Planview PPM Pro Reviews

We use PPM Pro mainly for resource tracking and project/program management at present. Resources are tracked from the time of joining in Organization/Division until they exit. Projects are getting tracked from the conceptual phase until completion. Projects are tracked and managed through the gate mechanism. In addition to the project information, we also capture resource staffing, health, risks, status, and project stages; all of this gets updated periodically. We also use it for certain aspects of financial details from a project management aspect.

Eventually, it is supposed to become a one-stop-shop or a source of data for project information. That is what we are aiming to achieve.

Project Management requirements evolve based on how the project data is getting utilized. PPM Pro is getting updated continuously for such requirements. Through such changes, PPM Pro has evolved in my organization over a period of time.

Our stakeholders evaluate project information from PPM Pro periodically. Stakeholder's need for capturing additional data or information processing is also continuously evolving. When it is observed that additional project information would be useful for decision making, it will get added to PPM Pro. Or sometimes, the processed data will be useful to get a summarized view, we achieve this through calculated fields.

It is slowly evolving that way. The way the system is able to capture all this information is really impressive.

The project entity in PPM Pro gives a lot of options for us to capture information, manage, and control it in a very detail-oriented way.

The timesheet management features give us visibility to the overall capacity planning and how much actual effort is going into the programs monthly. The risk and project status information gives a helping hand for stakeholders to understand how the programs are progressing. We have only explored a portion of it so far. The other features that we are exploring right now are the what-if features that seem to be helpful for future planning and project program management. We are aiming to get that rolled out as quickly as possible.

PPM Pro enables us to create reusable project templates that reflect our project management lifecycle. This includes many factors like fields used in a particular type of project, information captured in selected fields, tasks, attachments, dashboard links, calendars, risks, roles, team members and staffing information, etc.

When a project is running, there are several aspects of this that come into the picture. Gate structure, task structure, resources, roles, and settings etc. Also, the information we capture varies from project to project. When a project is completed, if we see that something is a potential candidate to be converted as a template, we extract the necessary information/setting from the existing project and create that as a template asset, so that in future, projects can be created based on that template. Multiple templates can be taken from one project. It takes hardly a minute and a half, maximum, to create a project in PPM Pro with the system defined mandatory fields. When it comes to a project, each customer will have a set of requirements (mandatory fields) in terms of what they need to capture for it.

Building a team is tricky. There are two ways I look at the team in a project. One is based on the staffing aspect; another one is just as a team. For building a team, if it is just a team grouping into a program, it is very simple and straight forward. You can add the members directly into the team. But if it is a staffing-based team, it is a bit complex because we deal with the role demand as well as resource planning. So, we need to plan it out first before it goes into the system at present.

In terms of PPM Pro’s task management features, we have not created any complex structures yet, but recently we have identified that it is more suitable in terms of complex structure management. And also helps to roll-up the information from tasks to project to Program to BU level. As of now, we only use around 50% of the potential from a task status. The structure we currently have is very straightforward and simple from a task point of view. It is possible to capture a lot of details in the task structure. It is really impressive that task structure can capture that kind of detail.

The time-tracking abilities like timesheets and allocation of hours are good. It is efficient and practical. PPM Pro gives a comprehensive insight into projects and empowers project/program managers to make informed decisions. We create reports and dashboards in PPM Pro that show the overall status and progress of each Business Unit with the details of projects with required KPIs. Please note that these KPIs will differ based on requirements from each BU/Customer.

Stakeholders also get a view of the timesheets at a high-level and are also able to drill down to the necessary details. This helps them to see whether the team is spending more or less time compared to the original plan and they can revise the planning, which will become more efficient for further project execution. We have set a platform for stakeholders in the system with dashboards and reports based on the KPIs needed for them to evaluate. This helps them to make decisions and also helps us to improve the system to get more out of it.

If you had asked this question a year ago, I would have pointed to the reports and dashboards. We had to create a lot of reports and dashboards outside the system (like Power BI). Planview is launching the new reporting and dashboards now, which is supposed to give us better results compared to what we have now.

The calculated field section has a lot of room for improvement. There are a lot of formulas and functions available to make calculated fields but are still not comprehensive. We do a lot of processing of the data in PPM Pro through these calculated fields to represent them in reports/dashboards. It is much easier to do such calculations in excel/Power BI. That kind of flexibility or gap is still there in the calculation field aspect because we cannot create that kind of structure in the system at this point. That is a key area for improvement. 

PPM Pro has not helped to reduce project delays directly, but it has helped us improve decision-making. If hundred-plus programs or projects are running simultaneously, there could be multiple reasons why the projects are getting delayed. It could be either because of improper planning/improper fund management/lack of risk prioritization. The system allows stakeholders to make an informative decision, to see that we are putting the people in the right place or if we have too many efforts going in the wrong direction. Or to give priority/attention to the right program. That is how the decisions are taken to pause/accelerate a program. This way, stakeholders are given the right amount of information to make decisions at the right time and thus helping to reduce project delay. Thus, the decision-making process becomes more efficient.

PPM Pro was implemented in my company around four to five years ago. We are still learning and getting more familiarized with the system as we go further along.

It is 90% stable. At times, we have seen that some of the releases break some of the existing functioning features. We had problems with some of the reports and dashboards, and another issue was that people were suddenly unable to log in. 90% of the time it works fine, it is available. Performance-wise it is really good compared to the data it is holding at this point.

It is really scalable. The kind of information that was getting captured and the level of projects have significantly improved as of today. Scalability is not a challenge, but there is a catch. There is a limit in terms of how many fields you can introduce to the system on an entity, the more you add it may affect the system performance. This will be one challenge when multiple BUs shares the same implementation instance. If you have many fields coming into the PPM Pro, it tends to slow down. Any team that is implementing more user-defined fields, it is better to ensure that it is analyzed thoroughly and does not have many junk fields. 

We have a team responsible for maintaining this application in good shape. This team has representatives from each division. We also have an IT department to gives us advice in terms of IT aspects. Every division's requirements are different; so, we come together as a team to share inputs and take a collective decision for a system-level change.

PPM Pro has a 60% adoption rate as present in my division. We do have plans to increase usage. There are multiple types of projects we are running in our company. The R&D team uses PPM Pro for project management. It is slowly growing to adapt all the views into the system for R&D projects. And slowly other groups are also coming into the system, like the operations team. PPM Pro's horizon is slowly expanding here.

The decision to move to PPM Pro was done a long time back (before my time in the company). I am sure that stakeholders would have evaluated many options before they took a call to use PPM Pro.

I have used Microsoft Project for project management in the past. Though MS Project helps to capture tasks, it does not have an extensive capability to hold timesheets and to capture project/product information. PPM Pro is way beyond on that aspect from what we have in Microsoft Project.

