I've had several other groups come to me about using PPM and the ability to customize it and make it work for them could make it a great solution, depending on what their processes are. I normally push them towards it, if they're looking to automate and get away from any kind of paper-based processes, or to get them out of using multiple systems.

PPM is a great tool, but it's like exercise or eating: You get out of it what you put into it. There's a fine level of detail that you could put into it that can make the solution really work for you. If you're not going to apply that, you're not going to get the most viable solution. PPM is one of those tools where more is better, in the beginning, to allow you to do less once you have everything implemented.

I rate Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management a seven out of ten. Every organization needs a project management tool. However, you should apply a cost-benefit analysis before adopting any product. Micro Focus PPM might be too expensive for some organizations, but it's flexible and offers customized hybrid configurations. 

Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management offers great functionality in the project management space and other end-to-end functionality. Whatever you, as an organization, need for the implementation of project management, PPM offers it, so go ahead and use this tool.

But as far as reporting is concerned, implementing project management is not sufficient, you will have to report the data from it to senior management. Don't rely on PPM for reporting. You will have to come up with an external tool or some other platform to build reports on.

We have integrated the solution with Jira and it was easy to do and use the two platforms. We have also integrated it with Micro Focus ALM for application life cycle management and that was easy as well. We are new to the Agile process so we're still in the testing phase of this transformation. But management has embraced it.

My advice is to build your procedures and workflows well from day one so that you don't face any issues with the modules. Changes in the workflows take time.

I rate Micro Focus PPM a nine out of ten. To implement PPM, you need a dedicated team to learn and provide support. They need to build knowledge and work hand in hand with the partner vendor. In our case, its configurations and other highly technical aspects stay with a partner vendor because they are the experts. We left the development and configuration to them. Our support team, which I belong to, focuses on the end-user experience, and we support them. 

We act as consultants to the end users. I think that's a good model. If we take on the technical part in-house, we would need to build those technical capabilities again when there are changes within the team, like people leaving or moving to other roles. Instead, we rely on the partner vendor for expertise. 

Use it out of the box in the beginning, and don't change it too much or make it too complex.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) at eight.

It's very good as far as not needing to be restarted on a regular basis, not having mod files fill up, the number of issues, the number of tickets I have received from users with complaints, and its ease of use. Where I see improvement is more my experience with support and with the Micro Focus company in general, because we ran into licensing issues that took almost eight months to resolve. We had a divestiture, and we acted as a third party via TSA, and it took probably two months to try and get an answer that we really needed in 20 to 30 days. So, these kind of things where we ended up having to talk to one of their lawyers and in that five minute conversation, they're like, "Oh yeah, we can do that." They wrote up a letter, sign, sign, and done. Why it took 60 days, when talking directly to the lawyer it took five minutes? It was very frustrating.

I would advise looking at your internal processes. The maturity of your processes and the behavioral or cultural aspect are important. If those two aspects are not looked into, then even if you get the best tool, it won't give you the outcome you want. So, before you get into the tool, make sure you have a bit of maturity in your processes. You can mature it further, but you must have some level of maturity. Also, make sure that the organization is ready. If the organization is not ready and the leadership is not aligned, there will be a lot of roadblocks.

You need to have a strategic plan and link your strategic pillars, alignment goals, and business objectives. PPM enables the organization to translate strategic plans into actionable investment strategies, but it also depends on how you configure the tool. Once you have the right flow right from your strategic plan to your pillars and initiatives, that information can be reported to various stakeholders. So, it is important to have a dynamic flow.

It is important that the portfolio hierarchy is well-defined. If you don't do that well, then the information doesn't flow from the bottom. Whether it is epics or agile, or your projects or initiatives, it is important to get the hierarchy right. Once you have the hierarchy right and you also are very clear about what's in your agile tool, what's in your PPM tool, and how the information flows, it definitely gives you the outcome that you need. So, a bulk of the work initially goes into setting up the right hierarchy. If you don't get that right and your information flow is broken, that definitely causes problems. It took us one or two iterations to do that, but we got there.

For integrating your agile tools and synchronizing the execution layer back into PPM, they have a base connector. The good thing is that they have provided an SDK. So, we can enhance the connector by doing some coding. That's a good thing, but the agile life cycle is something that we are learning as we go. The challenge is not about the tools. The challenge is more about the behavior in the organization because every team does it in a different way. Standardizing a way so that everyone does it in one way and having some taxonomy in the agile tool and integrating that with PPM is a challenge. It is more on the people and behaviors side, not specifically the tool side.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

It's a good solution and definitely I would give it a thumbs up. Go for it.

There are lots of project management tools that do a good job, but not so many that can manage portfolios and the bigger planning picture. The key reason why projects fail, is the lack of necessary resources. With this in mind, projects need to be scheduled in such a way that their resource requirements can be met. You can’t just do all of them first.

That’s portfolio management (well, part of it). To be able to successfully execute the portfolio, it is necessary to have the required resources recruited, scheduled and committed to the different projects in due time. That’s resource management. Organizations who fail at either one of these, will find that the necessary resources tend not to be available when the projects need them, causing them to be delayed or fail completely. There are also other downsides, such as inability to project cash flow, ad hoc prioritization (usually at the wrong organization level) and, for the resources themselves, conflicting loyalties (serving the one who yells the loudest?), lack of clarity of what to do next, unclear work schedule expectations (You have to work weekend – surprise!) and just general overload situations.

Lacking portfolio and resource management, you are almost guaranteed that your projects will miss their targets. That is why I consider these the key features of PPM, although there are other aspects that make PPM a very powerful tool, such as being able to define your own request types and create work flows for them. Very neat, indeed!

Nope, all covered.

I would suggest that in the first year of implementation try to keep it simple and keep close to best practices. One of the main mistakes companies have made in the past is to replace the industrial-based best practices with their own technics and this doesn't always work. So, they end up migrating problems and issues, that may be part of their internal culture, to the new platform. I would advise soft adoption and incrementally distributing the use of the tool across the company.

Every solution can be improved so I would rate this product an 8 out of 10. 

Keep it simple, of course. Apply phased or sprint based approach. Not Big Bang.

Consider thoughtful roadmap, be ambitious, but implement with a realistic sense, counting on “human/people adoption”.

It has a parametric infrastructure, which provides efficiency whilst managing projects and demands.

At the same time, HPE PPM's customization is also very easy, so time-saving is ensured.

It has a parametrical infrastructure. This provides efficiency while managing the projects and demands. At the same time, PPM customization is very easy, so time-saving is ensured.

Be ready to have a lot of complaints from the end users in terms of usability and not a high level of responsiveness from technical support and R&D. Do not expect R&D to develop on your enhancement requests.

It has a parametric infrastructure. This provides efficiency while managing the projects and demands. At the same time, PPM customization is very easy to use, so saving time is ensured.

It is easy to perform changes (workflow/process). Even the customer can easily administer and develop it.