Planview Portfolios Reviews

The primary use is project and resource management. Right now, it's just used for technical infrastructure, which is IT. But, we are also configuring it for business.

We are not live yet. It will make us more "agile" in things whenever we deliver. It will bring better visibility for projects, in terms of: resources, whether we are lacking resources or not, If we are in alignment with the global strategy of the company before a project has been delivered, financials, etc. 

The flexibility is whenever we implement for technical infrastructure, we have our business transformation process with targets, etc. Now that we are in the process of configuring for the business, there is a totally different solution. We have all the lifecycles, capability, and capacity to create screens based on workflow, shifts, etc. This is giving us huge flexibility to accommodate the company's needs. If we didn't have this flexibility, there would be one global solution for different processes of project management in the organization.

We are using the Lean/Agile delivery tools. The new solution for waterfall will be extremely helpful in making delivery faster because of visibility that the application brings to us, such as the schedule, resources, and what is happening in the background. Before, we had projects, but we didn't know if we'd have enough resources. We didn't know a lot of things. Now, with this tool, we have the full visibility of what's happening: 

• Do we need to hire resources? 
• Do we need more project managers? 
• What is our capacity? 
• What are our investments? 

Now, we can see fully into the portfolios and that everything is integrated. For the project financials, we can roll up and spread down. It's pretty 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.

When I started working with Planview, I didn't know anything about project or resource management. I had to learn everything: the admin side, then the user side of it. Probably, in the beginning, I would implement in the blueprint or workshops more demos. A live demo of how the system works because we would like a little deeper dive in how the application works for us to understand what we need to provide, what we are doing, what we will be doing. Because in the beginning, it was so overwhelming, and we didn't know anything about the tool. 

You know your process. You know how you work, but you don't know how you're going to put that in the tool. If we had more demos in the beginning to make us more comfortable with the tool, we could have improved the success of the configuration.

So far, the stability is good. We haven't had any issues.

The scalability is good. The only thing that is hard with scalability, and may have a little hiccup, are the structure levels that we need to define in the beginning of the configuration. It makes for a lack of ability to be flexible whenever we are scaling, and we are growing as an organization. We are stuck with the levels that we set up in the beginning.

Whenever we define these levels, we state the amount of levels in a way that will allow us to scale in the future. That is our workaround.

It's just moving with technology. We cannot be living in Excel files. The company needs to be able to grow. Yet, we were still using Excel or other applications from Microsoft. So, we needed something more robust to support the growth of the organization. I think Planview came at the right time.

The initial setup was complex. We didn't know the tool in the beginning. So, it was harder to understand what is being done and what information we need to gather. Planview helped us gather all the information and deliver it. However, in the beginning, it was so blurry. We didn't know what was happening. We just went with the flow, then suddenly, "Ah!" Things started clicking. We started seeing things as they became live. Then, we were like, "Okay, now I'm getting it."

Configuration-wise, we took six weeks. Then, we had some issues after the configuration. It took us four more weeks to get it back into shape. Overall, it took us about 10 weeks.

We are planning to go with this project now that we finished the configuration. We are planning to go live on the second week of January 2020.

We used a Planview consultant for the deployment. Our experience with them was challenging. The initial consultant lacked some knowledge to help us. He didn't know the user interface, plus had very superficial administrative knowledge. 

Once we escalated the issue, we were taken care of immediately. Now, we have a way better consultant. We are extremely happy with our current solution architect (consultant).

Planview just jumped on this issue. They have been great and extremely supportive. They have been making sure that we are on the right path. 

The company evaluated other vendors.

The company chose Enterprise One because of the potential of the platform. It links to Spigit, PPM Pro, and a lot of other things that will support the scalability and growth of the organization on one single platform. This make it easier to manage licenses, administrate contracts, and everything else. It's one vendor with many solutions.

I would rate the product a 10 out of 10.

We are not using outcomes yet. But on the course I took on Monday, we saw the value of having outcomes. It was also brought to our attention the gap that exists between strategy programs and how you connect everything together: strategy outcomes and programs. How we can connect all this, it seems to be the way to go.

We are a big company, which has almost 30,000 employees.

The primary use case is resource management. Enterprise One is built for this. We have a specific function that we use it for.

We are going to be leveraging the planning tool within Enterprise One. We had a demo of it. It will be a really good tool for us. It will help us visualize all the projects that we have lined up for the next year, where we can shift things around, and see the impact of different resources being staffed to individual projects.

