Item: Planview Portfolios
Rating: 9
Author: Jason Przybycien

Overall Satisfaction with Planview Portfolios

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Portfolios for capital portfolio optimization, reporting and analytics, and enterprise project and portfolio management. We integrate it with our ERP systems and with Planview AgilePlace and Projectplace for multiple use cases/processes.

Pros and Cons

Pros

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.

Cons

ODATA is powerful but complex to customize, and it is hard to track query changes (who changes what when).
The user interface defaults to the last open portfolio, which can waste a lot of time loading a large portfolio if that's not what you want now.
Job management logs need better error messages to diagnose the issues.

Return on Investment

During multiple market downturns, Portfolios helped us to track the priority of major projects and provided a central source of truth to coordinate stopping projects to preserve cash.
Portfolios have allowed us to decommission several other in-house solutions - a custom Sharepoint database of small cost-saving projects and a legacy Changepoint time tracker.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Project

Portfolios have better integration with reporting and other systems vs. MS Project.

Key Insights

Do you think Planview Portfolios delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Planview Portfolios's feature set?

Yes

Did Planview Portfolios live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Planview Portfolios go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Planview Portfolios again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Powerpoint, Planview AgilePlace, Microsoft Power BI, Snagit

Likelihood to Recommend

Portfolios are great for managing large portfolios of projects, especially projects with detailed schedules and dependencies. I would not recommend it for smaller projects due to the amount of required setup. Also, it's not an ERP system- the accounts are only summaries of expenses.

Using Planview Portfolios

Users and Roles

10000 - Capital and Expense Project Management, Payroll.

Support Headcount Required

10 - Project Management, Change Management, Data Analytics, Integrations, Database Administration, Service Management.

Business Processes Supported

Capital Project and Portfolio Management.
IT Costing.
Lean Project Execution.

Innovative Uses

10-year capital budget forecasting.
Project efficiency analytics (time and money).
Multi-tier strategic operationalization.

Future Planned Uses

AI-assisted portfolio management.
Adoption of Agile methodologies outside IT.
Project workforce optimization.

Likelihood to Renew

Portfolios are useful enterprise solutions for new and old use cases. They have robust reporting capabilities and many opportunities to customize the functions without additional costs. Although some desired features are still in development, and the reporting infrastructure has some issues, Portfolios continue to offer more capabilities than we can take advantage of at any time.

Evaluating Planview Portfolios and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Scalability
Integration with Other Systems

We chose Planview around 2018 because we had a multi-year change management plan for capital management best practices, including the deployment of enterprise stage gate and portfolio management practices. I wasn't involved in the solution selection, but Portfolios exceeded the other options at the time.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I was not involved in the selection. But if I had to do it today, I would focus on the ease of customization without additional cost, the vendor's availability to support ongoing change management in the human dimension of processes that use the system, and the modernity of the reporting infrastructure.

Planview Portfolios Implementation

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Don't know

Configuring Planview Portfolios

Product Configurability

It is possibly too complex. Much of the capability is needed, but I feel they created many reporting options (ODATA, Data Mart, APIs, columnar data models, Fasttrack tiles, custom tiles) without fully optimizing them. This makes it hard to select solutions confidently. Also, because projects retain older workflows as the workflows (lifecycles) evolve, you have to live with the decisions you made months ago when you knew a less optimal way to configure them.

Configuration Lessons

Go slow. Do not turn on every feature of the system at once. Ensure you fully understand how Planview intended that part of the system to work and its pros and cons. And keep customizations to a minimum. That way, you will make the most of the capabilities as intended and have less de-customization work down the road as you move toward industry-standard best practices or the vendor improves on existing capabilities.

UI Customization

Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - We have built several screens, lifecycles, and menus. This is pretty easy to do by creating custom fields, adding them in a WYSIWYG fashion, and scripting the behavior of popups. We have also set the menu option and column visibility by user role and project type. In our experience, change management (coordinating with other teams and users) sets the pace. Technical development can be rapid.

Extensibility and Customization

No - we have not done any custom code

Planview Portfolios Support

Support Rating

Our customer service team responds well, but technical support leaves something to be desired. We do not frequently get a fast response, no matter the priority of the case. Some issues—such as ongoing ODATA reporting failures—remain a mystery after months of issues, tickets, and meetings.

Planview Portfolios Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team Kept well informed Immediate help available	Poor followup Escalation required Need to explain problems multiple times Support doesn't seem to care Slow Initial Response

Premium Support

We added the services of a TAM and Analytics Assurance, which improved our overall experience. It gave us another person to actively monitor our tickets, escalate issues, and liaise with technical folks at Planview. Having them did not resolve all our issues, but it made the process more transparent and satisfying.

Bug Resolution

Yes - Some yes, some no. We will see bugs fixed in the next monthly update. But we have seen other bugs deemed "not a priority," in which case they were never addressed. In the latter case, it was a minor bug, and the customer tolerated a workaround while waiting for the permanent fix. After over a year, Planview closed the case.

Exceptional Examples of Planview Portfolios Support

Thanks to relationships built with the product team by our customer support staff, we have had the opportunity to articulate our issues and our planned future use of the system. We have had more success influencing the features of Projectplace. Still, we have also seen Planview working on the ODATA capabilities (developing a replica, improving refresh reliability, and working toward change data capture) thanks to our ongoing feedback.

Using Planview Portfolios

Usability

Portfolios can accommodate nearly any kind of project, portfolio, or other work. It supports relating the work to strategy and outcomes (i.e., products) and has lots of options for customizing the workflows of work and changes/risks/issues. Not to mention, you can customize the user experience by role, with very granular permissions and multiple custom reporting tile options. With a decent level of expertise, you can craft and support various user interface experiences appropriate to their role and knowledge, and that should only grow as Planview. I and Copilot roll out.