We performed a comparison between Microsoft Project and Planview PPM Pro based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Project Management Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"Dependencies (not typically effectively used in "Agile" techniques) allow understanding of actual project status and challenges."
"If you work with Microsoft, it's very easy to work with this."
"The daily tracker is valuable."
"Microsoft Project is easy to use and helps our teams visualize the evolution of our projects."
"I use Microsoft Project to manage project timelines."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The solution is very useful for project planning."
"It is a complete and all-rounded enterprise product. From a portfolio management perspective and an individual project management perspective, it is a corporate-wide project management product. It can be used for resource planning, financial planning, task planning, etc."
"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."
"PPM Pro is really great at the portfolio level like seeing what projects are in flight versus complete, or maybe not started. The portfolio level view is good for stage-gate management specifically."
"I've worked at many different companies, and the customer service and the support from Daptiv are unlike anything I've encountered before. They far excel any other company I've worked with. I always say to people that Daptiv is like a sub-department in your company. You don't realize they're a vendor. It feels like you're working with somebody who is part of your own company."
"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."
"The timesheet & staffing management function gives us clarity in terms of how capacity planning has to happen and how much actual effort is going into the programs. The risk and project status information gets captured in the project gives more clarity for stakeholders to understand how the programs are running. We have only explored a portion of the application features so far."
"We use PPM Pro with Projectplace. It is absolutely 100 percent fantastic. Now, we can give people that more collaborative, comfortable look and feel with a Kanban board view. We give them a smart app that goes along with it, essentially not having to worry about using rigid project management. They are very complementary towards each other: PPM Pro and Projectplace. What one is not so strong in, the other one has strengths in it. It is fantastic."
"The status reporting is the most valuable feature as it's easy to use; it's simple for project managers to enter their information, and the reporting features are very flexible."
"In my current company, it provides a quicker ramp up to understand what it can do for people by taking away all their barriers to entry: time, managing resources, and linking projects."
"I'd like the solution to be less expensive."
"There are some things about it that I've always hated, and they haven't really changed them. It makes a lot of assumptions. It is also difficult to put business rules in it. You have to de-link it from the consecutive task if you don't want to do a What-If analysis, and sometimes, if you forget to do that, it changes everything. It is a pain in the neck to undo it. I would also like to see better integration with graphics. The graphics are primitive, and they need some major work. I would like to have the ability to do some small macros within the project for fuzzy logic. For example, if you're not sure how long a task takes, you can get the earliest guess. It is very time and manpower intensive to keep it up to date. You need to constantly update it. You will find that you are spending more time working on the Microsoft Project file rather than working on your project. I don't want to devote a person to just do that. That's silly. You can link it to some more modern applications so that it is dynamic when a real-time resource schedule changes, but it is not at all dynamic. It is only as dynamic as the person using it. It would be nice if we could plug it in real time for each project, subproject, or task. If something is going on, I want to see it in real time. Sometimes we have international clients, and they don't use the same calendar. They have a Thursday and Friday weekend, and we have a Saturday and Sunday weekend. I can change it in Microsoft Project, but I would like to be able to do it globally. There may be a way to do it, but I just haven't figured it out yet. I would like to be able to specify globally what weekend we want or what we want to call a weekend. We might have a project that works seven days a week. Some tasks are automated outside, like manufacturing processes. Embedding external processes is almost impossible because, in a practical sense, we don't have people who can do a lot of programming here, and also the interface of Microsoft Project is not the easiest because a lot of it is proprietary. It would be nice if we can link different tasks to external sources of inputs and outputs so that we could integrate them with a master project plan and see in real time what's going on. For example, you are manufacturing a batch of a chemical, and I have to rely on if a customer is making some type of complex chemical. Their system does not interfere with ours. We have to get the outputs from their system and enter them manually into the project to see the effect. That takes time. If you're talking about hours, you going to spend three to four hours, but there is the risk of getting it wrong or making a mistake. On tight projects, every minute counts. I