Planview Portfolios vs. Projector PSA vs. Workzone

Planview Portfolios is well suited to provide a single, central, view of the truth. There is clear expansion capabilities to integrate it as a true Enterprise toolset with existing organisation wide (not just delivery) - you can pick and choose what you need to implement and that list gets longer. The ability to quickly gain an understanding of resources within the overall portfolio and some really clever tools regarding capacity and demand modelling. I think the only challenge we have encountered is modelling our Business as Usual activity to a level of detail - this is due to other tools being very embedded not just in the organisation but across a lot of industries.

Incentivized

We think Projector PSA is a great tool to track and manage people in a professional service environment like management consulting. This system is easy to set up, easy to understand and should easily suit the needs of smaller and medium sized firms. It may be less appropriate for firms that rely very heavily on project management through another system (like MS Project) or firms that rely very heavily on a sales pipeline tracking system. While still very much possible to use, you would (I believe) have to do some re-keying between systems

Workzone eliminates confusion and ensures that the team uses the latest version of files by organizing these files and adding version numbers as files are being revised. The team can share these files with other team members or with clients and even set file permissions to ensure individuals get access to those files that are only appropriate to them and avoid confidential information getting into the wrong hands. The system notifies the users of the progress of their tasks, comments or calendar events through alerts.

Incentivized

• Manage large portfolios with thousands of projects.
• Roll up financials across strategic hierarchy for projects around the world.
• Manage access in multiple ways so we can set up each user/role with just the right permissions.
• Support a variety of reporting and analytics methods.

Incentivized

• Projector is a very well designed tool for project management. It has allowed us to eliminate a number of auxiliary tools for project timelines and WBS for the vast majority of our projects.
• Time and expense entry is intuitive and quick for our staff.
• Our forecasting and resource management capability has improved greatly with Projector and allows us to grow our team efficiently with minimal additional administrative burden.
• Reporting is extremely robust. It does require some time to really get a handle on the full functionality of the reporting tool, but once you do, you can get almost any kind of report you want out of the system!

• WorkZone is good at basic project management like scheduling and time management.
• The software can be set to send you a daily email with the list of the tasks that you need to get done for that day.
• Workzone allows the admin for the account to pick and choose which clients/projects can be seen by each person with an account, which allows each user to focus on the projects that they are involved in without being distracted by other things.

Incentivized

• Capturing lower-level detailed expenditures within a project so that financial screens can show the details of the roll-up.
• Reporting flexibility so that end users can create their own quick ad hoc reports for analysis.
• Capturing matrixed skills on resources to ensure staffing is adequate and better align demand to supply.

Incentivized

• Release management process needs to be improved. Currently no facility is provided to test the impact of new releases in a sand-box. This introduces business risk if there are interfaces into Projector PSA as part of it's use in the business.

• One of the reasons we left WorkZone was due to how videos/roughs were presented. While WorkZone does allow for a customizable and professional, clean looking interface; it did not offer everything we needed when it came to cross platform integration.
• WorkZone was also a little more pricy compared to a few competitors. WorkZone is worth the price and we loved using it, but a competitor offered an added feature that WorkZone does not offer that tipped the scales.
• There is no 'library'. As an AD Agency, we have worked on a lot of different spots for a lot of different clients. WorkZone did not offer a comprehensive library for us to upload content and use for presentations purposes. If WorkZone does add this feature later on down the road, it would be a great improvement and we would give serious thought about switching back.

We have been a Planview customer since 1999 and have seen it grow and mature as a tool. We have looked at other tools and have found that PV continues to meet our needs and is easy for our resources to use. They work to stay up on the project management industry and the direction it is going, keep on on current technology so that we can work more effectively, provide excellent customer support and have great pricing for what they offer. We can purchase only the modules we need versus buying a tool where we would only use a portion of the functionality.

We have been using this tool for a year now and find our use of it continually evolves and broadens. We are also very excited about the overhaul that's under way and feel many of the improvements being put in place will help make us that much more effective and efficient. The Projector team is also very responsive and collaborative in terms of user feedback and improvement suggestions, which helps us know they will work hard to help us get what we need out of the tool.

Because of time constraints, our team hasn't been able to fully implement and change our existing processes. If we can get our templates set up and maybe some better export options figured out, I think it'll be a no-brainer to renew, but until then it maybe be difficult to financially justify something we're only partially using.

Perfect tool for planning resource time management. Giving flexibility with ease in uptodate . Team collabration . Team aligment. Top management aligment. Close the project with feed back . Team aligment. Expert contribution in task . Task management easy for project manager . Nice tool to have for project manager. Cost contol & project management is very easy with Planview

Incentivized

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

WorkZone was very easy to learn, especially for the members of our team who were not as technology-savvy. WorkZone offered unlimited training as well, making it easy to transition new team members to the program, as we were a startup organization consistently adding new team members.

