Planview Portfolios Reviews

Our company has a PMO, which they use to intake their projects. They use the request module and do a process for the steering committee before its turned into a project. Once they turn it into a project, the project managers take it over and work the WBS all the way through to the end of the project.

The product is deployed on the Planview cloud.

With the lifecycles, it helps us step through our processes easier. We'll take a process and create it in Visio, then we'll go and implemented in Planview. Anytime that we have to do a new process, this is what we use. We just step it through the lifecycles and the configure screens are very easy to use. The fields that you need are easy to use.

With the prioritization that the company is getting into, it's easier to do that using this solution, including a ROM. Normally, the ROM is done in the work, but we put it in the request module. You don't have to have an in-depth ROM. You don't have to create a project, we just do it in a request module today, which has been very helpful.

For the delivery, we can tell when a project will be late, so the PM can find out why. The PM would have to tell management why it's going to be late, but they can see that right off because they do weekly status reports. So, they don't have to wait to get a status report. They can just go in there and look. Also, with the reporting capability, where they can do the subscriptions, they get it every Friday.

Resource managers can see their resources. They try to do things on their own, so that is good. Today, we don't have high-level resource management, but we are going to start doing that. We will start having demand or resource meetings to see where resources are available. However, we are still developing that. 

We don't have that today, but I worked at other companies who used Planview and saw where resources were available, scheduled, and short. It was very useful. We would meet every two weeks to view resource management. We would just sit in a room and say, "These are our projects. These are the projects that are incoming. Where are our resources today? What are they working on?" So, it was very good.

The biggest impact has been the ability to see your resources and what they're working on. Most importantly is having your projects in one place. We don't have that specifically here at GM today, but we're working towards that. That's our new initiative: Get everything in one place and have one place to go for intake. So, if you have a new request, they go straight to plan B. Once we post a project, they can do that today. We get on reporting for Power BI and the ease of use of Power BI is very big.

It's easy to use compared to other platforms that I've worked on, e.g., Microsoft Project. Innotas was one of our contenders, but they ended up buying them, so it's good to see that those features are coming out across Enterprise One. 

• I love the requested intake.
• I love how you can do calculations of fields. 
• We put in the lifecycles, which I love. 
• Love that you can get notifications within Outlook. 
• The reporting: How you can do subscriptions of the reporting. So, you don't have to sit there and send reports manually. That's very helpful.

These features save me time. Anything that you can automate is always helpful. When somebody doesn't have to come and ask me, "Hey, can you do this for me?" They can do it themselves, then it's easy to use. You can show them one time, and they go through it the next time by themselves.

It's flexible and very easy to use. Just having all of our projects centralized and all our programs in one place so we can see what the PMs are working on. Now that we've gone global, we can bring in the other PMs and PMOs easily because we've already configured stuff. Although, they may have things that they're reporting on, we can easily integrate those into our current system. 

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.

For the multiple fields that you have, there is not a single select field, but multiple selections. You can't use those in column sets today. It excludes those fields when being reported on. So, you have to figure out another way to do that.

It would be beneficial for us if it was able to integrate with other tools and have those tools integrated into Planview, which they're working on. Examples of tools being integrated DevOps, JIRA and Projectplace. Since we're a mature PMO, and not all of our PMOs are, if they can integrate with Projectplace or the Planview PPM Pro, that's good. 

The company has been on it for at least five years. I've used it previously with other companies for over seven years.

I have never had an issue with the stability of Planview. That's one thing that they can tout very well. Performance issues have not been an issue. When running a report, all I have to do is let them know, and they will expand my timeout limits. So, I've never had an issue with performance with them, not in the cloud.

It's very scalable. We're on Enterprise One, so you normally have to be pretty mature. Where I came from, we were immature. We adapted to Planview and became very mature. I know that other companies can do that too. They start out with Projectplace or PPM Pro, then they'll go to Enterprise One. So, it's very scalable. It's a great solution for scalability.

The technical support is very good. I've never had an issue with them. They answer their tickets right away and always come back with a solution very quickly.

We moved from another tool to Planview. I don't know what tool this current company was on. I worked for them for 10 months, then I left and I came back. I've been with them since June again. Another company that I worked with, we went from MS Project Pro (the PPM tool) to Planview.

It was more complex because I came from MS Project Pro. Planview has so much more to offer, so you had to consider a lot more. You had to figure out what its capability were, what your portfolio and programs were going to be, what your teams were, how they were structured, and what type of resources you had in what roles. So, there were things that we had to consider, but Planview asks the right questions. They bring that out of you.

