OpenText Project and Portfolio Management Reviews

As an administrator in our organization, I use it for provisioning, configuring different request types, workflows, and making adjustments therein; things on the higher-end side. 

As an organization, we use it for project management and defect tracking. 

We also use it for time tracking. That's one of the reasons we rolled it out to the cloud. We are also starting to get into program and portfolio management, which are things we hadn't done in the past.

The first advantage is that it helped us get away from using spreadsheets for time sheets. Also, many of our request processes that used to be paper-based have now been automated. We're also able to automate notifications to users to take away a lot of the busy work that teams were having to do to communicate with each other. And it has definitely helped our cross-team coordination and the handoffs that we have within our processes. It has also assisted with bottlenecking.

In addition, we have an integration with our help desk that allows tickets to be processed on the front end and in PPM in a much easier way than they would be on the help desk side and it allows notifications and SOAP messages to go back and forth between the applications. As a result, it has really streamlined our defect tracking process, and we're really hoping to see the same as we roll out into the future with the program and portfolio management aspects that are new to us.

On top of that, at a high level, it enables us to translate strategic plans into actionable investment strategies. We have our KPIs and business strategies in PPM and that's the way that management moves forward with our portfolios and programs. They are only willing to move forward with projects that line up with our strategic plans. The solution has definitely helped us flush that out. It gives us a place where everybody can see those things and be aware of what our business strategies are. Within our projects, we're able to see the strategies and end goals that are important to the organization. We can actually track which business objectives different projects are adhering to. That's a really cool feature that our management likes.

It gives me one place where I can do pretty much everything. If there is a project or portfolio, or even a request that I'm working on, I have the ability to charge time to each of them in PPM, instead of going through different systems. Even though we have the ability to integrate with Microsoft Project, I really like that PPM offers a one-stop-shop for everything. It saves a lot of time because I'm not going between different places or using paper forms to get information to management.

With PPM allowing us to streamline processes, get them all in one place, and automate handovers and notifications, it saves us between 15 and 20 hours a week on things that we would have otherwise had to do ourselves in emails and other types of coordination. It's made our processes a lot faster.

I like the ease of customization from an admin perspective. I'm really excited about some of the things that are coming in version 10.0.3 as far as what admins are able to do. 

I also really like how the program portfolio and project management roll up into each other. That's going to be a really good feature for our organization because we have a lot of things that are related, and it's nice to have things under one umbrella where we can go back to them. 

I also like the fact that it's not very difficult to integrate with other applications, as long as you have the right people with the right skill sets on board. I have seen us integrate with a couple of other cloud solutions and that was done fairly quickly. It's the ease of use and the ability to customize PPM that really work in our favor.

Another useful aspect is that the solution gives us a single place where teams can track and measure progress towards their goals. That it is very important from an upper management perspective. Part of the reason that they're using the application is to have a cohesive place for tracking business strategies and organizational goals, and to only implement projects that line up with them.

We have been asking for some enhancements in the domain management module. There are things that we have to ask about, whether they're even possible to implement, but they're more cosmetic, look-and-feel issues, rather than functionality.

We have been using Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) since 2007. We upgraded it over time but, in 2020, we finally migrated to the cloud.

We had a couple of issues with stability or performance degradation about a year ago, around the time of the initial rollout. Since then, we've only had two unexpected outages that were quickly resolved. 

Stability-wise, it's okay. When we were on-premises, we were just on Windows boxes and every month we would have some sort of performance degradation and we would need to clear the cache and restart the app servers, et cetera. We haven't had to do that as often. We're at least 75 percent more stable than we were before.

It's very scalable. That's one of the things that I like about it. You can change it and move around and make it work for you.

We have over 2,500 users.

I expect our usage will increase. Right now, it's being used by all of our IT department. Our usage has already increased from when we initially rolled it out. Prior to us moving to the cloud solution, it was used by about half of our organization that was focused on our eligibility systems. Then we opened it up to our IT business areas to use for time tracking and now it has been rolled out to the entire IT department. As we keep growing and continue to use the tool, we'll find more uses for it and that will definitely increase the number of users.

They have really good technical support. There hasn't been a question that I've asked or posted to our technical support team that hasn't been answered or addressed in some way.

They're doing a really good job with the application overall. It can't be too rigid to the point that you can't make it work for your organization. But they also have to be able to control the changes that go into it. The vendor has been prioritizing deployment of enhancement requests that have been voted on, and the speed at which they have released them has been gotten a lot faster. It fits how fast we need to move and how fast we actually need to make changes.

