
Anyway, enough about the history, lets talk about the product itself. When starting a new project, Merlin will offer you the ability to select a project templates they have already created. You can add your own templates to the list if you want to as well.
Templates include phases (first level of the WBS) so you can immediate specify when creating your project which of the “phases” are relevant to a particular project. This, although not a massive time saver (given you could simply delete specific phases of the project) is a nice touch and something relatively simple to engineer. Its these sort of “little touches” seen through out the program which make it a pleasure to work with.
Functionality
So how does Merlin different from project? Well, not much if you mean does MS Project have anything that Merlin doesn’t and a lot if you mean does Merlin have functionality that MS Project doesn’t.
MS Project is a scheduling tool for project management, Merlin is a project management tool that includes scheduling. The major difference is Merlin includes functionality that allows you to manage almost everything on your project including some document management functionality with versioning (light), risks and issues, and the resourcing benefits from integration into the Entourage and Address book so you don’t have to manage two separate sets of information or contact lists.
Its far easier to use than project, while still having more functionality so its not like you can say MS Project is more usable because it has less, simply converting a project to html or pdf and you immediately get an idea of how complex MS Project can be, while Merlin just makes it really simple to do really basic tasks.
Incidentally Merlin is compatible with MS Project, both 2003 and 2007 and you can open a project file without a hassle with Merlin and also export to MS Project supported format (MPX or XML) so it goes both ways. Conversion on opening happens automatically, exporting is done via an export function which is very simple. There are some limitations, not all data is carried across for the import or export - check the Merlin manual for more details if this is important to you.
Merlin also benefits from a massive sets of customisable reports which include the ability to add company logos to a project ensuring the logo appears on all reports.
The reports are flexible enough to cater for 90% of reporting requirements and a fair amount of customisation is provided for editing these reports with no script knowledge. The Merlin2 icon seen is replaced with a user selectable icon (customer or company depending on your preference).
The issue and risk management functionality is extremely usable allowing the project manager to work with a single tool instead of having to use multiple tools and databases to handle different areas of the project.
Another nice feature is the checklist functionality, removing the requirement to micro-manage projects in some areas with individual items that need to be checked off.
Other nice features include the export to web, which unlike most export functions for project packages, allows the users to manipulate the project plan, expand phases and all from within a browser environment, unlike the norm of having to export to PDF which doesn’t really provide the sort of functionality required for more detailed viewing from the project team. Fortunately there is an export function for various formats so if you need to distribute PDF’s via email. The following screen shows some of the file formats supported by the export function. You will notice of course that MS Project is supported allow you to export to a format support by most companies.
Exporting to HTML is the nice function here as can be seen. Most view functions are available including the ability to expand column widths, move the gantt chart, expand tasks and view resourcing. This shows the export options available from Merlin.
This would probably provide the most practical format for sharing the project plan with users as it negates the issues of worrying about who has what software installed as anyone with a browser can view it. This is actually the web view.
Percentage complete actually fills in the line itself rather than having a separate line above as is provided by MS Project.
Needless to say, as you can see from all of the above, the product is really amazing, and I haven’t even got into the functional aspects of the costing side of projects yet where I could spend pages more covering how much the product has in this area, but this should give you an idea.
Beta Testing Issues
Stability of the project was an issue during my testing although I have to state that I was testing a beta so its not really surprising to see crashing when the guys are actively working on the program. By the 4th Beta release, the majority of these crashes were almost non-existent and any feedback provided to the Merlin development crew were responded by promptly and with information on whether they were aware of the problem, when the problem would be solved, and in some cases they asked for copies of the project file so they could examine the data and replicate the problem themselves. Overall, I found the development team to be extremely efficient and friendly, and its this type of service during the beta process that made me purchase the product in the end. To give you an idea of how efficient, they only generally responded within 3 working hours of their time zone coming online and in most cases within half an hour. The development team were also kind enough to respond to questions on available functionality and when I would see some specific functionality I wanted in future versions, and the problems were actually fixed, it wasn’t just talk. Overall, I could not fault the development team for their handling, they should receive a full A+ for their customer service levels.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you are in the market for a project management package, then this should definitely be one on your list of products to test and could well find its way to the top of the list. As far as I am concerned, its arguably the best on the market currently, and I’ll continue to remain a customer of theirs for a long time.
You can pick up a trial at
Merlin 2 - Home if you are keen to check it out.
Merlin - Project Scheduling on Mac (MS Project Competitor for Mac)
I think Primavera plays more in the space of integration with SAP and SAP Projects Module. I.e projects that are run from SAP itself rather than implementing SAP.