During the horizon event, Planview introduced the collaborative environment and Coffee Break area for the brainstorming aspect. This is something we use in different platforms currently (like MS Teams). I believe that such features will enhance the adaptability and improve the acceptance of PPM Pro for more stakeholders/users.

We are seeing the ROI of PPM Pro as it is helping us to manage the projects/programs effectively. This is the reason we are continuing with this application. It is not a direct monetary return, but it enables the business decision-makers to make a call based on reliable information on a day-to-day aspect. That gives a lot more value and it has a large impact. So, if a decision-maker has been given the appropriate information on where each program stands and what the upcoming challenges are, etc. With this information, stakeholders can decide whether they want to stop the program, continue it, if they want to invest more into it, or cut down from it. It is an indirect enabling system that enables the business decision-makers to make a call and then commit to it.

Pricing is on the higher end. But, when you look at the system's robustness, continuous support, and its dependability, I think it is worth the price we are paying.

When we look at the budget, people, or administrative structure that we have in the system, it is too big for a single person to chew from a system administration point of view. If a system like this one is getting implemented, you need to have a workforce to manage it. Do a detailed analysis before you jump into any functionality implementation aspect because there are several underlying aspects that need to be evaluated thoroughly before a particular feature gets updated or rolled out. Once we start using a feature, it is difficult to go back and change.

I would rate PPM Pro an eight out of ten.

Our primary use cases are for capacity management, resource management, and time tracking.

Previously, a lot of activities were done using Microsoft Excel and they had to be recreated. There were a lot of formulas and stuff like that, with a lot of manual work that resulted in a lot of errors. With PPM Pro, we don't get any errors in terms of the calculations. We get the right picture in terms of the dollar amount being spent on each and every project.

It helps from a historical perspective. In 2020, we sometimes go back and refer to 2017 for some of the projects or some of the work that was done. 

Based on our usage, capacity management and resource management are the salient features. The challenge that we have in terms of managing the portfolio is arriving at the different projects within a portfolio and ensuring that the capacity what we have meets the need. When we do the portfolio planning, the tool helps us a lot in doing so, and from the reporting perspective, it provides a good overview of where time is spent as compared to what was planned, which I feel is key for a standard project and portfolio management.

PPM Pro enables us to create usable project templates that reflect our project management lifecycle. I think it works beautifully for the waterfall-based project, though Agile-based implementations have challenges in defining such templates. The level of detail is a bit different when it comes to Agile as compared to waterfall projects.

We have customized the templates for our needs, based on our definition of waterfall and Agile. If it is a waterfall template, then you're defining your activities, you're defining your time, and the schedule. So when people report back to these specific tasks or a specific area, the time gets captured according to the phase and work that they have been doing. This works out pretty well when you take a report and compare it to say, "Okay. Where are you? What was planned?" If the design was planned for 1,000 hours of work we can see how much we have spent, where we are, and how much more is needed. It is pretty well documented.

Once the task gets completed or closed, you can't expect people to go back and report any time on it, so it's locked from that particular perspective. In terms of the Agile template, it's a different thought process altogether, specifically when a project might use different teams to work on the same project. It becomes a bit challenging, because two teams might do the work at two different times, and you may still want to keep the task open for a longer duration. It's a bit of a challenge and we are learning what the optimal way of moving forward with the Agile process is.

Because most of these Agile teams work with the task breakdown or they plan with Azure DevOps, we have a whole gamut of activity that breaks down within the Azure Boards stating the Epic's features and the task level detail. With PPM Pro, we define a high-level Epic or a feature so that the team can report the hours. There's a bit of duplication of effort there because the team has to update their activities on Azure, as well as come back and do the time reporting in PPM Pro. One of the initiatives that we have engaged with Planview is to see how to integrate both the tools.

It only takes a few minutes to create a new project. It's just a copy and paste to create a template.

In terms of the task management features, based on the parameter of the project, we have the standard tasks being defined. They would have been mostly waterfall-based projects. Then we do the phase-wise tasks, the initiation, elaboration, construction, warranty, kind of a thing. But if you take a modified Agile project then the task is derived based on the higher level Epics. It has brought a positive impact to the project management process, mostly in terms of planning financial controls or budgeting process. We rely on the tool itself to let us know the overall plan, as well as the dollar amount that is forecasted and spent.

The solution's time-tracking abilities are one of the strong points. The only challenge is enabling it to the minute-level task. It's not at a project level but it's at an organization level. If  I want it to be at a higher level as compared to some of the other projects where I want it to go to the nth level of a task for the time reporting, I cannot control it at a project level but it's controllable at an organization level. That's the only big challenge that I have.

The leveling of time reporting is centrally controlled as compared to the control at a project level. For example, if I create a task and I create a task as a phase of initiation, elaboration, or construction and if I enable the time reporting to be at a task level, these tasks would be seen by the timesheet report by the user, to say that this project has an initiation task assigned to him and he can report the task. But if there are multiple levels of those tasks, it has a folder with three or four tasks. If the time tracking is enabled at a task level, the number of steps that you would have defined in your task shows everything to all the users.

It provides managers the insight they need to empower decision-making. When we look at our portfolio and when we want to work around either increasing or reducing that portfolio, we do use a lot of what-if analysis. That helps us in making very meaningful decisions to say whether we would be switching or investing in something else, whether that would be working on a specific system or diverting diverse posts to a different system, which would have a better return on investment. 

The integration with some of these other tools that we use, like the Azure DevOps needs improvement. I heard there are few things coming within Planview or PPM Pro itself, but I think it's still future dated. These integrations are key for us from an organizational perspective. 

We're looking forward to the new dashboards and some of the capabilities.

I have been using PPM Pro for five years. 

It is stable. It has matured a lot since the time it was called Innotas. I find the solution to be stable and robust.

We have around 200 users in my company, including portfolio managers, project managers, and two admin. 

We are at an optimum level right now so we don't anticipate more users at this point in time.

Support has been great. Last year we engaged with Planview to help us with some of the apps that we've been doing, specifically in terms of the forecasting, and how to manage the contingency. We did have one of the consultants engaged and working with us, but unfortunately, it was not of much help. In most of these cases, I think consultants revert to saying, "Okay. We are coming with the new financial tab and the functionality." So our problem didn't get resolved at that point in time last year. But we are hoping that the new features that are being rolled over right now will help us in what we are looking for.

I would rate their support a four out of five. There are gaps in some of the work they do but they are responsive and knowledgable. 

When we purchased it, it was still called Innotas. The organization hired a PMO manager who had worked in a different organization and he had experience working with Innotas.

We use MS Project and MS Teams. We never looked at any integration with PPM Pro, since we worked the process to a different aspect of work. Microsoft and PPM Pro are two different things. From the project management perspective, you can't do any time tracking in Project, and you can't do any capacity management across your portfolio. PPM Pro is focused on complex projects.