They're doing a really good job of innovating and updating features in PPM. That process used to be a little slower, but now it seems that when an enhancement request is prioritized or a hotfix is needed, they're right on it. We're getting fixes fairly fast, before the month is over.

Positive

We've always used PPM. We've used different versions and seen it grow up.

We were migrating from an on-premise solution to the cloud so we already had our own instance, obviously. It was a little complex because we already had integrations that needed to remain with us and business processors that would suffer if they had any real downtime. So while it was complex, at the same time, it was very much coordinated by the vendor that we're working with. It was a smoother process than I've seen with other integrations.

We started with training and user stories in April of 2020 and the initial rollout, including an upgrade, was completed around November 1st, 2020. We then had three more phases in the project. We initially rolled out resource management. Then we deployed project management, financial management, and finally program management. Now, we're working on custom reports. By the time we're completely done with the implementation, it will be November of 2022.

We also have an upgrade coming up in September. We deploy upgrades or updates to objects in the tool. We don't use deployment manager though, we just use the built-in deployment package methodology.

It's private, so it has to go through our DMZ. We have a private cloud, but we share data space on the Micro Focus side and we're partitioned off from anyone else.

We're working with Carahsoft as well as the Micro Focus professional services and SaaS teams.

They're very good at what they do. However, with the size of the project and the pace at which we were moving, it would have been better if, perhaps, there were better knowledge transfer and more focus on making sure that we understood all of the ins and outs, as opposed to just rolling forward and meeting timelines. 

There were little things that should have been completed by the vendor, things that we only found after the fact when we were already on another phase of the project. With a project this large, it's easy to lose track of small details. 

Other than that, it hasn't been a bad experience. There have been some hiccups along the way, but that's to be expected.

The jury is still out on whether it will help accelerate our delivery. We're still rolling it out. Having used it earlier on, I believe it will, but I'd really like to see the overall impact once this project is firmly nestled into the ground and we're no longer under the vendor's launching period.

Upper management looked at other solutions before they went ahead with PPM. Prior to using PPM, we had users who were using Salesforce and PMRS and a couple of other applications, but we consolidated all of those solutions and users into PPM.

I've had several other groups come to me about using PPM and the ability to customize it and make it work for them could make it a great solution, depending on what their processes are. I normally push them towards it, if they're looking to automate and get away from any kind of paper-based processes, or to get them out of using multiple systems.

PPM is a great tool, but it's like exercise or eating: You get out of it what you put into it. There's a fine level of detail that you could put into it that can make the solution really work for you. If you're not going to apply that, you're not going to get the most viable solution. PPM is one of those tools where more is better, in the beginning, to allow you to do less once you have everything implemented.

Neutral

I have been a developer using this tool since the beginning, working for various clients. All my clients have used all the modules of this product for project management.

PPM helps an organization translate strategic plans into actionable investment strategies. It gives you the correct current picture of how the investments are being utilized and what their current state is. We are looking for the budget against which the money is invested and the actual cost involved. It gives you an end-to-end picture of that and we are happy with that feature.

It has helped us in tracking where money has been spent and the areas where it has not been accurately spent, so we know in which areas improvement is needed.

It gives us the flexibility to set our own goals, business objectives, et cetera, and then align our portfolio or projects along with them. It gives us what we need. That is very important.

It's a very detailed tool. As far as an enterprise is concerned, it gives you the flexibility to manage everything: portfolios, projects, finances, proposals, resources, and time. It gives you everything, including reporting. It takes care of even the minor details that need to be captured. The project management functionality is configured really well within the tool. That stands out.

Also, the portfolio management dashboard for tracking objectives and key metrics is important. Every project and portfolio is categorized under business objectives.

The ability to integrate Agile tools and synchronize the execution layer back into PPM was offered in the product, but initially, that capability was not very good. I had worked with Micro Focus and got a lot of things fixed. In its current state it has improved a lot, but it is not quite there. There is still a lot of improvement needed. The set of people who are actually using it is quite small, frankly. Everything in this context takes place within Jira, for us, and not in PPM.

And when it comes to PPM's built-in capabilities to support Lean Portfolio Management and be aligned to Scaled Agile Framework initiatives I can't comment, other than to say that those areas are still evolving in PPM. It has a long way to go.

I would also like to see improvement in PPM's reporting and alerts. PPM has reporting capabilities, including HTML reports and portlets. But a majority of clients will build their own reporting platforms, or they will use external reporting platforms like Tableau and QlikView. I would really like the reporting to improve a lot in PPM, especially the HTML reports and the ability to use some of the more recent tools, like Python and React.