People are happy using the tool. It has had a good impact on the business. Some people may not like the tracker time sheets, but it is just part of the role.

We are able to see where everyone in the team is in terms of hours, where there is capacity, and where we can actually add them, e.g., other projects that they're not currently staffed to.

It is relatively easy to manage the workflow.

I would like easier ways to manage reporting titles in Planview. A lot of our users like to see things on dashboards, etc. I know there are integrations with Power BI and other applications. But, I would like a little more of an intuitive way for us to manage that.

There are some concerns that I've had on my side from the administrative side and controlling certain things. From talking to some people at this conference, there are certain tricks around these things. It sounds like tomorrow that there will be some sessions on improving that functionality specifically.

The administrative tabs are very confusing, especially in terms of configuring screens and users. It's not very intuitive versus many other applications that I have worked in the past. I have to go to separate sections than I think I have to in order to get to the place that I need to adjust something.

I have used the technical support more on the consulting side of things. There have been no issues there. Everything has been pretty straightforward.

Previously, we were just managing resources in Excel.

While I wasn't part of the integration, it's obviously a lot easier when you have a tool which can manage your resources. It's a lot easier to visualize.

if you need a resource management tool, the tool definitely does that.

We're working on an older version right now, so it is interesting to see how we can upgrade. For example, I am interested in learning more about the cloud.

I would rate it maybe a seven (out of 10). Obviously, there is room for improvement and ways that the tool could be more intuitive for our users. But, we're a very niche use case. What might work better for us, probably wouldn't work better for others.

The overall interface is very easy to use. It puts together strategy and execution across all your investments. The demand, organizational resources, financials, strategies, project execution, and ideation elements are all brought together in this solution.

It resulted in a high rate of adoption and sustainability of changes that are associated with the business unit and its regions.

It proved a single set of reliable and actionable portfolio plans, consisting of ranked ideas, projects, and services across the organization. Thus, it enhanced visibility.

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 (like TFS, JIRA, RALLY, etc..) and collaboration tools to support the seamless Organizational investment data flow from and to these tools, it could prove as a great eco-system aligned with today’s emerging frameworks, methodologies………

I would like to see them publish their guides, FAQs, tips, and Knowledge Management Database (KMDB) for free in their community, as other market leading PPM tools do. Planview has not published, shared / made available it’s tool related guides, QRGs, release notes in public domain. Only the authorized customers can access their repository – I hope they should think about this and create the open / free / openly accessible community blog, sites where users can found the threads / discussions and can download the user / feature / admin / functional / module guides etc…

Scope of customization – it’s a great tool built with set of best practices from project management perspective, but they should provision the scope of customizations. I have grown up working with Planview versions 5 / 7.4.1 (10 years back, almost) and have never seen them provided the ability to create any custom object / module, if required. What Planview suggests is to use their existing modules as they suffice the PM and Strategic requirements. But like the other tools, they should provision for the scope of customizations so that users can create a custom module / object / entity – which will work individually (as the work, strategy entities do) having the object specific supporting attributes / lifecycles / Scripted dialogs etc… it would then certainly revolutionize the whole PPM space…

I have used this solution for over ten years.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

10/10

Technical support is great. They have got really good experts on their team.

I have used other PPM tools before, but I found Planview Enterprise to really be the best-in-class for project and portfolio management practices.

The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools. However, it is worth the price for those organizations who seek to bring their strategy to life in a world of limited resources.

We evaluated other solutions, namely Microsoft Office EPM and HPE PPM solutions.

Go ahead and get this solution implemented. Do not limit your organization’s exposure to the timesheet/resource management. Instead, use Planview's solution starting from the intake part through the overall strategy management.

The primary use case is for portfolio management on product development.

We do a lot of big projects which are pretty expensive to structure the product development around and see the progress. Every time we start a project, we have to expense the spends for certain amounts. We need some baselines, like predictive versus actual.

The product has been stable and reliable throughout our testing.

So far, it has been scalable.

The support is good. There are some good people there.

My frustration is that there is so much turnover at Planview. Every time we have had an issue, particularly on the sales side, you're talking to a new set of people. 

The technical people are very competent, but there is so much turnover in the people that we talk to, and that's frustrating. They will say, "We can make this work." Suddenly, that guy has left, and we have no one. Then, we have to start all over.

The decision was made before I was in charge of Planview.

We found it the best to hire the Planview team and get the setup done through them. It took a couple of days.

We used Planview for the implementation.

It is way too soon.

Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year.

I would rate the product a seven out of 10.