The initial setup requires some work to be done, but it was not complex. You have to setup the organization, have customized reports, and customization. It was more of a standard process, but it was not so straightforward.

From the PMO perspective, I've written off 30 to 40% of the effort from my PM constitutes to a good amount of savings at the end of the day.

We have different models, some are user-based, some are a license for all the tools underneath it. It's a different combination and capacity based on the user's needs. It is optimally priced.

You need to have a very clear understanding of what your requirements are, the use cases that you want to implement, and what is that you would like to develop in the tool. Based on that, you need to ensure to put the right configurations in place so that the right kind of data can be populated. Doing a thorough analysis of that requirement is key for putting up the right design and right configuration for the tool.

I would rate PPM Pro an eight out of ten. There are still features that the product needs to deliver. The standard project management, in terms of the capacity of the use cases related to the portfolio, capacity, refills, time-tracking, is all good. Other features that are key from a project at a portfolio perspective in terms of auto-calculation, managing contingencies at a project level and the portfolio level need improvement.

We use PPM Pro within our IT department to manage enhancement requests that are small, medium, and large.

Our request process for how our users request enhancements from IT has been the driver for us. We have a lot of people coming in to request enhancements who are using Planview and we customize those fields as we see fit. For example, if you're in a pandemic, you need to track different things on those requests. It's easy to add those fields to build a report on those fields which has been a nice feature for us.

PPM Pro provides managers the insight they need to empower decision-making. The data is always in the tool. It's just making sure people are using it correctly. We track the requests as they come in. We track our demand by each of our teams within IT and then estimate that effort so that we can see if we are getting a lot of requests to certain teams. We check the demand versus capacity as those items come in. Then as we plan out the coming year, we're doing a lot of that demand versus capacity and also looking back at historical data. We check how many hours it took us the last time we did something similar. That's where the tool has been helpful for us.

It has also helped us to reduce project delays. I wasn't here before the tool. When I came on, the tool had already been in place, but I think our utilization of the tool has changed a bit. I think it will be changing again based on the enhancements that are coming out as well. Overall, we've seen some improvement and I think we'll see more.

I really enjoy how easy it is to get to data in the system like when doing searches with custom filters. EasyBuild reports are one of the best features, it gets what people want to look for.

We have several templates that we use in the system depending on the type of projects that we have. That really quickens the pace of getting tasks set up for a project.

It only takes minutes to set up a project in PPM Pro. We use the templates and then just put in the details for it, so it doesn't take too long to set it up.

The process for building teams within a project goes pretty smoothly. I find it pretty easy to use. You can build your team at different levels, either at the overall project level or by building it up through the task level. It has good flexibility.

This flexibility really does help our project management process because every project is unique and we have different kinds of project processes or techniques that we use and the way we structure the project may be different. It's nice to have that flexibility in the tool to be able to handle that.

Overall, its time-tracking abilities are good. One of the things we've looked at is potentially Projectplace to help out our users with their timesheets. It would be nice to be able to track more while we're in the work rather than having to go to a separate timesheet. From a timesheet perspective, it works fine.

PPM Pro is good for viewing projects and timelines. Some of the items that they're working on will make that even better and I know those are hopefully coming out in the near future. The whole timeline view and the ability to select and show what you want to have on a timeline will be a really nice visual component for showing a project.

Reporting and dashboards need improvement. I know they're doing a major revamp of that. We're really looking forward to that because that's something that is really being requested by our customers to give them better visibility, reporting, and dashboards that are easier to understand. 

They're looking at moving the spreadsheet editor into other areas of the system. Those have been key updates. They're not available on all the screens yet and all the locations of the system but that will be a nice add-on when they get that because we can have one screen, but when we go to the next screen, that won't have the same editor.

It hasn't increased the number of projects in our organization because that's more based on the demand of our customers internally, rather than the tool. It really hasn't changed our throughput overall with projects.

I have been using PPM Pro for over four years. 

Overall, we've had very few reportable issues on PPM Pro so we've only had to submit a few tickets. I usually submit the tickets within Planview, so I know personally that we've only had to submit a few over the last couple of years and that speaks to the stability quite a bit.

It's definitely very scalable. We've seen growth in our business. I know we've seen a lot more users using it for requests. As our governance structure has changed over the last couple of years, we've used it quite differently and scaled it to a lot of different users and a lot of different uses. It's done just fine.

We have our request users who are submitting requests for enhancement-type items. There are over 6,000 request users. Then for full users, these would be folks who are doing more than just requests, they might be tracking time, working in this system, providing updates, or doing approvals. For those types of things, we have over 250 users.

For maintenance, we have several of our project managers, including myself, that are administrators of the system.

PPM Pro is being used quite broadly in our IT department and for requests coming into our IT department. We use it for all of our enhancements as well as projects. It has a 100% adoption rate. We have to use it. That is our IT tool for tracking time and handling new requests. We use it all the time with IT.

What we've used of their technical support has been good. We hit some technical issues with an API that we utilize and we got the right people on the phone with us to work through it and get it resolved. Overall, we've had a good experience with their technical support.

I've used MS Project at previous employers. Compared to Microsoft Project, PPM Pro is quite a bit different. We used Project previously just as a standalone to build a project, put in our tasks, do our work breakdown structure, and that was it. We didn't use it for a server or enterprise base where we did any capacity, demand planning, or intake like we did in PPM Pro. We do enjoy that functionality, that there's a lot more going on in PPM Pro and a lot more use cases that we can use it for. It's served us well, and we're looking forward to seeing what else we can do with it.

I was not involved in our initial setup. We are moving to the new request process, which is a pretty major revamp for us and I am involved in that. That work is currently underway.

For the revamp, we have a lot of historical data and custom fields in the system, so there's a little bit more thought process we have to do around what we set up in the new request process and then how we migrate or what data we migrate over to that new process. And then also communicating that out to our request users, which we have a couple of thousand of, and making sure that they're aware of the updates that we're doing to it. I'd say it's a little bit complex just moving into the revamp, but I think overall the help we've gotten from Planview has been really helpful in mitigating some of that.

I'm really not familiar with the pricing structure that we have. We do like the fact that we have all those requests users for the licensing. Our default for our users across the enterprise is to set them up as request users so that anybody can submit a request to IT. The fact that those requests users are a free license is definitely a key item for us.

My advice would be to have multiple administrators involved in your teams. Learn about the capabilities of the tools so you use it to its fullest. Involve other areas in developing those processes and procedures around it so you can get buy-in and utilization.

Solutions always have a lot of capability. It's really how you use the solution and then how you show the value to the main users of the solution as well, so that they have that buy-in and that they're not working around the system, but rather working in the system. That gives you the best data for tracking, and it gives you the best utilization and reporting capability across the board if you have that buy-in and utilization.

