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Planview Portfolios vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Planview Portfolios
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
15th
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 (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 0.9%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 14.9%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

EduardoMaya - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution that gives you all the information you need to plan detailed projects
The initial setup was just a little complex. I rate the initial setup a seven out of ten. Deploying the solution took two weeks. While deploying the solution, we had two instances, one for the IT team and one for the business team. And we had to connect the two and explain things to the team. Only two people were needed to deploy the solution, me and another person.
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

"The resource capacity planning is the most valuable feature because you can evaluate your team's capacity by team and what projects they're working on and you can forecast easily by team."
"Another good thing is that we can create custom reports, which is great. If I created a custom report, a tile that tells me how many people have logged in today. We currently have a little under 2000 users, and that's only users, we actually have integrations, that we created a custom form that sends hours directly to Planview. They're not using Planview directly, but they're sending their hours to Planview through an API."
"The biggest impact for using Planview currently would be to understand the true costs of projects. We are trying to get to a point where not only do we take into account technical costs, but what the business cost is. Trying to integrate our business right now into Planview is helping us identify the true cost of the investments that we make so we can try and understand their value."
"We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that."
"The resource management and assignment features are valuable. The timesheet management is also valuable because that is a requirement for us. So, the ability to see timesheet forecasting and timesheet actual submission from resources has been very useful and valuable to us."
"We can view a project both at the top level and dig into the particularities. It's given us greater visibility into the work itself."
"The data is the most valuable because the reporting that we provide out of Planview is priceless when compared to any other tool. The reporting has a variety of reports. It has the capabilities of Power BI. It gives us all these dashboards that we can show to our executive leadership, and they have been very well-received."
"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."
"The company has become more efficient and reduced its budget."
"Sparx technical support is good."
"Artifact templates are most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the integrated data model, so if I change the name of an item, all models using that object are automatically updated."
"Automated document generation is a real time saver, no more cut and paste, no more keeping track of which diagrams are in which reports, no more last minute update panics. Just click a mouse and you've got an up to date report."
"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."
"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is very flexible and it is simple to define the metamodel. Additionally, it is lightweight on resources."
"Customizable and tailored to the environment. Several template frameworks are provided."
 

Cons

"It would be great to see Planview incorporate agile interfacing/methods in it. Like CA Clarity and other leading PPM tools – Planview should enhance or develop the interfaces to ingrate with other market leading Agile tools."
"The financial piece of the tool could be better. While it may have to do with the complexity of the work that we do, it seems that the tool should be able to drill down a bit deeper into the financial area."
"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."
"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."
"I think some of the administrative aspects of it could be a little easier, especially when it comes to designing reports. The reporting coming out of it could be a little bit better."
"There can be improvement on the sense of urgency because a lot of times we've exhausted everything that we can, and now, we're reaching out. So, it isn't a, "Well, have you tried to reboot this?" We've already done everything. Once we put in a ticket, there should be more of a sense of urgency on it."
"The only area that I can see currently needing improvement is just the modernization of the look and feel of it."
"Sometimes within the application, when you pull a report, it takes awhile performance-wise for the reports to pull up."
"One room for improvement in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is that it's not very friendly. Another room for improvement in the tool is that it doesn't enable you to import the metadata from a database very easily, so reverse engineering of a database was very difficult. Its database modeling and entity-relationship modeling functions need improvement."
"I think the product is good. When I'm trying to do something specific for some part of project documentation, it's hard to get it figured out if you don't use it all the time. It's such a massive tool, it's hard to figure out how to dig in and get to the documentation where you have to be to get some idea of what to do. There are not a lot of examples that I'm aware of to be able to do that."
"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."
"Their technical support is not good in India. I wrote to them because I had a question, but I never got an answer. So, I just left it behind."
"Its best features are not intuitive or easy to learn. Most companies I have worked with, when I see what they are doing with it , are not using more than 5% of what they could and should be doing with it."
"This solution has some limitations from a business perspective."
"Because its easy to create diagrams one needs to be vigilant on the housekeeping of orphaned fragments - I have written my own scripts to do this, maybe they are available now."
"The documentation needs a bit of improvement. What I find is that when I'm trying to do something specific for some part of a project, in terms of documentation, it's kind of hard to get at figuring out if you don't use it all the time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have."
"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."
"We overbought our licenses. We looked at our needs three to four years down the road and tried based our contract on that. However, we were over aggressive. We use about a third of the licenses that we have. We're looking to adjust the makeup so we can start utilizing the amount of money that we are spending. Right now, we're overspending, and my organization is not seeing the value in Planview because we are paying so much for licenses that we're not using."
"We are on the Flex licenses."
"I don't know about the actual pricing. I have not come across any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $50,000 USD annually."
"We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"We have an annual license, and it's very affordable."
"The license I use is on-premise. We haven't gone to the cloud where we have to pay monthly or something like that. Sparx is cheaper than most similar tools."
"Use floating licenses strategically."
"The license for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is paid yearly, but I don't handle that area. It's good for its price, so I'm rating it a five out of five, but I'm not using it much. I also don't have information regarding additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"This product has a paid license, with a yearly subscription option."
"We had a yearly license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
17%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software 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
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO
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Find out what your peers are saying about Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.