They could also offer us templates. The developers are mostly proficient in the PPM tool itself, but they're not hardcore UI developers. So clients usually use those external reporting tools and they hire resources who have expertise with those tools. What if Micro Focus were to create reporting templates? They have them in a few areas, but not in a significant way. If they could offer good or decent templates in the areas of JSP reports and portlets, it would help a lot. The client would use PPM itself for reporting rather than utilizing external tools.

This tool has undergone multiple acquisitions. Earlier, it was Mercury ITG. I have been using it for 14 and a half years.

It's not very stable. First of all, there are quite a few defects in this tool. That makes life a little difficult for us. You have to do a lot of follow-up with Micro Focus that something is, indeed, a defect and then get a hotfix out of them. That takes some time. 

And as far as performance is concerned of the tool overall, it is alright, but it is not great. Some of the data elements will take quite some time to load. Performance improvement is needed.

It's scalable.

I work for various clients. Some of them have a user base of 20,000, and for some it is 30,000. But the admin portion or the developer portion of it would have 10 or 15 people at most. The largest percentage of users is actually the timesheet users, with 5,000 users in project management.

We use all the modules of PPM. We try to use almost all its features. Portfolio management is the space where we are trying to consume all of its offered features, slowly. We are trying to have more and more users adopt it. We are trying to increase its scope.

Micro Focus is adding features to PPM that they feel are important to future versions. But when, as clients, we try to tell them that they should also work on XYZ enhancements, they always come up with the answer that their backlog is full and they cannot tell us when our enhancements will be implemented. They do come up with some new features, but they're quite slow in incorporating the enhancements requested by clients.

There have been a lot of improvements in the space of portfolio management, in the space of integrations with external tools, for example. There have been improvements in the reporting capabilities of PPM as well. In the initial days, it was just the JSP reports or the HTML reports or types of portlets. But over the years they have included Excel and some other dashboards.

Their updated features and innovations are important. Even though we are not very satisfied with some of the functionality, the kinds of UI improvements and features they have added have helped us carry on with the tool.

The technical support for the solution is average.

They take a lot of time in understanding an issue, even though they're the technical support team. They're supposed to be knowledgeable about the product, but when you try to explain an issue to them, half of the time they don't understand. When they do understand the issue, they don't accept it as a defect. They say that it is as-designed within the product, which is completely foolish. Even a third party would agree that it is a defect. But the technical support team will quarrel a lot and say that it is not a defect; that it has to be an enhancement. That sometimes feels stupid. And getting a fix takes quite a bit of time.

As far as upgrades are concerned, for example, I'm working on version 9.65. If I have to upgrade to version 10, I can tell you that whenever that upgrade happens I will easily be able to find out at least seven to 10 defects in the new version. It is good that they come up with new features, but I would like them to do the testing of that version a little bit more seriously.

Neutral

Along with PPM, we have been using Jira. The Agile methodology came into the market maybe six years or seven years ago and recently started catching up. That's when people started using Agile tools like Jira along with PPM, because what PPM offers, Jira doesn't offer, and what Jira offers, PPM is not quite there.

In a generic way, the initial setup is complex, but that is because it gives you granular-level functionalities. That is the reason it would be a little difficult for some people. But Micro Focus gives adequate support in doing the setup, so it is manageable. 

The setup takes weeks. It's a very lengthy process.

PPM provides a single place where teams can track and measure progress toward their goals, in a way, but not as well as Jira. A consolidated view is important and we use PPM as well as Jira. If we could use just one tool, that would be the best situation for every company. Why would a company use multiple tools if it doesn't have to? If PPM could offer functionalities like Jira has, that would be the best.

We use PPM's portfolio management, but we don't use all its features, like maintaining the Epics, Portfolio Backlog, and Kanban boards. Those are maintained in Jira. It comes down to the functionality offered by these two applications. The portfolio management abilities in PPM have recently been improved, but are not as good as Jira's.

It's mostly Jira that helps us in the area of expediting delivery. As far as execution is concerned, that part is managed by Jira, for us. But as far as the management side is concerned, like what a project is all about, who is working on it, and what the various deliverables are that need to be worked upon, those things are done in PPM.

I believe most clients would actually prefer Jira rather than PPM.

Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management offers great functionality in the project management space and other end-to-end functionality. Whatever you, as an organization, need for the implementation of project management, PPM offers it, so go ahead and use this tool.

But as far as reporting is concerned, implementing project management is not sufficient, you will have to report the data from it to senior management. Don't rely on PPM for reporting. You will have to come up with an external tool or some other platform to build reports on.

I use the tool for resource and financial management. 

The solution helps with tech management. It has a work plan similar to Microsoft Project for tracking progress anywhere. It can synchronize with Microsoft Projects for updating and rebooting tasks. They can also assign tasks to team members who can update progress using timesheets without a sheet. 