I would rate PPM Pro an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case of this solution is to capture all corporate business demand across the organization then to visualize that demand in a way that can be used by the senior management team to make decisions. We use it to collect a portfolio view of all projects that were in flight and various stages of the delivery lifecycle. We ride risk and issue management capabilities, capturing lessons learned, dependencies, plans, schedules, and resourcing. 

We also use it for:

• The ability to manage and review resource information around availability, demand, and schedules. 
• The ability to report on that information.
• The ability to visualize our portfolios, that is key.
• Finally, we're using that information in order to generate meaningful reports.

PPM Pro has improved my organization through standardization. The big thing for us is that we came from a very immature state of play. Everyone had their own risk and issue management capabilities and their own different impacts for risks. We've been able to standardize that within the program delivery arena. That for us has been a major thing. We're all speaking the same language about the same things and using the same metrics in order to capture statuses.

We are exploring its ability to provide decision-makers with the insight they need to empower decision-making. The big thing for us was just to get our projects moving and delivering. We've historically been through a number of challenges and organizational changes within our area and effectively, Planview has enabled us to get a really good picture of where we currently are. The biggest challenge we had initially was that our executive leadership team didn't know how much change was going on. With Planview, we've been able to capture that and provide the metrics in order to see what they want to do and what needs to be reprioritized. 

PPM Pro has also helped to reduce project delays by 50% in terms of highlighting common issues and risks. We hold monthly project reviews where everything is captured and we go through the project managers to highlight those high-level and high scoring risks and we are then able to take corrective action. The key thing is that we're using it as a tool to help support project managers. We're not using it to beat them up because they're not delivering stuff. It's really a tool to be able to surface those issues that wouldn't necessarily get surfaced.

The most valuable feature is that it's highly configurable. It's a highly configurable solution. We can design and build stuff quite readily ourselves. It's also very flexible. We are also using it to help identify pinch points within the organization. As in, we can identify where people need support and additional help.

PPM Pro has reduced the time it takes to generate reports. That for us is a big thing. Instead of us spending our time doing collation and presentation activities, we're actually doing more value-add activities in terms of analyzing the data and trying to interpret what the data is telling us.

PPM Pro absolutely enables us to create reusable project templates that reflect our project management lifecycle. It enables us to quickly establish and build projects as and when they've moved through the governance lifecycle or parts of the early stages of the governance lifecycle. We're also able to configure the ability to print a standard type of project or program in some of the cases we've started exploring. In terms of the benefits, it's given a visualization to our senior management team of where things are at any particular time and they have the ability to drill down into the detail where necessary or keep it as high level as they need.

It's literally just the click of a button to create a project in PPM Pro. It's a very quick process. The key thing that we have is the governance processes and the approach for capturing enough information. In terms of that, the lifecycle is about two or three weeks, but actually being able to get a project into the system is exceptionally quick. You can build workflows to help support that. We don't use it at the moment, but it has the ability to build workflows.

I would say it's quite straightforward to build a team within a project. It's very easy. It comes back to data and I think it's the same with any PPM tool, the tool is only as good as the data that you've got in there. We did a lot of work initially to make sure that our resources were in place. It's just a case of project managers being able to select who they want on their teams and vice versa. If they're not sure, we also have the ability to set up resources as well and then our resource managers to select people that they want to start based on their availability.

In terms of viewing schedules, I would rate PPM Pro's ability an eight or nine out of ten. It's a very similar interface to Microsoft Project, which I'm sure a lot of project managers are very used to in terms of the details pages. It's a very nice layout in terms of navigation. You can select your ability to view different timeframes and you can view a purely word-based view of your plan. There is the Gantt chart availability as well. It's very easy and quick to switch between the two. You can also drill down into specific details at a task level summary task and you can bulk upload or update tasks. 

At the moment, we don't actually use timesheets or its ability to allocate hours. Integrating and using timesheets is on our roadmap but we don't use it at the moment. From the exposure that I've had in terms of playing around with it, it seems pretty fully functioning and it gives us the information that we want to be able to capture. And then it's how we then suck that information out to then push into our external systems or corporate systems.

We always had a very high number of projects. We have around 30 going at the moment and they're quite significantly sized projects. In terms of the number of projects, I think the biggest challenge we have is getting resources on board in order to manage them. We can certainly capture them and we can identify where the pinch points are. It's just our recruitment process is quite a slow process. In terms of being able to run projects, we can actually identify what we can run based on the constraints that we have at the moment, whether that be financial or resource-based, and we use the information from PPM Pro in order to provide that.

Reporting and dashboards need improvement. They've got the new beta coming out now and I've been playing around with that in our sandbox environment. I'm very impressed with the flexibility and functionality. In fairness, I was speaking to my senior management team and saying that we should go ahead and enable it in our production environment because I think it is actually now in the position where we can start getting it in place. 

Another area for improvement, realistically, is regarding the financials, but it's been addressed as part of Planview's focus. That's one of the things that drew us towards Planview, that they're actively investing in developing the tool and making it best of breed. We can certainly see a lot of new enhancements coming forward that we're going to be taking on board.

We have been using PPM Pro for over two years now. 

I've never seen any issues with stability. 

We've had no issues with scalability. Being a software as a service, the amount of power that we need is determined by the number of licenses that we have.

There are 30 to 40 project managers. We have business partner managers who are the key interface in the business. We also have a number of resource leads. There are around 20 resource leads who are responsible for ensuring that resource demand can be met with the availability of their team members on that side.

Maintenance purely happens in the background. If we're developing new configuration changes, we'll do that ourselves in the sandbox and release it at an appropriate time. It's very minimal impact.

Technical support is excellent. We've had some issues that have been dealt with very efficiently. There's a very quick response time and the consultants themselves are very capable in terms of responding to our questions, not just about tool configuration, but also best practices in the wider industry, specifically for where we work.

We use Microsoft Project and Teams as well as part of this process. It's been a while since I've used the Microsoft Project tool suite. Microsoft Project has a lot of different types of applications to store different types of data within the project. For example, for risks and issues, we'd have to create a team site in SharePoint, for example, whereas in Planview, it's an all in one application. I'm very quick to be able to jump around to individual areas within the system. We're at the very early adoption stage of Teams at the moment. 

There are pros and cons to each. In terms of speed, because it's on-premise, the local application is very quick. The downside with Projects is that it is very difficult to aggregate that data together. With Planview, bearing in mind that software is a service, it has so many opportunities to configure the system and also lock it down as much as you want, as long as you can get that standard configuration. With Microsoft Projects, it's very difficult to get that standard. You'll have people managing projects in the way that they're used to, which then becomes a big issue for us to translate that into the standardized reporting. Whereas with Planview, we can lock that down. We know exactly what our project managers need to enter when they're not entering information that we need and it's just a click of a button to get a report out when we need it.

Before PPM Pro we were using Microsoft Project desktop with Excel PowerPoint. It was a case of 90% of our time was spent collating information and presenting it in PowerPoint rather than actually doing the value-add work, which was to do the analysis on what data is actually telling me.