We use it for a little bit of everything: R&D, product development, project management, resource management, and program management.

It has given us much greater visibility to resource management and financials.

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're looking forward to version 18, upgrading there, and seeing what we can find there.

It would be nice if Planview were a little more flexible.

One thing that we'd absolutely really like to see is an improvement in the administration capabilities. With the Planview administrator, the interface is very time consuming, and that is not fun. We could be doing other things.

It is very stable.

It's pretty scalable.

Overall, the technical support has good people who are knowledgeable. They are a little overworked. At least, they have been in the past year. We need them to focus on somethings from time to time. You can tell that they're really focusing on many things. It has gotten better, but I think they could still use some relief.

Karen Anderson has been a big help to us.

Historically, our company switched project management environments every three years globally and organizationally. When it was time to do a review, we looked at an entire enterprise portfolio management environment. Planview met the criteria that we had. It was a global organization. It was very solid from a financial perspective. It was able to do multiple currencies, etc.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

The deployment took us three and a half months.

We deployed it ourselves. We did have an integration with our SAP environment, but that was through Planview. We didn't have a third-party do it.

The Planview consultants were very good. They came in with a plan. They said, "If you execute this, then this, then this, and then this. This is how long it will take. This is how much it will cost, and it did. It took this long across this much, then we were up and running.

We have several hundred licenses. It costs us several hundred thousand dollars a year. 

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.

At the time of evaluation, there were only four or five environments in the entire world that could have met our requirements. Planview by far was the best. 

We evaluated SAP, Oracle, Planisware, and another vendor who dropped out. 

Listen to what they have to say. They know what they have to say. Start small and grow into the environment. Definitely get executive management buy-in for the environment.

What I usually hear from our own implementations and other implementations, they tried to do all the modules, integrations into this environment, SAP, Windchill, and Integrity together. Instead of that, just get the thing up and running. Get people used to the interface. You will have the executive management screaming at you to get it all in one place. But, if you can't get the actual users onboard with using the environment in a simplified manner, then you're never going to get the advanced solution in.

We are beginning to use the solution’s Lean/Agile delivery tools.

I think it's an eight (out of 10). I really like it. I don't really rate anything a 10 I just don't think anything's perfect. I'm happy that they've worked on improving the reliability of the environment over the last year, and I think they need to finish the integrations with all the different components that they purchased over the last year. Once they get that all together, it will be something special. But, let's see it happen first.

I have a governance role in our strategic portfolio management and I use this solution for reporting out against the strategic portfolio. I interact with the PMOs and FPNA and help to get the two on the same page.

Our ability to do strategic portfolio reporting has gotten much better. We're more accurate with how we report out. One of the biggest things is that each year, we've had a lot of shifts in how our pillars are set up and we can quickly shift to meet those needs without having it be too lengthy or too difficult.

Using this solution has helped improve how quickly we can deliver. It saves us time.

Collaborative Work Management has affected our operations because we're able to collaborate with different groups. We've got our PMO groups, and I'm able to get the information that I need from them. They go in, pull all of their information and I get the reports. We collaborate really well, from what I can tell.

My understanding is that we are using the Lean/Agile delivery tools, but I am not sure if we are using them to the full extent.

The most valuable feature for me is the ease and customizability of reporting. We can get different reports and customize them to do different things.

I also like business objects capabilities, although I haven't used them in my current role.

This is a flexible solution.

This tool is easy to use. I have used solutions such as SAP and Oracle and compared to using those products, I picked up up this tool right away. Once I had a little bit of training from our admins, I thought that it was really intuitive. It was easy for me to go in and build reports, where I didn't constantly need other people to do it for me. That is nice because I have administrative access, so I can do pretty much anything within the tool that I have the knowledge for. That is a plus for a business analyst. You can get the data you want quickly, export it to Excel, and slice and dice it the way you want to.

I would like to be able to integrate with Oracle to supplement what we're currently doing with reporting. We aren't doing it right now, although I don't know if it's a limitation with Planview or it's a limitation with us. I know that it would be helpful for me to bridge that gap because we have to deal with two different datasets.

From a stability standpoint, I think it's solid. I haven't had any major issues with it. I'm always able to get my reporting and I'm always able to do the things that I want to do.

My understanding is that we have seen ROI from this solution, but I am not aware of the specifics. I know that other Blue Shield organizations are using it, and I have heard that it has been successful for us.