It includes a Project dashboard for managing multiple projects simultaneously and program management for overseeing groups of projects. It offers various data metrics. It has project entities for controlling risks, issues, and protections. It can calculate costs based on resource tasks and compare actual and planned costs.

The tool has features for scenario comparison, allowing us to optimize scenarios based on various factors. Additionally, we can manually optimize by managing resource availability, creating staffing profiles, and making payments to optimize in any situation.

OpenText Project and Portfolio Management should move their database from Oracle. 

I have been working with the product for ten years. 

We contacted support as per the SLA, and it is not quite good. 

Neutral

Compared to other products, the solution is easy to use, maybe because of the user interface. It is better in terms of features, configuration, and flexibility.

The tool's deployment is easy. We have to configure the process to align with our organization, input the resources, input the organization hierarchy, and input the group information. Everything should be done in a week.

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten. 

We have activated multiple modules of the solution, such as Demand Management, Resource Management, Time Management, and Project Management. We have done some customizations on the workflows for all of the modules.

Project and Portfolio Management has helped us save on resources and time. For example, we had an old solution for demand management in which we need to get approvals via email. But with the Demand Management module in PPM, we have all approvals in the system itself. Over the course of a week, it saves us two working days or about 15 hours. It used to take a lot of time to get approvals through email and on paper.

Overall, it has helped accelerate our organization's delivery by up to 10 percent.

The ease of customization of the tool means I can support multiple departments in our company.

Our users find it easy to use the service and the forms. And the Project Management module is one of the best modules that they work on.

It is very important that the platform gives us a single place where we can measure progress toward goals, as we have weekly meetings with the CTO. We present these consolidated overviews and dashboards to him so that he has an overview of all the projects and can see the status of all the problems that we have and we are working on.

We are using the Financial Management module for projects and also demands and proposals and it is sufficient. But there are some limitations when it comes to attaching receipts. For example, if we are going to buy some non-labor-related assets such as hardware, we are not able to attach the receipts in the Financial Management module in version 9.41. I don't know if they may have made some modifications to this in later versions.

I would also like to see additional reports for capacity in the Resource Management module.

I have been using Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management for three years.

This is one of the most stable products from Micro Focus and one of the most excellent products we have.

The scalability has been good so far. We haven't had any issues with it. We have about 200 users who use it for project management, timesheets, and some business resources.

We are using version 9.41 of PPM, but we are working on building our roadmap to upgrade to the next one. We are planning to have multiple instances of the platform, so we are investing in the product. But up until now, we have only been using one instance.

We are going to discover what Micro Focus' ability is to add and update features in the new version. But what we have seen from the demos is that they have added many valuable features for resource management and financial management and KPIs.

We had a support case with them a long time ago and our experience with them was good.

Positive

Before we had Micro Focus PPM, we used Microsoft Project Professional and we had a lot of constraints regarding resource management. It only gave us a project management module, it didn't have other types of management or the ability to implement a lot of customization.

Our management team wanted to link demand management and project management, meaning once we had a proposal or a demand, and it became a project, they needed a link between those two modules in one system. So they decided to move to Micro Focus PPM. We have removed the Microsoft solution from the environment.

The initial setup was straightforward. The actual work of the installation took just one day.

It doesn't need much maintenance. We don't need to manage it a lot.

We used a Micro Focus partner. Our experience with them was more than excellent. They were very supportive.

We have integrated the solution with Jira and it was easy to do and use the two platforms. We have also integrated it with Micro Focus ALM for application life cycle management and that was easy as well. We are new to the Agile process so we're still in the testing phase of this transformation. But management has embraced it.

My advice is to build your procedures and workflows well from day one so that you don't face any issues with the modules. Changes in the workflows take time.

We don't use Micro Focus PPM, but we implement it for our clients. It is primarily used for project management, but some of my customers use it to manage sales processes and service requests. 

Micro Focus PPM helps our customers translate plans into strategic investments. It enables clients to anticipate their needs and mitigate risks. We configure PPM for clients to help them upgrade their workflows and manage their risks. Our customers benefit the most by centralizing their processes. Previously, they did everything using Excel or something like SharePoint. 

Micro Focus PPM is flexible and easy to use. It's simple to customize and configure workflows. Micro Focus provides a single place where teams can track and measure progress toward their goals.

It's easy to integrate Micro Focus PPM and synchronize it with our client's systems. PPM has an API for everything, so we can integrate it with whatever tool we want. I also like the Lean Portfolio Management tool.

Micro Focus PPM should be less dependent on coding. It could also benefit from some updates to the software architecture. These have been on the roadmap for years now, but they haven't been released. 