We did a test for three months, then we did a soft launch. So, only our PMs were on it, and they brought all their projects over and managed their projects there. We had another tool, where we had to do double-duel entry for time sheets. So, when they ended their time sheet over there, then they started doing it in Planview. That was just to get them used to it, and saying, "We're going to do our time sheets." We were a company that already did time sheets. That seems to be a big thing for other companies. How do you get your people to do time sheets? But if you're doing financials, they're going to do time sheets.

We used consultants, and I would recommend that for everyone. They're very easy to use. They listen to your needs and requirements. They gather them. They've been in the business so long that they understand what people are saying. Some people may want a lot of details, and they'll talk them down from that by saying, "Do you really need that? Let's start with this, and then we'll see. Does that give you what you need?" So, they're really good about listening to the requirements and providing what you need from the beginning.

When you talk to a consultant, make sure you know where you are, how many users you're going to have, what number of projects you have today, where you think you're going to go with it, and what are your pain points. 

Know your pain points, and definitely tell Planview what your pain points are, because they'll have a solution for them, whether it's reporting, which is real big, or just the ease of use. Everybody is so used to using Microsoft Project, but it's really not that different from Microsoft Project. You just have to use the tool, like Word or Excel, and the more you use it, the better you get at it. It's a very good PPM tool.

The learning curve is not steep. They have very good training and a lot of people. My recommendation is when you take on Planview, get the training. Have trainers come onsite and make sure you budget for that. Make sure you budget for consultants to come onsite and train your people. Don't try to do it yourself, let them do it.

I think our company has seen ROI. If you can see where all your projects are, what type of projects you have, what resources that they're working on, and finally, where your budget is. That's a win-win, all the way. 

We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model.

We evaluated MS Project, because we thought we going to stay with them. We evaluated Planview and Innotas. There was another minor one too and we want to be more mature than that. Those were the main ones that we evaluated.

We chose Planview probably for the centralization of all the projects, ease of use, views, and the configured screens were very easy to use. Ours was more about resources, knowing where your resources are, for example:

"What projects are you working on?" 

"I'm over here working on these five projects." 

"But they're not on my list!" 

This solution is just about able to see what your resources are working on and having all your projects in one place, even team schedules.

We do not use the solution’s Lean/Agile delivery tools yet. That's one reason why we were looking at this heavily at the conference. They seem to be really focused on that, which is good. A lot of companies that I talked to seemed to be struggling with it, so it's good to see that Planview is trying to move into that direction, taking everything with it.

Today, Planview does not help connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution because we only have one PMO which is using finances. I don't think that they're doing a capital budget yet, to say, "These are the projects that we're going to work on." But, as we've gone global, we will start doing that. So, it'd be very beneficial. The other company that I worked for, it was very highly used. We forecasted constantly to see where our budgets were, what our capital budget was for that year, and what projects we were going to work on at the beginning of the year. That was good.

There are so many different functionalities within it that you don't have to take in all in one day. You can just grow with it. So, that's what I like about it.

I'm always a person who will never give anything a 10. I would probably give it, compared to other tools, a nine (out of 10). I would've given it an eight (out of 10), but they've made improvements this year. So many good things are coming out, and they really listen to the customers. I'll give them a nine for that.

We've been using this product for prioritizing work across our Organization and also demand and capacity planning. 

Work that gets added to Planview captures all the key information like t-shirt sizing, key stakeholder names, financial information, and, most important of all, resource allocations and role requirements - all in one tool.

It becomes really easy for the Project Managers to keep an eye on the progress of their Projects, and on the other hand, for the resource managers, it's really easy for them to identify what's in flight for their resources and what's in the pipeline, also do we have enough capacity to fulfill that demand.

Really happy with how Planview keeps transforming its capabilities to meet customer needs.

We are able to take up the right work and invest in the highest value ideas.

The challenge was that we were doing a lot of work without identifying what work has the highest returns. With Planview, we have that visibility across IT, and all the work that gets entered into Planview is surveyed and prioritized to make sure that we start with the highest valued investments. 

Not only that, we have visibility of all the resources as to where they are spending their time and how they can be utilized to better meet the vision and business strategies of the organization.

The best aspects include:

Work Management. Work that gets added to Planview captures all the key information, including t-shirt sizing, key stakeholder names, financial information, and most important of all, Resource allocations and role requirements - all in one tool.

Resource Management. We have visibility of all the resources as to where they are spending their time and how they can be utilized better to meet the vision and business strategies of the organization.

Leankit. The kanban board has really helped us be more agile and we can keep track of everything that is ongoing.