I was involved all the way from product selection through to delivery and handover. The initial setup was fairly straightforward. As an organization, we had some challenges internally in that we were a brand new department delivering programs. We hadn't really got our processes set outright, but certainly, with the support and help from the Planview consultants who were working with us very closely and regularly meeting on a weekly basis, it was certainly a very straightforward piece. Once you get your head around how things are set up and the different terminology, it is actually quite a straightforward application to enhance yourself in terms of how you want to build it forward.

From the start of actually signing the contract, the deployment took around about three months, to the point where we had the projects in Planview and us actually using it practically.

Our strategy was originally going to be a big bang but we thought that there's only so much change that our project managers can manage. We took a few key elements and the first pieces were to get the demand requests in place so that we could see what demand we've got coming through. Then the next part was getting the projects and programs into Planview, and being able to start reporting on those projects. From there, we then started introducing the resource management side of things. More recently we've been looking at portfolio management and prioritization. Looking into the future, we're talking more about enhancing that portfolio management and demand capability and bringing the two together. That's more of an organizational thing rather than Planview. We've got the basics in there to get us where we need to be.

I wouldn't be able to quantify ROI in terms of the work that we're now focused on. We're doing many more kinds of value-add activities. Rather than having to go around and aggregate information together and then try and report it, we can make those recommendations now. We are also able to highlight those risks and issues before they actually become a true challenge to the company and to the delivery of that project.

The key thing is to really get a good understanding of your stakeholders that are going to actually use it. It's differentiating between those that are going to be physically updating Planview information, versus those that are reading it and then just building your models around how you're going to use it because then you can effectively build your licensing models to support that. In some cases, you can save some money there.

We evaluated Planisware. In terms of maturity, PPM Pro was a much better fit for our organization. It was also highly configurable, so we could do a lot of it ourselves. It gave us the opportunity and a roadmap that as we mature, we can mature with Planview and still maintain our data. Whereas, some of the other tools were coming in right at the top end. Cost-wise, it was certainly one of the better value products that we had assessed the amount of functionality and flexibility that you got with the tool.

My key advice is to standardize your terminology for projects and programs in portfolios; create a roadmap. Don't be afraid to say no, because  you'll get different project managers with different experiences. Everyone will want to say, "Oh yeah, this is what I've done in the past and what I've done in the past," but don't be afraid to say no.

One of the challenges with any PPM tool is that if it's not Microsoft, then people aren't normally interested and I think the other side is that actually by centralizing this stuff, you're exposing weaknesses of project managers that they may not feel comfortable with. Try and position it as this is here to help you and to help us identify where we need to give further support. It's not there to question your ability or capability. It's here to give us that information that we can then help you to deliver.

We spent far too much time aggregating data from many different data sources. Having it in a single central place, we get one version of that truth. Everyone's aligned, everyone's standard and it makes it a lot easier for us in our management team to be able to visualize and view the data that we're capturing.

I would rate PPM Pro a nine out of ten. I think there's still room for improvement but there's a very active roadmap.

I'm with the Wake County government and PPM Pro is our project portfolio and application portfolio management tool that is used enterprise-wide throughout the County.

Wake County government recently received a second place in the Center for Digital Government award. A lot of the information that was provided during the application process was an easy export from our system. We were able to provide lots of very valuable and invaluable data with a couple of clicks.

PPM Pro provides our managers with the insights they need to empower decision-making. I don't think it's utilized enough. We make the information available and give access to those that need it. They've seen the benefit of the system. But I don't think it's utilized to its capabilities.

It has also helped us to reduce project delays by 50%. A little over a year ago, we implemented a new process for us whereby we no longer change dates within the system. We put in more processes in place for baseline tracking and held project managers and teams accountable. We've seen more accurate estimating and projects when they do miss their deadlines, we have substantiated reasoning behind that.

We're staying at an even rate with the number of projects. The projects that we do are based on the board of commissioners, elected officials, and revenues within the County. When revenues are down, the number of projects are down. So, we can't really put the two together like a private industry would.

Just about everything about the solution is valuable. I can't pinpoint one specific thing. The tool has helped us mature as an agency, has taught us to collect better data and the benefits of having good data.

It enables us to create reusable project templates that reflect our project management lifecycle. We utilize many different types of templates from intake forms to review processes, to standard status reporting. There are very different use cases. It's streamlined the project management process. My group is not an official PMO. We're referred to as solutions development. We are the project managers and business analysts for the organization and so, it has helped us to understand the work where it's coming from and how to organize it. It also makes the necessary information available to our higher-ups within the organization.

It only takes a few minutes, depending on availability, to create a new project. We use a standardized template to collect the information. The project request initiator fills out a short form through automation within the system and the approvers are notified. They go through the process of determining whether the project will be added to the portfolio or not. And if it's approved through workflow automation, the requester is notified. It gets added to a series of reports which get updated on a weekly and monthly basis.

It's always been an easy process to build a team within a project. The users are familiar with the system. It's not like we have to do training every time a new project is spun up. It's pretty intuitive. There is not a lot of hand-holding necessary. The tool gives us what we need and we get what we need out of it.

The task management features are very robust within the system and the other platforms like Projectplace, for example, offer more variety for task tracking and task responsibility and so forth. We don't really utilize the system from that perspective for tracking at the PPM Pro level. We use that more as high-level portfolio management.

It's very good for viewing projects and timelines. The reporting is getting better. It was good before but now, with all of the new improvements to reporting and dashboards, it's improved quite a bit.

Integrations need improvement. We have the ability now with the FLEX licensing to take advantage of the different applications. But if you want them integrated there's a really large cost associated with that. The integration should be included in the cost per license. We shouldn't have to pay these really high fees to get the systems to talk together.

We've been with Planview before it was Planview so we were actually originally Innotas customers. We originally implemented in 2015.

It's very stable. We've had less than a handful of issues over the years with the system, as far as uptime. Whenever we've run into a problem, customer support has always been right there for us.

I definitely believe that it's scalable. Just listening to where they're going and their ideation is exciting. 

We have 53 licensed users currently and they range from a project manager to system administrators, to stakeholders and senior-level management.

There is a staff of two for the deployment and maintenance: myself and one other. We are portfolio managers.

PPM Pro is primarily utilized in the IT department but we do have representation in most of the departments, not all of the departments. There is at least one licensed user per department.

Technical support is on top of things. They really know the system and we've stumped them a few times over the years. It's taken a little bit of time for them to research things and get back to us. But for the most part, we feel like we're given adequate support.

I have used other Microsoft solutions. I don't think they're on the same playing level. I see Microsoft Project as a heavy tool when it comes to project management. I think Planner has similar features to Projectplace and it's the same thing with Teams. Teams has the functionality for the cross-collaboration and they integrate seamlessly because they're all Microsoft tools. With Microsoft, you have one license and you're integrated with all of those things. You don't have to pay a fee to integrate one tool to the next. It would be nice if Planview did the same thing.

