Planview Enterprise One: yep, it's worth it!
April 19, 2019
Planview Enterprise One: yep, it's worth it!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Portfolio and Resource Management (formerly Planview Enterprise)
Overall Satisfaction with Planview Enterprise One (formerly Planview Enterprise and Troux)
Planview Enterprise One is being used for project, portfolio and resource management for IT. The users are strictly within IT, but resources managed within include all of IT plus the business resources that participate in and contribute to projects. It serves as our primary system of record for all IT project work and primarily addresses the historical problem of the organization taking on too much work without taking into account the resources required to do the work. By availing capacity and utilization data captured in PVE, the organization is better informed, makes smarter decisions and focuses on the most critical strategic projects and outcomes.
- Out of the box analytics. Canned, but modestly configurable reports that provide quick insights to project and resource performance.
- Flexible configuration enables resource management at a macro or micro level.
- Modeling (what-if). I can create projects, load with resources and quickly stack it against our existing portfolios to identify conflicts and optimize scheduling.
- Steep learning curve. PVE1 is far from intuitive. Training and consistent usage is key to adoption and good data.
- Scope. PVE1 is infinitely configurable and scalable, and users commonly get lost in the navigation and myriad nuances of WRM.
- The WRM (work breakdown structure/Gannt) is effective, but is overwrought with varied column sets, wonky drag-n-drop, is saddled with a progression engine that does more harm than good and behaves like another app entirely. I would say this above all else requires work to make it more intuitive, to work more like MS Project, and feel more integrated to the application itself.
- It has improved Resource Management. We now consistently represent resource available-to-promise against operational commitments, other projects, q-end commitments, vacations, etc.
- It has improved our quality of forecasting. We now model project changes and future requests against available time and resources ("what-if" scenarios).
- It has improved our strategic focus. We now manage our projects from a program/portfolio point of view to ensure we are resourcing company strategic initiatives.
HP PPM and MS Project Server were past predecessors to PVE1, and both fraught with misconfiguration, lack of top-down support, and neither had effective resource management capabilities. We sort of backed-into PVE1, as we were initially entrenched with Projectplace. As luck would have it, Planview acquired Projectplace, and just happened to be the market leader in PPM when we set out to deploy. The fact that I was able to integrate work plans between the platforms sealed the deal for us.
We leveraged Planview's professional services for configuration and enablement. I cannot imagine taking on a deployment of PVE1 or anything like it without the use of such services. The engagement included a team of three, each specializing in areas of service, and operated from a well-practiced process. This most certainly accelerated our time to value.
We have not implemented the CTM module, but we would like to.
Planview Enterprise One is not a collaboration tool. Period. While it does have a content leading./sharing capability, there is no collaborative, social aspect to the service whatsoever. Nor should it. It does avail the data necessary to view projects and resources across the enterprise, but that's the extent of it. Cross or inter-department collaboration is best left to purpose-built offerings like Projectplace, Jira, etc.
- We'd very much like to deploy the CTM module and gain the additional insights resulting from that.
- We'd also like to see PVE's use extended to the entire enterprise (beyond IT), and to further leverage the powerful financial management capabilities of the service.