I have used Micro Focus PPM for ten years.

Micro Focus PPM is highly stable. 

Micro Focus PPM is scalable. My largest customer has more than 300 users. 

I rate Micro Focus support a three out of ten. The support for PPM isn't very good. We can resolve most of the common issues on our own because we have experience, but we need help with difficult cases.  

Negative

I worked with several project management solutions. Typically, Micro Focus is an added tool, not a replacement for an existing product. For example, many of my customers were doing project management using Excel spreadsheets before they adopted PPM, so they had no project management tool in the beginning.

Setting up Micro Focus PPM is somewhat complex. It's in the middle. If you're installing it by yourself and you're completely new to the product, you should take the time to read the manual. It takes about two hours for an experienced person to deploy. 

A large organization will find Micro Focus PPM affordable, but it may be a bit costly for a small or medium-sized company. The license is based on the number of users. 

I rate Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management a seven out of ten. Every organization needs a project management tool. However, you should apply a cost-benefit analysis before adopting any product. Micro Focus PPM might be too expensive for some organizations, but it's flexible and offers customized hybrid configurations. 

The bank purchased PPM in 2016 because our system was out of support. We decommissioned that and switched to Micro Focus PPM. We have the full suite covering project management, work plans, risk management, and project issues. We've done a lot of customization to the bank's requirements.

We work with a PPM vendor partner and their developers. When we want enhancements or new features, we work with them to deploy the changes. We work closely with the developers for preliminary testing and user acceptance testing. After it goes live, we do another round of testing. 

We do a lot of financials as well. When we work with the project managers to manage their resourcing requirements, it's built into the staffing profile of each project record that we load into PPM. They translate to a labor forecast calculation automatically. The project managers can also manage their forecasts so they can manually update them directly into their project records. 

Before Micro Focus PPM, we had three separate systems. One held project information, another held resourcing requirements, and a third managed timesheets. They weren't integrated, and we had to support each system. Now, everything is in one tool, improving visibility and integration. Dashboard reporting is also easier. We have another tool integrated with PPM that extracts the data from it and refreshes the dashboards instantly. 

PPM helps us translate strategic plans into actionable investment strategies because our executive committee uses it in their investment decisions. Information in PPM can be used to decide which initiatives to prioritize and which to delay based on the bank's strategy. It helps them determine which initiatives require more funding and which need to be trimmed down.

We added a new PPM feature in the last year or two. For each initiative or project loaded into PPM, the project managers must raise what we call "value measures." In these metrics, they need to indicate the actual value being delivered. It's mandatory. The value measures are used for a lot of the assessments being done. If someone asks for a certain amount of project funding, the decision-makers can do a cost-benefit analysis. You must demonstrate the project's estimated value when you ask for funding.

Regarding PPM's ability to help us achieve goals, I would rate it a nine out of ten. All the project and portfolio management features are in one tool. It provides real-time information to support decision-making, and it's easy to integrate with other tools. 

At the bank, some delivery teams do agile while others still do the traditional waterfall. PPM is suitable for both methods. PPM has helped us save resources by consolidating teams. Before PPM, we had three teams providing support for three systems. Now we only have one support team for the tool the entire bank uses. 

Planning and budgeting are vital to achieving our organizational goals. It's a ten on a scale of ten. Our leaders are focused on resourcing because they want to use the funding for projects that matter and are aligned with the bank's strategy. They are looking closely at costs and trying to bring the funding asks for our projects down to a certain amount. 

PPM has sped up project delivery because we have a process where everything has to go through checkpoints. The projects that are delivered are those that have been thoroughly vetted. PPM has helped determine which projects will be delivered. 

I like the automated calculations, especially on the resource side. When project managers enter their resource requirements into their staffing profiles, they are automatically translated into labor forecast calculations. PPM automates a significant portion of the forecast calculations. Timesheets are also built-in. We automatically process time sheets and bill them accordingly. 

PPM provides a consolidated view of our teams and their progress toward goals, which is essential. The bank has invested a considerable amount of funds into these projects. The executive committee must have an overview of the value that these projects bring to the banks. They need to ensure that each project is aligned with the bank's strategy and brings value to our customers, stakeholders, or employees.

All the information decision-makers need can be found in PPM. We've integrated PPM data into other tools that provide real-time reporting to create dashboards. The audience for those dashboards is the executive committee. When they need to know what's happening, they have instant visibility. The bank uses information in PPM to decide on which initiatives to prioritize. PPM has several built-in dashboards, but we also build customized ones.