I don't think we could do what we do with Planview with Microsoft. We've tried. Planview has more functionality within one application than multiple applications in the Microsoft world. You can do everything in one place, which is a benefit for us, speaking from our experience, not having to go from Excel to SharePoint, to Planner, to Project. Having to do all these functions in different applications rather than having it all in one place is the key benefit.

We started out when it was Innotas and I would say that the setup was very complex because we built the system from the ground up. It wasn't what it's like today. We've heard from newer customers that it's a lot easier today than it was before. When the company was switched, it was like relearning it all over again. We implemented a system and then we had to relearn it 14 months later.

The deployment was started in November and we were live in February so it took about four months.

Our deployment strategy was to take baby steps. We bit off small increments. We started with creating the project portfolio and then, once we got that up and running, we focused on the application portfolio. 

We didn't use a consultant for the deployment, we did it ourselves.

We've seen the benefit. We've put a lot of work and a lot of effort into cleaning up the data, maximizing the functionality and we've seen the benefit. Our executive management has seen the benefit. It would be easy to jump ship and go to another product but we have that background. We've made relationships with the company. We know everybody on a first-name basis. They support us and they're willing to work with us. The main reason why we stay is because we get that support and we feel cared for. The only area that I wish that we could come to a better understanding is with the pricing,

PPM Pro is pricey. We've been with the company for a long time and the main thing is that if you're a government agency like we are, funding is an issue. If we want to expand this on a larger scale, they really need to come up with a pricing model that will benefit us, as customers. We can't afford 200 licenses. We have to really think about how we expand when we purchase new licenses because of that price point. It's constantly increasing and we have to think about how we can expand it and roll it out to the enterprise on a yearly basis.

We also looked at Captivate, Adaptive, and Innotas. At the time we were very immature in the capability and maturity that Gartner put out there. That's where we started. Those tools were for very mature project and portfolio management offices. We were just beginning and we were looking for a tool that would grow with us. That's why we chose Innotas at the time because it gave us that flexibility. 

We had a homegrown tool in the past that crashed and burned. The reasoning behind that was due to the fact that the users were given too much upfront. It just became one more thing that they had to do. We took a different approach and said that we were going to do this step by step. We had the flexibility and it worked for us. 

My advice would be to take your time, learn it, and understand it. Know that what you put into it is what you're going to get out. Just like anything, you want to nurture it so that it grows, matures, and really shows the work.

For myself and my team, it has helped to foster our reputation for accuracy, for estimating, for being able to produce or anticipate what our management's needs are, and having that information there. It helped with being able to help project what things may look like with predictive analytics.

I would rate Planview PPM Pro a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case is for IT project management. We're slowly rolling it out to all of our divisions. We have six divisions and some of our divisions are using it to start with IT projects M&A and then I have one division that's using it for a little more than just IT projects.

We have 60 users right now and eventually, we'll be probably close to 150. Our initial release for our divisions was going to be back in April, but we had COVID hit and a couple of our divisions had to have a reduction in their workforce. There's additional training going on. I've got one group that's going to go live by the end of this month and that's going to be another about 30 people.

There are PMOs that manage their projects, but as far as supporting the application, it's just me. Right now it's full-time maintenance only because I'm the one that has to work with all the divisions to get everything set up as far as what they want to see in their grid and their details. I do all the training and if there's a field that they need that Planview doesn't have I'll create a UDF. It's full time, but it's not like where there are issues all the time. It's still just rolling it out to the division.

The reporting and dashboards are the most valuable features. For most of what we're using it for almost all of it is pretty valuable to us.

One of our M&A projects are acquisitions.

I don't want to say that they do enable us to create reusable project templates that reflect our project management lifecycle because some of our IT PMOs that are using it, I don't know if they're creating templates and stuff yet to go that far. I am planning to utilize it in the future. 

The time it takes to create a new project in PPM Pro depends on how many tasks are within the project. Currently, I have one group that has 191 tasks. That took them a while to put in. The biggest downfall right now for us is loading all the tasks in there. Some of them are not using Projectplace so they can't import from it.

The average time it takes to create a project is ten to forty minutes. Before PPM Pro it would have taken five minutes. A lot of our employees have Microsoft Project. On the PMO side, one of their concerns is that it takes them a little bit longer to input a project and tasks than it would in Microsoft Project. I have a couple of PMOs who are still on the fence, just because of the amount of time it takes them to put in projects compared to Microsoft Project. With Microsoft, you can copy and paste because Microsoft Project is basically Excel. That's about the most that I've heard their biggest complaint is that you can't just copy and paste into it and you copy task and things like that from Project. I've got one PMO who isn't hip on Planview, just because she can create a project in her task and project within five minutes and it takes a little bit longer in PPM Pro to do that.

The process for building a team within a project using PPM Pro is easy. 

I only have one division that is using timesheets right now and we're still testing out in our sandbox site, but so far everything seems to be working great for what we want to do for time tracking. I think there's one little concern, and we're testing that out next weekend, but I think we'll be fine on it.

We've tried a couple of the different settings for the time cards and what projects they can charge time to. It comes back to that they want them to only be able to see the tasks that they're assigned to, but they can see everything now. If a task is in the future, they can still add time to it and they don't want them to be able to add time to it. Just a mistake-proof type thing is the biggest thing.

PPM Pro provides managers the insight that they need to empower decision-making. So far I've gotten good feedback from our PMOs who report and things like that. I would say that's a plus, that's a good thing for us.

I'm not really running any projects and taking feedback, from what I hear so far it has helped us to reduce project delays. It has also helped to increase the number of projects within our organization.

The reporting has room for improvement. I know it's all in the revamping all the time with it, but there are things that I know my PMOs don't like. For instance, they want a pie chart and I think it's a bug in the system. I've been working with somebody on it, but then she thought it was because they were trying to look at negative values, which a pie chart doesn't do, but little things like that quite haven't gotten to what we need as far as reporting, but I think it's on the roadmap.

I have been using PPM Pro for a year and a half. 

The stability is pretty good. I haven't had any issues. 

We have plans to eventually scale it up. Eventually we want to start using the request and the what-ifs, right now we're not using those. We'll probably do so mid-next year.

Technical support is absolutely great. Anytime that I have to actually submit in a ticket, I have a resolution usually within that same day. They're great. Everybody at Planview is great to work with. All the ones that I deal with are great.

We just had to up our license by 25 because with the original quantity that we had it turns out where a lot of people think that their employees need full user licenses and now that they realize the cost of what it is per year per user, they've scaled back and well. That's a big thing with the license type is getting everybody to understand that not everybody needs a full user license. Other than that, it's fine. It would be great if we had something that was less than a full user, but a little bit more than a time user.

