Currently, we are helping a government entity with their PMO portfolio. They have many departments and streams. The main Microsoft Project Server use case for them is managing the planning for all the projects within the workflows, monitoring the projects inside the dashboards of the PMO and processing all the workflows for the project initiation, charter, and deliverables.
There are many valuable features of this solution. It is very advanced and once you understand and learn how to use it, it can be quite powerful. The whole package can be quite powerful. Inside of Microsoft Project Server, you not only have in-house development solutions, but also the workflow engine. You can create templates, pages, and users. The web part is very straightforward and even without any development knowledge, you can create any page you want aside from the workflows. This is fantastic.
The solution should be made more collaborative. Currently, we are using Microsoft Project Server alone, without the involvement of a team. In other words, we are not collaborating with the whole team within the solution and that is a minus.
I would also like to see an integration with Amazon's project management solution. As of right now, there is no integration. We have a link only between the Amazon project management solution and the planner activities. This is very basic and we need some advanced cooperation options.
I have been using Microsoft Project Server for four years.
I would rate the stability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. My opinion is that the cloud version of this solution is quite stable.
I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.
The main problem with this solution is collaboration between teams. If you want to involve the other teams you'll have to buy Project Light servers or enable the project team members to collaborate inside the plan itself. This is an extra cost to the standard license. We also have a license for the planner and the teams, but we need some integration between all of them.
The professional and premium licenses are quite expensive.
The solution can be very slow. Sometimes, it takes minutes to open a page that shares the dashboards.
In addition, there is no training material and there needs to be more awareness training. There's no online help to aid users through the process.
The first thing I would say to anyone trying to use this solution is that you need to understand its capabilities and functionalities before trying to use it. If you are not aware of the capabilities and features, you are using a Bugatti like a normal car. You need to get the right training and educate all of the project managers on how they can utilize the main functionality and services of the solution.
Overall, I would rate this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.