would like to see some control system interfaces with Microsoft Project. A modern machine shop has a lot of computer numerical control (CNC) computers. In fact, virtually all machining is done with a CNC machine. Even 3D additive manufacturing is made with CNC. That data can go to a computer, and that computer can spit it out to a project so that you can see in real time whether you are going to finish a day ahead. If you had to finish a day ahead, you could talk to the systems' software, which can say that if I have this machine working for another hour and this one for one hour or less, I would be able to meet the schedule. It can then make those changes, but it can't do that. Everything needs to be done manually, which takes more time, and there's a risk of mistakes. It requires smarter automation and more machine learning. There is no machine learning capability in Microsoft Project. It just doesn't exist. That's why I say it is only suitable for small-sized to medium-sized companies and small projects. Most people don't have the problems that I have. I don't have them all the time, but when I have them, they're big. When you're bidding on a project that has to get done, you find yourself spending most of the time working on Microsoft Project, whereas you should be spending these hours managing the project. Thinking on a bigger scale, I would like better integration with Office, Visio, and Access. If you make a change in one, it should cascade to others and vice versa. It doesn't do that. It is not a dynamic program. I would like to see a dynamic program or at least the capability of being dynamic, that is, even if it is close to real time where it outputs to a module, and the module then talks to real-time things. The real-time data goes back into the module, and the module updates the project plan. Such dynamic capability would be nice. It may not be real time, but it is at least close. I would like to be able to link directly to the data in an Excel spreadsheet so that I don't have to keep going back and forth updating it. I don't want to have to create a dynamic link library. Whenever I change the data in Excel, it should update in Visio or PowerPoint. If I'm doing a pie chart or any kind of graphic, I don't want to constantly update my graphics. I want to link them together, and I want them updated automatically. I know it is a wishful thing. They don't make major changes every time they come out with a new version. They don't fix the issue. They just add a few features."
"It would be better if the solution is integrated with other communication platforms like Microsoft Teams."
"Microsoft Project should include more visualization, queries to filter out data, and more reporting structures."
"Its reporting and its integration with some of the other related systems should be improved. It is not very easy to integrate."
"If Project had a better mechanism to allow those who are not the project manager to see their own work tasks, that would be of help or of value to us."
"I would like to see the inclusion of multi-currency support."
"Tracking timeline, resource allocation, and monitoring are areas of concern for the tool where improvements are required."
"Entering day-to-day tasks is a tedious process."
"The calculated field area needs improvement. There are a lot of formulas and functions available to make a calculated field, but it is still not comprehensive. We process the data to represent it through a report or dashboard. Due to the current constraints, for complex calculations, we do the data processing outside PPM Pro."
"The downside to the way the solution tracks time is if your project manager doesn't add you to the project, you won't see it on your timesheet, even if you did do work."
"The agile functionality can be improved. The tool was definitely built around the waterfall PMBOK PRINCE2 methodology, and although there are great functions within the tool for agile, it is often compared to dedicated tools like LeanKit or Jira. At the moment, the only integration we would have is to Jira itself, not to another Planview product. I believe that's coming in 2022 at some point."
"The initial setup was a little complex. There is so much to customize. It'd be good to have some templates out-of-the-box."
"I would like to schedule reports. I would like to be able to schedule a report and every Monday it sends that report to these people. That circumvents having to give them a license. It's just a way of saying "Okay, this is what's going on this week," and it just happens. I don't have to worry about it."
"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."
"I would like to see integration with third-party applications, like the JIRA, Microsoft Project, and financial applications."
Microsoft Project is ranked 2nd in Project Management Software with 77 reviews while Planview PPM Pro is ranked 12th in Project Management Software with 34 reviews. Microsoft Project is rated 8.0, while Planview PPM Pro is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Microsoft Project writes "A stable solution that very accurately runs projects". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Planview PPM Pro writes "Attentive customer service". Microsoft Project is most compared with Asana, Jira, Microsoft Project Server, Smartsheet and Wrike, whereas Planview PPM Pro is most compared with Planview AdaptiveWork, ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, Planview Portfolios, Planisware and Smartsheet. See our Microsoft Project vs. Planview PPM Pro report.
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