Cost-wise, it seems within reason, but I don't know what other applications cost is to see if it's compatible or within the range of what other applications are charging for their licenses and things like that. 

Overall it's been a great tool to use as far as project management.

They like the tool. I have a couple of PMOs who like MS Project but they're given the PPM Pro. I have other PMOs that love PPM Pro. It's just a matter of taking time to get used to when they're used to MS Project.

PPM Pro is a great tool and you can get it to your needs for the most part. There's not an application out there that you're ever going to find that's going to fit your needs 100%. You can only get the application to your status that far and then you have to adapt to its status as well but overall, it's a great tool. I would support it. I would hype it up to have people use it.

I would rate PPM Pro an eight out of ten in terms of the overall application, what it supports, what it can do, and for me, a project that I have only took me a couple of minutes only because I have a couple of tasks, but for me, this was the first project management application I've ever dealt with. It's fine for me. Especially since I only have to support it and not do projects.

Currently, we're using PPM Pro mostly for project management and resource management and we try to incorporate last year into this year everything that's related to strategy and program portfolio management. We're expanding for 2021, trying to use the ICP component.

PPM Pro provides us an organized view of the work that is ongoing and resources that are working on those particular projects. It gives us that view.

It hasn't directly helped with the prioritization of projects through alignment with strategic objectives directly out of the tool. It's allowed us to gather the information and then take it on the side and supplementing it with additional tools. It could be an Excel worksheet or SharePoint site. That's what we're trying to get to for 2021, to try to use ICP for alignment more and prioritization of work, based on budget planning. It helps us facilitate that, but it doesn't provide the end-to-end solution.

The feature that gives us the most value is the project management with the Warm screen, the work and resource management screen. The strategy financial plan roll-ups also give us a lot of value.

The Warm screen, even though we're not going to the deep levels and deep details of all the projects and trying to assign resources at the lowest level, it gives us a quick visual of what resources are being worked on, what projects, and on what activities they're working on. At least at a very high level, because we're not using all the assignment components to the fullest detail, but at least with what Planview gives us as a tool and how we're leveraging it, it gives us that quick view of who's working on what project and who's booking time to what project at any given time or any given a week.

Then, on the strategy side, it allows us to group our projects based on the strategy hurricane that we've configured in-house. It gives us a nice little look at how those public forecast stacks up and then also how the actuals stack up over time.

We are able to get all the features that we need out of it and it gives us the ability to see what we need to see, understanding also how the tool works and how the tool reacts to certain actions.

It does provide a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. Although we're only using authorizations and reservations.

The flexibility of configuring these assignments is straightforward once you understand the assignment types. They're very straightforward and easy to use. The flexibility does not limit us. It helps us move the process that we had in place based on how we want and how the tool operates. It just gives us a little bit more control.

PPM Pro is good for forecasting remaining effort. It's accurate. 

It helps us to manage work but I think it also helps us manage our resource's time, and know what they're working on and how we could spread them. I think it's a mix of both. It helps us in both roles. From a project management or a work management perspective, it gives us the ability to know who's available to work on what projects. Planview gives us the ability to have different attributes so that we can group or be able to do a quick lookup whether it's a skill, whether it's a role, whether it's a team and allows us to do that roll up so that we can quickly identify who's the AR of a particular project and if that person is available to work on the project.

It also allows program managers to group work together and see the resource demands and costs at a consolidated level because it gives us that consolidated view at the strategic level but not at the project level. It doesn't affect project management because here the role of a project manager is just to focus on their project, not to focus on the entire spectrum of the projects that are going on along with them. That's more than the responsibility of the program manager. I don't think it affects them in the long run.

PPM Pro has increased our on-time completion rate. It's above 8 over 10, so 80%. 

It does not provide end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. I don't think it does because that's why there's Agile. It would be too cumbersome to try to go to Planview to the lowest deep down level that you could capture JIRA. Where in JIRA, you could capture pretty much a task.

It does not provide an end-to-end solution. In our case, we're going through an Agile transformation. Where we want to have mostly 90% of our portfolio working in an Agile state. Planview does not provide us the end-to-end solution at this point.

Based on my experience, the financial management screens have gone a long way, but I think there's still some room for improvement in terms of how you model them and the different version controls. 

I would like to see more dynamic screens, most of the screens are static. That has room for improvement.

At my company, they've been using it for almost three years. I just joined the company a year ago, but I have about 15 years of Planview experience across different companies.

It's very stable. Performance-wise in regards to being available, if I had to compare it to the way Planview was back in 2005, I would say it's very stable now.

I've gone from a company that used to manage about 8,000 projects simultaneously. It was a global solution here at LPL, which is more of a nationwide solution. It can handle it. Maybe the one problem on the global side is when you have teams that are working on a particular project all around the world, the whole time zone issue becomes a problem. Sometimes because of how the reporting solution that has been put in place it cannot provide real-time reports for people that are on the other side of the world. It gives them a lag where they don't know what to do or what not to do.

There are 1,500 users in my company. The great majority are just time entry contributors. They are around 75% are contributors, time entry folks. Then the rest of the 25% are between project managers, program managers, and financial people that go into the tool and approve capitalization. 

Right now, we have two dedicated and two shared staff members who work in regards to configuration and ongoing maintenance. In regards to any changes that need to happen in the tool or, and proof of concepts, things that we want to test out. And then we have two that are shared, which are more like admin activities who add remove users, add value to existing structures, and all that.

It's heavily used, it's the project management tool. This is where all project data and financial data is related to a project are being stored. It's a brand new project management and technology. I would say it has a 100% adoption rate. 

Technical support is good based on the level of support level that we get. There are different tiers. Planview provides different tiers. We're in the second from the top, we're not on the top, top tier. The response rate we get is good. I can't complain.

My company previously used Innotas. One of the reasons they switched is because Planview purchased Innotas and then they saw Planview as being a more robust solution than Innotas.

In the past, I've used Oracle PPM, which is the Oracle demand management tool. In creating reports, I think OPPM is very easy. It's Oracle-based so they have a very straightforward database and their reporting capabilities are pretty much a plug and play. That's very straightforward in terms of user interface and the user experience but OPPM is not as great as Planview. They were lagging on that side of the fence.

I've gone through multiple versions of Planview, multiple instances of Planview, and multiple instances of how reporting was done in Planview and there's a lot of human interaction with it as well. You need to build a universe and how you build that universe and what reporting tool you're going to use to be your reporting input, endpoint tool or reporting solution plays a lot into it. Planview gives you a variety of different options to go with. Some are great, some are not, and it just depends on the user experience and the knowledge of the person. Even though pretty much all of them are intuitive and all of them do the same. All of them have to give you the same solution. It's also usability. I'm going to compare that between an iOS device versus an Android device. They do the same thing but the user interface is completely different.

There is a return. It's not a very high-level return because of the cost, but it's a lot better than having an Excel spreadsheet.