The solution needs to be better at accepting new ideas for upcoming releases. At times, we've requested Planview to add new features to the tool. But they have it go through an enhancement idea process, and we find it a long process. Your idea goes through only if the same idea is proposed by other organizations.

Email notifications for resource allocations/requests/requirements/reserves are something that could be added. A lot of the time, we get questions from resource managers. We would like to get an email notification when a resource request is made.

We've used the solution for nine years.

The product is stable and reliable, with 24-hour support around the globe.

Planview does a great job in scaling the solution with its in-house experts.

We got it implemented through vendor support and are really happy with the support.

The setup cost is mostly the same as competitors. That said, you get a lot of value and return on investment with just one tool.

We also looked into ServiceNow ITBM.

Private Cloud

We use Planview Management to assess the current project portfolio, evaluate resource availability, and prioritize projects based on strategic objectives, ROI, and risk factors. 

Planview Management improves an organization depending on how well it aligns with the organization's goals and processes and how effectively it is implemented and utilized by the team. 

Our overall experience was good. Our primary use case is Planview Management. In this scenario, it is to improve project visibility, optimize resource utilization, and drive better decision-making to achieve organizational goals effectively.

This software totally changed our organization's workflow. Planview Management offers a centralized platform for managing all projects and portfolios. This helps to improve visibility into project status, progress, and resource allocation across the organization. 

Planview Management enables our organizations to make data-driven decisions. The centralized platform offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities. 

Planview Management integrates seamlessly with other tools and systems used within the organization, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and collaboration platforms. This integration enhances data visibility, streamlines workflows, and eliminates silos between departments. All other services are sophisticated

Enhancements are needed in:

Advanced reporting and analytics: While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data visualization options, predictive analytics features, and customizable dashboards to provide deeper insights into project performance and trends. 

Enhanced collaboration tools: While Planview Management facilitates collaboration, additional features such as real-time chat, video conferencing integration, and collaborative document editing can further improve communication and teamwork among project teams and stakeholders. 

Scalability and performance: As organizations grow and their project portfolios expand, it's essential for Planview Management to ensure scalability and performance. This could involve optimizing the platform's architecture, enhancing database management, and improving response times for large-scale deployments. 

Overall, by addressing these areas for improvement and incorporating additional features in the next release, Planview Management can continue to meet the evolving needs of organizations and remain a leading solution for project and portfolio management.

I've used the solution for six months.

It is for total strategic management, portfolio management, etc. It is used for end-to-end projects from the beginning to the end. Our entire company is using it.

I am a developer. I work on RBI reports (financial reporting) in Enterprise One for our business leaders.

The product has been good. The strategic planning started in 2017. They have been making good decisions based on the data that is available in Planview. They can do a drill down to the results level and what is happening exactly in every project.

They are trying to use the product portfolio. I had news that our management team is trying to get the product portfolios in place. It's about to launch.

The integration stuff from tool to tool, like Projectplace to Planview, to manage projects is the most valuable feature. It keeps all our tasks up-to-date. It closely follows up with everything, which is really cool.

From a reporting angle, it is flexible. We can use it in multiple ways, like with the in-house dashboards inside of Planview. With the security and all its options, the data can be limited to the extent of that user's need based on their roles, which is awesome. There is a lot of connectivity to a number of tools.

We had issues with the data rephrasing. 

The integration stuff is not going so well. I heard that there are a lot of updates to version 18. It is almost 40 to 50 percent updates on the integration part. We should feel the difference and our problem should be resolved.

I am looking forward to exploring the bots on the recording part. This will really help us out when it is added.

I've been using it for a year.

The stability is good.

Impact-wise, more users and teams are getting onboard, seeing Planview within the organization. People are using it in IT, engineering, manufacturing, R&D, etc. Users are increasing daily.

Technical support is awesome. I personally know Natalia. I have been interacting with her for my last couple of calls. Whenever we have support, we raise the last developmental request, and they are very good. They're very helpful all the time.

The product is a nine out of 10. I need to give a little space for improvement.

The primary use case is project management (PPM) for the IT and PMO departments.

We can easily see which functions are overcapacity. Before, we did not have visibility into that.

Planview has helped us connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. Now we understand that if we reprioritize projects in the pipeline, it will impact downstream capacity.

It hasn't transformed our delivery yet. We are still new at it. We're learning all the functionality, so this is something that we're working towards.

Once we get more comfortable with the tool and the data accuracy, strategy will be a great step forward for us.

It's an end-to-end integrated tool. We can look at resources, finances, tasks, etc. 

