Planview Enterprise - a commited relationship that goes both ways
Modules Used
- Portfolio and Resource Management (formerly Planview Enterprise)
Overall Satisfaction with Planview Enterprise
Planview Enterprise is used by our IT organization to track total project costs and manage project budgets, schedules and resources. In addition IT uses it for resource utilization and resource capacity planning. IT also uses it for program management and is in the early stages of investment planning. Non-project work is also tracked in Planview and 90% of resources report time.
Planview Enterprise is also used in our product areas. We have Product Management groups who have project managers that manage the product delivery schedules for various product lines. However in these organizations, only the project managers themselves track time to high-level budgets.
Our product areas use the Request module for a process called "Customer Special Requests". These involve a sophisticated lifecycle that notifies users and allows them to vote on whether their area can meet the requirements of a special request. The requester then reviews the responses and determines whether the request can be delivered. In some areas this request is then dispatched into a work and other areas it is not.
The Visual Merchandising Organizations use Planview for project intake via the Request tab where Lifecycles notify users by email of next steps needed in the approval process. These request are then dispatched into work.
- We have been able to use the Request process and Lifecycle email notification to streamline and capture a flow of work that was previously undocumented. These "Customer Special Requests" were known to cause disruption to normal work flow, but the volume was unknown. They can now be reported and decisions to say "no" be more easily be justified.
- We use the Planview's budget module to capture all IT project costs. We then use this data monthly and quarterly to review our progress towards spending the annual budget and make adjustments to priorities as needed to do the right work with the available people and funds.
- We utilize IT project time reporting to enable capitalization of software development to improve Hallmark's cost structure.
- In our Hallmark Digital IT group we are able to use project budgets and schedules to create program roadmaps for upper management to do monthly status reviews.
- Our PMs still struggle to use Planview to run their day to day schedule. We have trained them on the approach of using Resource Reservations at the project level coupled with Authorization to detail tasks to enable more accurate resource utilization coupled with meaningful dates on activities.
- The PMs often complain that they cannot easily see how they originally planned the work and that base-lining did not meet that need. However, with the newly rolled out ability to see Expired Effort and Approved effort, I think this deficiency may be greatly improved.
- The Request tab has not yet been improved the way the Work tab has. You cannot bring multi-select attributes into the column set nor update a structure in a column set, but must open the detail screen for both these tasks.
- Currently it is very cumbersome, when working with programs in the Strategy tab, to remember to load the project budgets each time. These appears to be addressed however when you upgrade to version 12.
- The Strategy tab is difficult to use when managing budgets that cross years. We have on-going "Programs" that represent our infrastructure and small enhancement work that continue to show completed projects from previous years unless we take the time to un-associate them. In addition, currently a column set must be create for each year that needs to be viewed.
- Planview does need to improve their quality control. I think the challenge comes with the versatility of the tool and the need to test many different use cases. But if you move to a new version within a couple months of its release you need to plan extra time for testing and resolving incidents.
- I don't have access to those numbers at this time. We've had Planview since 2003, so to speak to ROI impact before and after would be difficult.