The biggest lesson is that it's a three-legged stool. One component of that three-legged stool is the tool. One leg is Planview Enterprise. The other thing is the processor that you have in-house. To the organization, you're trying to compare the culture of the organization and the people's willingness to use the tool and to be able to adapt to changes with Planview as that as a third leg of the stool. It's one of the best that's out there on the market, but it goes along with those other two legs of the stool. If you're missing one, even if you have the best stool, it's not going to work.

I would rate PPM Pro an eight out of ten. 

We use it to track IT project management and portfolios. It has also been used for tracking time performance on projects by our IT team, getting a better understanding of where work was going, managing resources to those projects, and setting the priorities for the projects.

We have created some reusable project templates that reflect our project management lifecycle, though we haven't used that functionality a lot. It has definitely improved our relationship with our business partners. They now have insight into what we are working on and are able to help set priorities across divisions or groups within the company. We are not having to fight to say, "HR is doing this, finance is doing that, and they only have a view into what they want and don't realize that there is a greater picture." When they get that greater picture, they're able to say, "Okay, this is less important than what is going on in finance right now so we can prioritize properly and align resources better to get their projects done faster, benefitting the company better overall."

It takes us minutes to create a new project using this solution.

The process for building a team within a project is relatively simple. I don't use that functionality a lot. I think we're just starting to get into it a bit more with some of the work that we are starting to do with some of our project intake processes in some of our project management disciplines that we're starting to implement. While I haven't used it a lot, it's pretty simple to add a person and build that team out within PPM Pro.

PPM Pro provides managers the insight that they need to empower decision-making. From an IT manager standpoint, we have been able to see the impact of a large 2:1 system conversion that we had coming in. We had two systems converging into one while we had this major project going on. This tool allowed us to see the resources, even though we had a project that was supposedly shutting IT down for a six and a half month period from all other business projects We were able to use the tool to see the resource levels and fit in a lot of other smaller project work within that major initiative and continue to move the business forward without stopping work. Previously, we would have said, "We have no capacity. We can't do anything else about this." However, in reality, we can see that there were other things that we could have gotten in and moved through the pipeline to get the work into production.

PPM Pro has enabled us to set up and run a project priority committee (PPC) within the organization. Without the PPM Pro tool, we wouldn't be able to have the project information, updates, and project listings in the pipeline to be able to run the meeting efficiently, give information prior to the meeting, and also run the meeting when we meet on either monthly or on a bi-monthly basis.

The flexibility of the product meets our needs to manage project details of what we are tracking, including the level of detail which we may be tracking. 

It is a good communication tool for our end users. The flexibility of being able to meet the different scenarios for our different customers has been very good. We have come across a few different scenarios in regards to how we work with our customers.

The solution’s task management features definitely have helped to set some of deadlines expectations in a project and have them visible and trackable to know where we are headed, what the deadlines are, and the different portions of a project. These are areas in small projects that we task very lightly, which is good. This is another aspect that is flexible for us. On larger projects, which may span six to nine months, we need to get a lot more detail done on the tasking. However, the product is able to handle both scenarios equally as well.

The solution for viewing projects and timelines is good. There are plenty of reporting and Gantt views within the application.

The solution has helped us to reduce project delays by 25 to 30 percent. Visibility is a big piece of what it is. We are able to see what's going on and react earlier to issues that have come up.

Planview PPM Pro’s time tracking abilities are adequate. It does a fine job as far as within the product managing it. Our users have commented that they would like a little more mobile-friendly aspect of it to be able to do it from their phones. While there is mobile access now, it's not as robust as we'd like to see, though it meets our needs for what little time tracking we do.

I would like a little more training on it.

We have struggled within the product. It has been changing the agile aspect of PPM Pro for us around the task management. This has been a struggle point, but there are a lot of things based on the keynote (in Planview's conference) coming up to address some of this. 

The reporting has some areas for improvement. It is not always as simple as we would like to get the reports we want or the information that we want. I think they are addressing this because there is a new version of the reports in a beta right now. I would assume that some of those features are coming.

Four or five years.

It has been rock-solid. I don't think we have had an issue once in the four or five years that we have been live.

I am responsible for the maintenance of this solution.

It has had no issue scaling to what we do, but we're not a large corporation. Based on how it is designed, I assume it would scale just fine.

We don't necessarily use it for the entire company, just within IT projects. We have 40 licenses right now. We have our business stakeholders in place as well as all of our workers, whether they are developers or system engineers. That level does the tasks within the project.

We typically do about 80 to 100 projects a year. We have done 637 project in four to five years.

The technical support is very good. We haven't had a lot of times that we interacted with them, but every time has been helpful. They have gotten us to the solution by resolving the issue quickly and helping us out.

We were previously using paper, pencil, and Excel spreadsheets.

It was relatively straightforward; I don't think it was a complex set up for us. Their implementation process was well-defined. The person working with us was able to easily gather the information that was needed, then configure the system to meet our needs. Even as time has gone on, and after four years, tweaking the system, whether it's a process change on our side, or maturing in the project management discipline process, it has been simple to do or easy to find out how to do it because the documentation is very thorough.

The turnaround time for our deployment was two to three months.

From a project plan standpoint, that was where we leaned on Innotas at the time to use their implementation strategy to gather the requirements for what we were trying to do and put it in place. We really didn't have that plan before we started. We worked with Innotas (who is now PPM Pro) to put that plan together at the time of implementation.

We have seen in return investment using PPM Pro since we put it in four years ago. We're getting more work done and we have not grown our IT department at all in four years.

My boss didn't balk at the price.

A collaboration of all their tools truly gets the biggest bang for the buck.

We went with PPM Pro after evaluating a few products. We were looking to get visibility into our portfolio and what work we were doing and how it was getting deployed. PPM Pro gave us the tools to be able to get that insight. When you're running things off your desks or out of a spreadsheet, you're not able to get that same visibility as easily.

We evaluated the Jira product, which worked well from an agile standpoint, but it didn't have the portfolio management side of things as PPM Pro, at least not in the way that we were reviewing it.

We have tried using MS Project. We use P6 for our construction projects and I've used it for a few of the larger IT projects a few years ago. We found that this tool did what everything that we needed it to do.

We prefer the Planview PPM Pro vs Microsoft and how it has dealt with the portfolio management. We really couldn't easily get that from the Microsoft stack at the time that we evaluated it. From a project standpoint, for the functionality that we used, it was one-to-one. There wasn't anything that Microsoft could do that we couldn't do within Planview PPM Pro.

We may be looking to increase our usage by a little bit, because we'd like to start pulling more of the company initiatives into products, but that has to do with the company culture and strategic plan. Moving forward, IT really doesn't have a direct impact on that.

Biggest lesson learnt: The importance of visibility on the work that's being done and being asked of the IT department.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.