It is very flexible. It's almost too flexible and lets us do stuff we shouldn't do.

We want to deploy the program management function. We are not there yet. It's not already part of our solution. It's a further enhancement that we want to purchase eventually.

We have been using it since April 2019.

I would rate Planview technical support as a seven out of 10. When we first deployed, there were some issues. We never got to the root cause of why they happened. Since we didn't have any history with it, we weren't quite sure if this was a standard operating procedure or it truly was a glitch.

Before, we did not have an integrated tool. Now, we can load all the resource and project requirements into a portfolio to see where we have gaps in resources, capacity, etc.

It was straightforward. However, I don't think at the time we understood exactly how all the processes were integrated. So, it was the learning experience for us.

We deployed it with the help of Planview consultants. Our experience with them was good. They came onsite, gave us a training, and were always available by phone.

We evaluated other vendors before going with Planview. We chose Planview because of the end-to-end integration.

I would recommend coming to the the Horizons conference first. Ask a lot of questions. Talk to other companies who have gone through a similar experience.

We use the waterfall delivery tools.

I would rate the solution as an eight out of 10, because I don't know all the functionality. 

Public Cloud

Other

We use it for project and program management.

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.

The solution’s collaborative work management has affected our operations in a positive way.

• The work and assignments
• We can track the financials.
• We can do portfolio management. We can look across the portfolio at several projects.

I find these features valuable because of their visibility.

I think our performance issues have to do with our large portfolio. We have a lot of data in there. We're a global organization with thousands of users, and that also has an impact.

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.

We have been using Planview tools since 2016. We rolled it out in two waves: wave one in 2016, then wave two in 2017. Currently, we are using version 17.

The stability is fine. We are currently experiencing some performance issues, but as far as the stability of the system, it seems to be rather stable.

It is easy to add users and introduce new projects into the system.

There are people on my team in my organization who work with the technical team. I do not usually work with the technical team. They are happy with the support that Planview provides.

The biggest impact was to the end user because we have always had a project management tool. We had a tool prior to implementing Planview. This tool is more user-friendly, so it was more easily adopted by the organization and end user community.

The switch between tools was made for better adoption throughout the organization and to move to a web-based system. Our previous system was not web-based. 

We did the initial deployment with the help of Planview. There was good support.

They also helped with the deployment and training. They were available to help us through the whole rollout. Then, they took us further than that and provided some support after the rollout to make sure that things continued on.

We evaluated the current vendor that we had, Planview, and a third vendor.

• Understand what it is that you want the tool to deliver. 
• Have clear expectations of what you expect to get out of the system. 
• Have good user requirements.

I would rate the solution as an eight (out of 10). 

Public Cloud

Other

We have the business side who uses the project management stuff for managing their plan and stuff. We have our IT side who uses the project management as well as time management to keep track of all their projects and the hours being spent on projects by all their resources. This way they are time compliant, e.g., they run this every week to see how many of hours are being spent as people enter their hours.

With the IT side of it, the tool gave them visibility on all their projects from a program and enterprise perspective. The tool helps the enterprise with more capabilities in terms of decision-making, making better decisions on efforts, and the money that they spend.

The solution’s integrated product portfolio has transformed our organization’s strategy because previously we didn't have a specific tool which was being used for project management. People were using different sets of tools for managing their projects, and there was no centralized tool where the organization knew what people were working on. This tool gives them that visibility on all projects.

The solution’s integrated product portfolio has transformed our organization’s delivery. It gives them their capability to govern and set some governance models around what they want to see in terms of projects progressing and how they can make them better.

The portfolio management gives you a view of all the projects as well as all the information about the total amount of effort, time, and cost being spent on the projects. It gives the organization how much money and effort should be spent towards projects so they can budget and do better capacity planning in the next fiscal year. It gives them visibility into their resources and if they have capacity.

I have found this solution to be flexible. I have found it flexible enough in terms of tweaking different configurations for helping the customers doing VMs.

I can access the system anywhere. I can manage my project wherever I am. Since it's web-based, it's flexible enough for making any changes. I can go in at anytime. I can just login from my cell phone.

I would like to see more documentation pieces. Right now, they do have the content repository. I would like to see more out-of-the-box features with document repository capabilities.

We are currently on Version 16.9. We started with Planview 13 and have been on it for more than three and a half years. We have using Planview for our medical center and plan to move to Planview 18.

With Enterprise One, because it's cloud-based, we have never experienced type of crash. It's always available 24 hours. I've never seen any critical issues where the system is down more than an hour or so.