We are long time Planview users and its availability is only limited to our internal SLAs for nightly backups. I have never experienced any unexpected or prolonged software downtime from Planview itself.

In 5 years of use we have never experienced an unscheduled outage.

Throughout the use of the WorkZone software, we never had a issue with it being unavailable. This is important, considering we wanted to access our projects and see our progress at any moment. WorkZone was always available and made constant supervision of tasks and goals easy; no excuses for not checking in on the status of a project.

There are occasions when the system is a bit sluggish. However, it may not always be on the Planview side. We are investing in better tools to monitor our network performance, which will help us diagnose issues more effectively in the future.

Incentivized

I have zero complaints about the performance of WorkZone; for our organization's needs, it was a perfect tool for keeping track of various responsibilities and tasks. We never experienced a lag or down-time when using the software, and the simple interface made things exactly that from our end...simple. WorkZone is a fantastic tool for work management that never fails to perform, in my experience.

Going through proper channels of support is fine for minor to moderate issues. However, lately the critical issues that arise have been frequent and the standard support cases do not always seem to relay just how critical these issues are and we have to utilize our customer rep to help escalate. Fortunate to have that escalation method.

Incentivized

The team at WorkZone is incredibly helpful and very willing to lend support when they can. Our team was constantly growing, and our new team members needed training every time someone cam on board. The WorkZone support staff was more than willing to ensure our new team members were completely comfortable using the software and set up for success.

Generally good. Sometimes, users are a bit overwhelmed, and it takes multiple sessions for them to get the hang of it.

Incentivized

The WorkZone trainers are wonderful! They offered us unlimited over-the-phone and online support, and the trainings were always informative. The WorkZone support team was willing to answer multiple questions and review sections of the training if need be. They were always accommodating, and trainings were scheduled very quickly for when our team needed them!

Always have a pre-implementation meeting or conference call with Planview to ensure all are on the same page, disclosure of all and any customization (including reports) and plan for support after implementation of a specified amount of time with the assigned implementation resource. And document everything

Implementation of WorkZone was very easy. We simply log into a portal online and begin to set up our projects. Access codes were sent very quickly to our team, so there was practically no delay once we signed the contract for our subscription. Training was scheduled quickly and was very helpful, especially as new team members joined our organization.

We are currently using Planview AgilePlace. Also we use Tasktop Hub for integrating with other applications within the organization. We would like to use ProjectPlace which is integrated with Planview Portfolios in the future.

Incentivized

We did pursue Quick Arrow another tool that was similar. We found that be in inflexible in use. Projector allows a lot of flexibility in setup. Our organization has very specific business processes and we were able to set up Projector to work with those processes. Several other systems we tried were not as flexible in allowing set up to our needs.

I selected WorkZone based on several criteria: 1. It is web based 2. It has more robust reporting capabilities 3. the price was right 4. It was easy to use and easy to train people 5. Timelines are easy to update.

Did not help purchase product.

Incentivized

We are constantly growing and expanding. It is challenging to accommodate different user needs, but the system does provide means of doing that as we desire.

Incentivized

We are a small organization, so the need to expand our use of WorkZone was limited. I only rate it below a 10 simply because I do not have much experience with the scaleability of the product. From the previews and training sessions, it does seem that the software can easily be adjusted to accommodate a growing workload; something we may use in future, just not at this point in our organization's development.

some resources were great, but too much on their plates to be available

Incentivized

• The positive impact is the ability to manage our projects enterprise wide.
• Managing and reporting on projects and programs via portfolios makes it easy to identify troubled projects/programs that need immediate attention.
• The negative is that pushing too much change too quickly is hard for us. We need to get our users focused on the basics of PM before we can adopt everything else. We need to introduce change to different companies based on their maturity level. Too much change too quickly is not always beneficial. We need to focus on core competencies.

Incentivized

• Even in the small time that I stayed to see Projector PSA reporting I saw ROI projections become more realistic. There was real data to analyze that proved we were spending way too much and charging way too less on some projects.
• Although employees were not used at entering their hours, this single reporting improved operations management and validated employees concerns that more people were needed to manage workload
• Project proposals were more realistic because they were driven by real data.
• Decision making overall for the department became more efficient and effective

Incentivized

• It has positively affected our workflow - keeping projects moving without requiring constant back and forth of emails and other communications.
• It has helped our team to avoid missing crucial steps in project and client management.
• We are definitely more efficient when WorkZone is being used and updated properly!

Incentivized