I haven't worked with the Kanban feature, but we use the other portfolio views. It's helpful, especially now that we are driving the portfolio views. Each portfolio manager uses dashboards to manage the collection of projects in their portfolio. There are many dashboards available that I am still unfamiliar with because I don't use all of them. 

The portfolio structure was set up a long time ago, and PPM allows us to have a wide-lens view of our portfolios, and we can drill down into a specific portfolio and see all the objectives within it. And within each goal, we can also drill down to see particular initiatives that belong to the objective. The hierarchy is quite clear. We also have a portfolio to view financials. 

We have "theme backlogs," initiatives that have already been incorporated into the portfolio but are waiting for the funding to be approved. Theme backlogs have their own project information, including staffing profiles, financial summaries, and forecasts. Those are used in decision-making. There's a consistent quarterly review of these backlogs, and the executive committee uses the information inside those backlogs to decide which ones will proceed through to becoming actual themes.

It's easy to integrate agile tools and synchronize the execution layer back into PPM. I work with the support team providing first-level support to all the bank users end to end. When we need changes or a new feature, we raise them within PPM. That's one customization we did. We submitted our internal change requests within PPM and worked closely with the Micro Focus partner vendor, which does much of the development.

We assess which ones we can do, prioritize them, and they roll out the changes within a month or a few days for a minor change. We do a lot of enhancements. There are at least a couple every quarter. The partner vendor quickly deploys changes and new features. It's one of the features we could "sell" to the internal users of the tool. 

We tell them, "If you find something that you think would be useful that isn't in PPM yet, let us know, and we will place a change request." It's one of the most important features because our users are demanding. They want certain features. Micro Focus regularly rolls out significant upgrades and new features, but we don't necessarily use all of them. 

Our boss is satisfied with PPM, and I don't think the bank will replace it with another product soon. It is constantly evolving, and they have been responsive to our customers' feature and enhancement requests. They often come out with features we had never considered, but when they roll them out, we see how useful they are. That's one reason we are staying with PPM. It's adaptable. We're bringing in other departments and customizing it according to their requirements. 

Sometimes features in PPM don't work as expected, or our users request a new feature. Typically, our partner vendor can deploy those changes. But there have been a few instances when we had to raise it with Micro Focus because it's beyond the ability of our partner vendor. When we raise the issue with Micro Focus, it sometimes takes time because it needs support from other customers using PPM, not just our bank. It goes through a voting system. Other customers need to vote for the feature. The features that get the most votes will possibly be added. 

I have been using PPM since 2016, so it has been six years.

After six years of providing end-to-end support to our users, I can say PPM is highly stable. Our vendor partner addresses bugs quickly, and we can discover the cause if there is an outage.

The scalability is excellent. We have at least 10,000 users working with PPM, including employees who use it for timesheets and project managers. We plan to increase usage. For example, only technology teams use PPM for timesheets, but they plan to get the business project staff to use the timesheet features, too. It hasn't been deployed yet, but it's under discussion. The user base will most likely increase. 

I rate Micro Focus support a nine out of ten. The support we receive from Micro Focus and their partner vendor has been immensely helpful. They're highly responsive, and their partner vendor has a high degree of technical expertise. They understand the product. Each time we have a change, they can perform an analysis and provide recommendations.

Positive

We were experts in the old systems, so it was easy to transition to PPM in terms of understanding the concepts. We know concepts like resource management, staffing profiles, labor forecasting, etc. However, we had difficulty supporting the old system while transitioning into the new one. We needed to understand the technical aspects of the new system, but we didn't have step-by-step training. 

It was just hands-on and going with it and then slowly building up our knowledge about it and us defining the process, which was great because we had control over explaining the process. It's just that it was a bit difficult at the beginning because we needed to get the technical knowledge part, and there wasn't really step-by-step training.

For deployment, we had three people from the vendor and two from our support team. The remaining team members were supporting the old systems at that time. The core team had five people, but there were ten people altogether on the PPM project team. 

The partner vendor developed the tools based on requirements from different departments, including finance and technology teams. The support team was there to understand the technical aspects because we were the ones who brought it to the service center team, and we would eventually provide BAU support. We had to understand the system, the tool, and the features. The project team had a business analyst and project manager coordinating with various departments because we had to include people from the finance and technology teams to define that requirement.

We worked with a Micro Focus partner vendor called BPM. They were highly skilled experts with a lot of technical and process knowledge.

I rate Micro Focus PPM a nine out of ten. To implement PPM, you need a dedicated team to learn and provide support. They need to build knowledge and work hand in hand with the partner vendor. In our case, its configurations and other highly technical aspects stay with a partner vendor because they are the experts. We left the development and configuration to them. Our support team, which I belong to, focuses on the end-user experience, and we support them. 

