What is our primary use case?
My organization handles IT consulting and services. That's primarily how the organization is managed. The use case for this solution was to set up the resource development unit and manage the investment cost, scheduling, budgeting, and some of those new initiatives that were supposed to happen in the R&D division. That was why we were looking for a portfolio management product. We found that Project Server could be a way to visualize and govern the entire program for the client.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution has improved the organization primarily due to the transparency between each individual team. There is a productivity benefit. I've likely seen a 20% to 28% increase in productivity benefit over a year's time. From a cost perspective, I'm less sure of how to comment. That said, productivity and transparency are definitely the two benefits I've witnessed so far.
What is most valuable?
The most relevant feature is its collaboration capabilities. Users can easily collaborate, for example, on Sharepoint or Microsoft Teams. If there is a lot of heavy usage of Microsoft tools, it's easy to share and collaborate across apps.
The Excel interface is very good.
The stability of the 2019 version is quite good.
What needs improvement?
The deployment aspect of the product is a bit tedious. That's something I personally see of my organization. Deploying Project Server from an infrastructure perspective is not an easy thing. It takes a week sometimes to set it up.
From a features perspective, the insights around the cost and budget could be improved. Competitor products are more robust. Project Server has a very limited feature in terms of reporting. Specifically, the features around the cost control are weak. The built-in reports and the built-in analytics for Project Server are very minimal. The competitors are way ahead than what Project Server is offering us.
The initial setup was complex.
The integration to an employee engagement platform probably would make more sense and integrations with other products like SAP would be useful.
Users of Project Server need to write some amount of custom integrations to the DLP product innovation site. If you wanted to have resource analysis, you want to create invoices based on resources working on a project, that integration is still not there. Integrating with some of those invoice management systems would make more sense now based on the way enterprises are working in terms of automation.
The solution needs multi-language support. The tool primarily supports English as a primary language. If someone wanted to make it Arabic, the Project Server does not work well. The characters sets, the dates, and other things create a lot of mess.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using the solution for around six years or so. We started using it in 2016.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
When I was using the Project Server 2016, that was creating a lot of problems in terms of performance, in terms of export, input, the content. However, when we moved to Project Server 2019 three years ago, I would say it was an improved version. It's quite stable now. There have been a lot of technical advancements, and feature announcements. 2019 is a much more stable version.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Primarily the solution has been handled by the PMO team which is comprised of 20 users. They are mostly portfolio managers, program managers, and solution architects as well as an executive who usually uses it from a governance perspective.
Since this has been used by the portfolio managers, so it's basically bread and butter for the PMO team. It's used day in, day out and it's tracking a single source of truth from a program management perspective. In terms of expanding the portfolio, likely, the business will grow, and that's when we may add more users. By 2022, we might add five more users. That is what I foresee.
How are customer service and support?
We go through a CSP partner for Microsoft due to the online nature of the deployment. Our CSP partner is quite helpful. We are pleased with the support quality they provide. I would rate them four out of five stars.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complex. Any type of guidance or user training or helpful documentation and materials were not available.
The deployment took around seven to ten days. Deployment took really a long time.
I will not be able to properly quantify what went wrong. I'm not sure if it was the infrastructure or the capacity planning or if the partner just wasn't quite capable. There could have been multiple issues. The general perception was that was supposed to happen within a day, maximum. It took around seven to nine all working days to just set up the environment.
What about the implementation team?
We used partners. They were a Microsoft partner.
Since I was not managing the process, I can't give feedback in terms of how the partner was to work with, or their capabilities.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution offers a subscription-based pay-as-you-go model.
Now that everyone has moved to the online version, it is my understanding that the approximate cost comes to around $350 to $400 USD per month. I see or close to $4,000 to $5,000 USD per annum.
What other advice do I have?
We are simply a customer and an end-user.
Although we began with the on-premises version, we've recently started using the online version of the solution. That is primarily how we access it now.
From an advice perspective, for any enterprise that has an existing investment around Microsoft, it makes more sense in terms of moving to a Project Server to manage in a more structured way. However, if you do not use SharePoint, if you do not use Microsoft Teams or any sort of solution that is the real value of Project Server it's not necessary to use Project Server. This solution is best for those companies planning to have a commitment to Microsoft technology. It brings more value.
I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It's lacking some features around budget cost and portfolio management. There are a few areas that could use improvement still.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
*Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