Since the IT side is already using the tool, we are promoting it to the entire business side as well. There are a lot of groups coming in trying to use the system now. We have an onboarding process that we follow for each group where we explain to them how the tool can help them. In terms of your project and portfolio management, we sort of customize or tweak the tool to satisfy their wants and needs. That is when they begin to agree to onboard the system.

We do one BU after another. We do workshop, training, and demo sessions where we understand their needs, then we do a customization of their requirements. We do custom configurations, which we show them, and they become happy.

We have used the technical support for a number of things, like reporting. 

We use our customer success team for any questions where don't know the answers or if we have a query. We do put in a ticket for that and they are pretty good with their response.

I would rate them as a nine (out of 10) because they are pretty fast in their response. I would have rated them as 10, but we use the capability and technology management. That's where it's gone a little down in terms of the support. As far as Enterprise One and the PRM side goes, they are very good.

The initial setup was straightforward. In terms of the lifecycle, it was pretty straightforward and we wanted to start small and see how it went. We wanted to see how people would react to it. We were pretty small with the initial configurations.

Our initial implementation was with Planview consultants. They were very good. We love them.

We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have.

We did on a comparison of different tools, such as, Planview and some other tools available. We did our evaluation of those tools and came up with Planview as the tool that we want to use.

Initially, the university and medical center were one company. Then, we split because the university was using Planview. Then, we also took the same tool but after evaluations we came across Clarity and Planview as the bigger, better tools. We went with Planview because it was already being used in the organization and everyone was familiar with it.

The tool has transformed. I have seen it grow. I have more than 12 years of experience working in Planview and have seen the tool from the start. I've seen all the versions, and it's grown to a more flexible tool.

Right now, we are mostly focused on the waterfall method, but we are also promoting the lean and agile method. E.g., we are promoting tools like Projectplace and LeanKit. We're trying to get our customers and project managers to use those systems. Our developers are mostly more comfortable using JIRA because they've been using it for so many years. However, we are promoting these types of tools as well, where we can see if we can add value for them.

We don't use the financial management piece because we don't have clear visibility on the cost aspect of projects.

I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Other

The primary use case is portfolio management. We're looking at the business unit portfolio and health of the portfolio as a whole. We are not just looking at projects on time, but capacity management for resources, and on the financial side, if we're on budget.

It brings visibility into capacity, how that affects our projects, and having the whole portfolio be able to see everything at the same time, then talk about it. 

One of our guys actually has a great quote that I use, "Planview Enterprise One isn't a tool that takes away communication. It actually increases the need for communication." It brings people to the table to talk about more things because we have transparency in all of our stuff.

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.

To see work, resources, and ICPM and those different cuts and views is very beneficial for us if we just want to focus on resources. E.g., here are all the resources, but here are the projects that they're working on. If we want to look at the work, then we can look at the work and can bring in the resources. Being able to slice and dice that way is really good.

• Integration
• The cost of other pieces and integrating them in.
• The response to certain issues that pop up.

We just implemented it in March.

It has been pretty stable.

When we put in tickets, they are responded to them as quickly as possible.

There is improvement there on responding back to customers. On our side, we've got quite a bit of experience in tools and systems like this. Normally, when we are putting forth a ticket, we know that it needs to be escalated. 

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.

In 2006, we engaged Clarity. We were using Clarity. We had just gone through one merger. We were completing another merger while we were trying to implement a tool: two different banks, two different cultures, and one new tool. The implementation wasn't that successful. So, we had a system that was too robust for what we needed. We sort of needed what was now called a low code common language type tool.

We ended up building our own. From building our own tool, we made changes to that, and rebranded it. Then, we made changes to that, and rebranded it. 

One of our CIO's big things was we needed a tool that will be able to facilitate our evolution into automation, Agile, and everything else. That's how we came to Enterprise One.

The initial setup is more straightforward for us because we've had other tools in the past, so everything is there. One of the things that we're excited about with version 18 is the configuration: Some of the entry points and user experience will be a lot better when we can collapse certain information. The clean look and feel of it will be really nice.

The product is flexible. We have someone on our team named Allison Cobb who is our Power BI and reporting specialist. She went in and learned the whole schema of Enterprise One to where we have more flexibility than others because we can see certain things, and go, "We want to put that in a dashboard. We want to be able to use that in a different way."

I would give it an eight out of 10. The reason why I would give it an eight is what's being brought into the suite of Planview. The integrations that you're going to be able to do with Planview with LeanKit. All of these things, it's really forward thinking on, "These are all the different pieces which are needed to move forward." All of this is great. 

Public Cloud