We act as consultants to the end users. I think that's a good model. If we take on the technical part in-house, we would need to build those technical capabilities again when there are changes within the team, like people leaving or moving to other roles. Instead, we rely on the partner vendor for expertise. 

The use cases are mainly around project delivery and managing the whole project control and governance at a project and program level. We are using it for investment management or the whole demand management pipeline prioritization. We also use it for:

• Resource management and capacity and utilization 
• Value and benefits management to assess business cases or initiatives
• Reporting management

So, we use it across the whole life cycle.

PPM provides a single place where our teams can track and measure progress toward their goals. This consolidated view is important for our organization because we are able to see what's coming through the pipeline, what's in-flight, and what's our current resource capacity, as well as the financial burn rate. When it is all in one place, we are able to slice and dice information and look at it in different ways. That helps in the real insight into what's happening. It also helps in shaping our decisions to make sure we achieve the goals and outcomes of the organization.

When you start doing things in a structured way, you get consistent reporting. With that consistent reporting, you get things that are not working properly in a much more time-efficient way, which helps in decision-making to pick up things that are not working as per expectations. Whether it is a project, whether it is a risk, whether it is an issue, or whether it is a financial burn rate, it is all about getting the right visibility at the right time, which helps in the right decision-making to avoid any pitfalls.

PPM’s portfolio management dashboard provides the flexibility to have a list view or even a financial view. It has standard views, and on top of that, we have configured other views based on our needs. The standard views are good to start with, but when we have more information, we want to look at the information in different ways. We can configure dashboards and views, which is a plus point. We're not restricted to just what comes out of the box.

It comes with a Kanban view, which you can configure. It also provides the flexibility to create a backlog by having stage gates. So, we can do backlog management, and we can configure Kanban boards. The good thing about it is that we are able to capture that information. Once we're able to capture that information in a simpler way, then we can report it. What we have seen in some of the tools is that capturing information is not that easy, or they do it a standard way, and that's it. You don't have the flexibility to change them in a certain way or in the way the organization works. PPM allows you to adapt to best practices. Every organization is unique. If that flexibility is there, then you can have best practices along with some of the good things that the organization does. That's where the flexibility of PPM is very good.

Every organization, small and large, uses the whole portfolio structure for the hierarchy or the whole organization model. With the flexibility of having portfolios and sub-portfolios, you're able to model a hierarchy. Once you do that, the roll-up can happen from the bottom, and you can also have a top-down effect. This flexibility is good to come up with a portfolio hierarchy. This capability is good in PPM.

It has been helpful for resource consolidation. It does give us a picture of resource capacity and utilization. It has been absolutely helpful in managing our resources.

It has helped accelerate our organization’s delivery. 

Generally, we use all the modules and all features. So, every module has its own merit. Overall, they have a very strong workflow management capability. That's a very strong feature because then you can model any process easily. Whether it is a demand management process, a pipeline management process, or your project delivery methodology, it is much easier because of their workflow management capability.

They can make its UI better. Currently, the UI is a bit clunky.

The portfolio management dashboard is good, but more work needs to be done in that space. You can capture the goals and objectives, and you can also have KPIs. How they're all linked and how they all roll up is something they need to look into. They can make some enhancements to the product to close that loop.

They have made a good start when it comes to the built-in capabilities to support Lean Portfolio Management and be aligned to Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) initiatives, but there are still gaps, which they are probably going to cover in future releases.

I have been using this solution for almost 14 years.

I would rate their customer support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I've used other solutions. We used CA Clarity in the past. It was a good product, but with the Broadcom acquisition, the overall focus on CA Clarity has gone down. So, overall, you don't see a lot of traction in the way the product is being developed. Hence, we made a switch.

It is software as a service. In terms of maintenance, it is all managed by the Micro Focus team. From time to time, we do enhancements, but that's something that we do ourselves. 

We did scan the market. We evaluated Planisware. There were products like Planview or Clarizen. There were pretty good products from the top tier that we looked into.

Product-wise, Planview was very good. Even Planisware was very good. Planview was a bit better than Micro Focus, but one of the key things was the capability to deliver and come up with innovative solutions. That's where the flexibility of Micro Focus is quite good.

I would advise looking at your internal processes. The maturity of your processes and the behavioral or cultural aspect are important. If those two aspects are not looked into, then even if you get the best tool, it won't give you the outcome you want. So, before you get into the tool, make sure you have a bit of maturity in your processes. You can mature it further, but you must have some level of maturity. Also, make sure that the organization is ready. If the organization is not ready and the leadership is not aligned, there will be a lot of roadblocks.

