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Planview Portfolios vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Planview Portfolios
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (8th)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 13.9%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mark Hillman - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly interface, but the reporting could be improved
The reporting is poor and requires improvement. The tiles and exception-based activities in the application are sufficient to get by. However, when it comes to producing executive reports, MI reports, or any other type of reporting, we must exit Planview and work offline. We have been working with them to improve on that, as well as using some of the Power BI capabilities that have been available for a while, but it's still more difficult than it should be. In the next release, I would like to be able to use the data in the tool to gain insight much more easily.
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient documentation generation through organized model structure with a good price-performance ratio
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not easy for even experienced users to find their way without guidance. This is not the most user-friendly solution.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Enterprise One provides a variety of types of resource assignments for assigning work to people. It's very easy and straightforward to configure these assignments. Planview allows us to see the entire workforce. We can see where our skill sets of people are, what they're working on, and allows us to make informed business decisions based on priority."
"The overall interface is very easy to use. It puts together strategy and execution across all your investments."
"I would say it works really well for forecasting remaining effort, especially in terms of forecasting the dollar amounts. We've gotten pretty good at adjusting rates because we have a lot of contract workers."
"The solution is flexible. Planview is always introducing new releases and functionality, which ends up being beneficial to the company. We are able to do some customizations on our own along with our IT department, and that's very helpful."
"I like that it's an enterprise environment. I can look across everything that's going on and have a sense of what is going on within the organization."
"We've brought our portfolio altogether. We have had multiple ways of reporting out what our portfolio is, whether it's in Excel, Word, or in different places. We brought all of our projects together in one place. That has worked out well for us. We've been able to manage the work on Gantt charts and our resources better. The big thing for us on research and development is around managing people's time, on which projects they are working on, and how much effort does it take to launch our projects."
"I like that everyone is able to see the same data. All of our users who aren't just time reporters have read access to all the data that is out there. So, it is one source of truth where everybody can go in and see the exact same data that everybody else sees. It is transparent."
"It gives us the vast ability to churn out-of-the-box reports and have an overview about approach rates and resource utilization."
"It's a stable and scalable solution. I like that it's similar to Rational Rose."
"Ability to keep inventory of reusable blocks, and use in different diagrams with views of various templates."
"Customizable and tailored to the environment. Several template frameworks are provided."
"It has led some teams to do better code reviews - to be less focussed on coding conventions (syntax) and more focussed on the semantics because of the abstraction level clear design affords."
"We can easily use it with our new customers."
"It is a useful tool for modeling and testing automated processes."
"Features good reporting facilities coupled with a concrete database."
"It's like a repository. So far, we use it only for Information Modelling."
 

Cons

"It could do with a quicker response time for some reports or portfolios."
"The reporting is absolutely shocking. It's not good reporting and requires improvement."
"I would suggest for the request module that they open up the fields and columns so it's like we are doing our work in the work module. You can't do that with today. We also have to make sure that the fields can go both ways with the request and work modules. Including fields in the column sets would be helpful, because today they only use attributes."
"When you think of planning at a PI level, roadmap planning, or release planning, I think they should make a little more headway into how agile delivery works, tying it back into the financials and the planning to Planview. I think it would be good."
"Its reporting needs to be improved. My main complaint when it comes to Planview is that it is good to maintain all the data but to actually use the information that is in it, you actually have to use a different tool. We use Power BI. So, we pull all the information, and then we use a Power BI dashboard to stage or look at the information."
"Their off-shore support is something new that they're laying out and the team just needed some development in terms of skill and experience."
"I think that the user interface needs some getting used to. It's not immediately intuitive. That's potentially room for improvement. I think also that an organization needs to have good support from some senior management to get something like Planview established."
"There's still a lot of reluctance within the organization. We're not using all of the capabilities that we have today. We're still doing our strategic and capital investment planning on spreadsheets rather than using the capabilities that exist within Enterprise One. I definitely need to leverage the experts here at Planview to help drive a culture change. There's just a lot of reluctance on behalf of people within the company to put data into the tool."
"It can be improved in the area of shared documentation. The idea is that the architecture tool can call back to an enterprise asset, pull that information, and link that as a sub-artifact."
"If you just want to create some diagrams with shapes and arrows, then use Visio."
"I struggled with most of the features for this tool, as did the rest of our architecture team."
"In a future release, they should improve portfolio planning."
"From a practical point of view, we need speed and reliability for creating a model and doing some really meaningful tasks such as application landscape, refactoring, etc. These are two primary criteria. Sometimes, when you import something, it creates the object duplicates, or it allows you to do something that you're not supposed to do. For example, validation is missing. This could be frustrating because when you work at a high speed, you need to come back and start fixing things that the tool allowed you to go with, which is not quite good. So, there should probably be some internal mechanisms to advise you about what you're doing and what is probably not the best idea."
"Using EA involves a steep learning curve if you want to understand its capabilities and functionality."
"Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward."
"Insufficient control of metadata and standards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With the costs, they were very understanding. Knowing that we were an existing customer, they were very much willing to work with us to make sure that we were able to transition to Enterprise One from PPM Pro."
"I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen."
"Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year."
"We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have."
"We are on the Flex licenses."
"Our licensing costs are probably $150,000 to $180,000 a year with 270 licenses total."
"We recently did a new bundle for all of Enterprise One. It includes some of the newer pieces, like Projectplace and LeanKit. It bundled our CTM in with it as well. I think the total came out to be about $900,000 a year. This is for unlimited licenses."
"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."
"I think our license costs roughly $1,000 a year, but I could be wrong."
"We paid 1200 euros as a once-off cost. All add ons and integrations come at an additional cost."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is priced well. The price we pay is approximately $20 per month. Other solutions I have found to be much more expensive."
"In terms of cost, Sparx EA is probably one of the cheapest tools I have ever used."
"There is no license required for this solution."
"It is cheap."
"This product has a paid license, with a yearly subscription option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Planview Portfolios?
Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) syst...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?
Planview Portfolios is not too expensive. You get what you paid for.
What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?
Enhancements are needed in: Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data v...
What do you like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
One of the reasons many public sector institutions in the Czech Republic use it is that it provides a very good price-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...
What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not ...
 

Also Known As

Planview Enterprise One, Troux
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO
OmniLink
Find out what your peers are saying about Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.