We performed a comparison between Microsoft Project Server and Planview Portfolios based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Project Portfolio Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"The scheduling and the customization are very powerful."
"The most valuable features are the gantt charts. It's easy to use for me."
"It is a scalable solution. We have been able to manage larger scale projects easily using this solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to understand and navigate."
"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."
"Capacity management and task baselining are the most valuable features of Microsoft Project Server."
"The solution scales well."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the tool's reporting is very good."
"The most valuable features are the control and visibility that you have for portfolio management in terms of projects and capacity planning for resources along with strategies and outcomes, etc. It's so easy to access information for sharing analytics and reporting."
"The most valuable features are scheduling, resource management, and, from a project perspective, the functions like issues that change orders. They are valuable because, from a project management perspective, we use the workflows that we build for project management and do active risk management and issue management for the projects that we want for our agencies."
"We use expenditures quite a bit. We put in forecast expenditures and then we actualize them below the line in the little box in the bottom tray. Being able to track the project with relevant milestones is also valuable. Milestones are valuable because it helps us to keep the project on track. The expenditures are valuable because we need to be able to understand expenses that are beyond the regular resources in the projects."
"The most valuable features are the resource management, the time sheet entry and usage, and the financial planning. With our projects, we primarily focus on resource assignments, as far as determining the actual forecast and actuals of our projects. A lot of it is based off of the resources utilized on those projects. The time based helps us capture the actuals. The amount of time people are spending on working on their project tasks. Because they've built this into the schedule, so we can build the forecast. With financial planning, we're able to look back on what our variance is and if there is anything between the scheduled forecasted hours, dollars against the actual hours, and the costs that they utilize."
"Whenever we have issues, there is always someone ready to help us. Their people are knowledgeable and responsive. They get to tickets quickly. Just three or four weeks ago, we were having issues with getting data into Planview. We submitted a ticket and the turnaround was probably 45 minutes to get a response."
"The overall interface is very easy to use. It puts together strategy and execution across all your investments."
"It gives us the vast ability to churn out-of-the-box reports and have an overview about approach rates and resource utilization."
"It maps back to our SDLC process pretty well. I'm able to see the stage of where things are at. We also use Azure DevOps for all of our requirements and our coding."
"The solution should be made more collaborative."
"When a lot of users logged onto the site, it took a big toll on the service. Therefore, there is a scalability issue."
"Microsoft Project Server could improve by making the solution more user-friendly."
"It has to be more user-friendly. For instance, there should be some assistance, like when you go to certain sites, people pop up and say, "Can we help you? What are you looking for?" It's not interactive enough."
"The reporting aspects can be improved, which is one of the reasons why I'm using Qlik Sense. In the older on-prem versions, reporting was lackluster, to say the least. Project Online has a better handle on that. However, we will still be using Qlik Sense. We're also looking at an add-on app from a company called OnePlan that adds some additional functionality where Microsoft is not as clean in its approach for things such as portfolio management and some of the trends analysis."
"The solution must provide Agile and AI features."
"It is not updated in real-time. Sometimes it, therefore, is not accurate."
"It may be considered expensive."
"We are not very happy with the customer service. This is one of our main pain points. It doesn't cover the entirety of customer service, as there are reps who are really great and we've had good experiences. Many times, we've had people give us attitude, there was a delay in the response, or just a lack of interest. This got to the point where if there was a problem, we would rather try to solve it ourselves then call customer support."
"I would like to see more documentation pieces. Right now, they do have the content repository. I would like to see more out-of-the-box features with document repository capabilities."
"One big issue we have been having during our annual planning is that only the creator of a portfolio can edit it. This means that only the creator of a portfolio can edit which projects are included or excluded in it."
"The solution is stable. However, it's so robust, there's so much data, that it has the tendency to lag."
"It is not an end-user-friendly product, and that's really the biggest thing. The hardest or the biggest hurdle I've ever had to face was adoption. I did the installation of the HP product in 2011. The company used it from 2011 to 2015, and the adoption was very high. When I was given the Planview product, adoption was very low. It wasn't as extensively used. We actually had people who wanted to go back to HP PPM because the interface of Planview was so broken, and it still is to some degree. So, it is not user-friendly. It doesn't flow the way a project manager thinks. What we did with HP PPM was a lot more manual programming. It wasn't as nice in terms of the interface, and it wasn't as pretty, but you could design it and build it so that everything flows with the way you worked, but Planview doesn't quite do that. There are a lot of screens. You have to jump back and forth. There are so many different places you have to go to just to do some basic tasks. That's the biggest thing that has really hindered adoption."
"The lack of templates harden the initial learning curve."
"Our version is definitely set up a bit more waterfall world. It would be better if some of the agile features were more in the standard product."
"While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data visualization options, predictive analytics features, and customizable dashboards to provide deeper insights into project performance and trends."
Microsoft Project Server is ranked 5th in Project Portfolio Management with 56 reviews while Planview Portfolios is ranked 8th in Project Portfolio Management with 63 reviews. Microsoft Project Server is rated 8.0, while Planview Portfolios is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Microsoft Project Server writes "Provides holistic reporting and allows us to keep track of what's going on with projects". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Planview Portfolios writes "Helps prioritize projects, share the big picture with management, and has a great planning capacity". Microsoft Project Server is most compared with Microsoft Project, ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, Planisware, Oracle Primavera Portfolio Management and Knovos eZManage, whereas Planview Portfolios is most compared with Broadcom Clarity , Planview PPM Pro, LeanIX, Planview ProjectPlace and Adobe Workfront. See our Microsoft Project Server vs. Planview Portfolios report.
See our list of best Project Portfolio Management vendors.
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