Currently, we are not taking advantage of the full functionality that is offered by this solution. We really need to push to get to that next level and use everything that is being offered. I think that there is a disconnect between the people who are the administrators of it and the people who tweak it to get it to do what we want. We just need to have the conversations and that vision of what we want it to do. I know we've got some limitations within our own company, where I think we have a vision of where we want to go and things that I want to get. We're just not quite there, yet.

We've always struggled, but we have been getting better with our reporting each year.

This is a great tool. I have a stronger finance background, so I've used more ERP-type systems and this is my first project management system. From what I can tell, it's great. I haven't used Oracle's or one from another vendor, but I think that this one works well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use cases are soft management and work management. We are expanding at the moment to outcome management and strategy management as well as ICP planning. Next year, we will expand to CTM.

When I started in the group on the German side, we could only have aliases as resources. Now, we are able to have named resources through the agreement, and pulled from the worker's council, for example. 

We have more stability in the data. Our group has plenty of portrait data now, as we are part of the source of the tools for portrait data.

Planview has helped connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. We started to have strategic planning inside going then down to the outcomes. Out of the outcomes, we will try to wait on the projects and other teams, then growing slowly to link it.

It brings transparency to our projects.

I like the Excel interfaces that we have and use it for. 

It gives us the vast ability to churn out-of-the-box reports and have an overview about approach rates and resource utilization.

The product is flexible. E.g., the work infrastructure is easy to adjust. Some other structures are really easy to configure, adjust to our behavior, and adjust to our processes.

Overall, the UI needs improvement. The UI should have more possibilities for users who are not specialized in using Planview. At the moment, it is more of a technical UI. I would like it to be an open user UI. 

improvement is needed on several modules, like resource management and outcome management. 

The product can grow with us. We can add more users.

The customer support center is really valuable. I have had a lot of email discussions and talks with them. We have found several solutions. Sometimes, it ends in an enhancement request.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We plan to upgrade to version 18 next year.

We did an assessment of several companies.

I would rate the product as a seven out of 10. 

Our primary use case for this solution is for managing a 450 million dollar portfolio from the inception and ideas into a strategy. We do this by turning it into an actual project and then understanding how that project performed and taking lessons learned for the next time around.

The biggest benefit that we have seen is that it's increased visibility across the board. It's given us a lot of data to actually make data-driven decisions, whereas before this product we didn't have the level of detail to make informed decisions around a lot of trade-offs with our strategic portfolio.

With respect to our organizational strategy, it has not been transformed by this solution, but it has enabled us to achieve our strategy and achieve our goals. We went through the large process of setting up our own IT shop in the past ten years, and Planview was a big part of being able to do that.

Collaborative Work Management has affected our operations by providing visibility and transparency throughout.

We do not yet use the Lean/Agile Delivery tools.

This solution has helped us connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. I do not have specific examples of this but that is my understanding from my colleagues.

The biggest impact that using Planview has had is that it has given us the ability to manage the main capacity of working our resources and getting better at that over time. We are better at planning for our people and making sure that we use them appropriately.

The most valuable feature of this solution is reporting.

The integration with Power BI, in particular, makes it very easy to get information in a useable format out to our stakeholders.

This is a flexible solution. The flexibility allows you to take care of your stakeholders in different ways. Depending on their way of working, you can accommodate several different processes.

Some of the out-of-the-box reporting is not immediately useful and although it can be configured or customized, there are still improvements that can be made.

This solution is stable. I've not had a technical issue where I was not able to access it. It has always been a solid, high-quality platform.

This solution is easily scalable. It really just depends on the administration team that you have in your company. When somebody wants it, you ask them a few questions then you turn things on for them.

The technical support is among the best in the industry. They're very clear, very thorough and they get right to the heart of the problem. They're willing to work with you and help discover any issues that arise, as well as the implications.

Prior to the solution, we were using the HP Portfolio and Performance Management System. We switched because it wasn't as comprehensive and couldn't handle tying everything together. We had a big issue with getting visibility.

We realize ROI through this solution because it is the way that we manage our strategic portfolio. It is difficult to quantify, but it is an essential part of our operations.

This solution has reached a pretty comprehensive state, so it is difficult to immediately think of features that it is lacking.

My advice to anybody who is researching this type of solution is to make sure you're working with a vendor like Planview, who has a comprehensive solution from innovation to the inception of ideas all the way through getting your teams to be able to collaborate together. It really makes a difference if they're all in the same environment.

This is a good solution, but there is always room for improvement. Planview seems great at identifying what needs to be improved and then moving the ball forward.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.