All Quiet on the Workfront
Workfront exemplifies the classical software paradigm of automating systematic, exacting tasks to free up users for creative work. Workfront is a resource management tool that gets integration right but underwhelms on collaborative value.
Source: Workfront at Software Reviews
When assessing the capacity of Workfront as an enterprise collaboration tool, we find it wanting on at least one of the four criteria we deem critical to the future of this space:
- Debates lead to elegant solutions.
- Project partitioning and allocation is efficient.
- Progress monitoring improves capital allocation.
- Risk mitigation improves project outcomes.
Workfront is focused on resolving the vexing problem every enterprise has: multiple disconnected software tools specialized for specific functions. There is undeniable merit in addressing this issue, because an optimized process is the foundation of a profitable business.
Though enabling the management of multidisciplinary projects across multiple reporting structures does raise efficiency and improve capital allocation, it only marginally addresses issues of risk and does not do much to foment the ideation process.
Our Take
Collaboration is often confused with transparency. Giving stakeholders access to all aspects of a project is an effective way to keep everyone apprised as necessary. This minimizes wasteful activities, such as redundant status update meetings, and improves decision making around what needs to be done, how it must be done, and who must do it. But collaboration is much more than that; it is about group discussion that leads to marked improvement, and it is about the valuation of risk mitigation. Workfront still must advance to get there.
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