You need to have a strategic plan and link your strategic pillars, alignment goals, and business objectives. PPM enables the organization to translate strategic plans into actionable investment strategies, but it also depends on how you configure the tool. Once you have the right flow right from your strategic plan to your pillars and initiatives, that information can be reported to various stakeholders. So, it is important to have a dynamic flow.

It is important that the portfolio hierarchy is well-defined. If you don't do that well, then the information doesn't flow from the bottom. Whether it is epics or agile, or your projects or initiatives, it is important to get the hierarchy right. Once you have the hierarchy right and you also are very clear about what's in your agile tool, what's in your PPM tool, and how the information flows, it definitely gives you the outcome that you need. So, a bulk of the work initially goes into setting up the right hierarchy. If you don't get that right and your information flow is broken, that definitely causes problems. It took us one or two iterations to do that, but we got there.

For integrating your agile tools and synchronizing the execution layer back into PPM, they have a base connector. The good thing is that they have provided an SDK. So, we can enhance the connector by doing some coding. That's a good thing, but the agile life cycle is something that we are learning as we go. The challenge is not about the tools. The challenge is more about the behavior in the organization because every team does it in a different way. Standardizing a way so that everyone does it in one way and having some taxonomy in the agile tool and integrating that with PPM is a challenge. It is more on the people and behaviors side, not specifically the tool side.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten.

We use it for project and portfolio planning, and for resource management.

It helps our organization to plan our resources exactly and to support the billing process as well.

The most valuable feature is resource planning or resource management.

Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) has a very strong workflow engine.

The functionality is really good with a lot of modules, and there's almost nothing missing.

The user interface is very, very old and is missing some functions, such as, for example, re-do, follow, and share functions. The UI is not good.

I would like to see different databases supported. There's only one database available at the moment, and it is very expensive. I would like better database support.

On the functional side of the product, I would like to see an enhanced and improved project management module with HR components in it.

I've been using this solution for 21 years.

It's a very stable solution with almost no downtime.

It's very easy to build up and is very straightforward.

We have 30 users in our company.

I would rate technical support services at five on a scale from one to ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented this solution through an in-house team.

We have an annual license, and it is fairly priced in comparison to that of other solutions.

Use it out of the box in the beginning, and don't change it too much or make it too complex.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Micro Focus Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) at eight.

OpenText Project and Portfolio Management is an integrated solution of multiple modules that help organizations manage their projects, portfolios, resources and financial deliverables. 

The availability of multiple integrated modules is a vital aspect of the solution. The modules present in the solution include project, demand, and resource management. 

The user experience of the product needs to be improved. The resource management in OpenText Project and Portfolio Management also needs to be improved. 

I have been using OpenText Project and Portfolio Management since 2007. 

It's a robust tool with no signs of instability. 

OpenText Project and Portfolio Management is a highly scalable solution. Numerous customers of our organization choose the solution over others. 

There are two types of customer support that can be availed directly or indirectly for OpenText Project and Portfolio Management. One type is direct support from the vendor for the core functionalities and infrastructure; another support type is from integrators or the product implementor company that is available with a SaaS subscription.

The support quality provided by the integrators depends upon their skills and experience with OpenText Project and Portfolio Management.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. But sometimes, the setup can become time-consuming due to some configurations for unique customer requirements. The deployment of the product can take two to seven months for rollout into an entire organization. 

The deployment process covers the whole range of professional services, from installation, analysis, design, development configuration, and training.

A yearly subscription needs to be procured for the SaaS version of the product, and the on-prem version is available through perpetual licensing. There is an additional cost for product support, which includes functionality and upgrade support. But there are no hidden costs in OpenText Project and Portfolio Management. 

The solution has the same level of integration capabilities as competitor tools. OpenText Project and Portfolio Management exhibit wide capabilities for reporting. The product has an AI engine that allows an user to create reports in varying formats from a remote location.

There are also certain configuration capabilities in the product that mimic BI tools. In comparison to other tools in the market, OpenText Project and Portfolio Management is one of the most flexible and powerful tools available.

The product also has a robust dashboard and recording features. The reports in the tool can be created and exported in almost any relevant format such as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word and HTML. Native corporate designs, dashboards and additional customizations can be integrated in the tool as well. I would overall rate the product an eight out of ten. 

I think it's very important to have clear processes defined in the organization in order to experience a smooth product transition and there should be support from the management executive to implement tools like OpenText Project and Portfolio Management. It's common for any kind of digital transformation and tool implementation to fail without executive support.

There should be proper collaboration and agreement within the organization using OpenText Project and Portfolio Management. For instance, to implement the product in reality, there can be some kind of resistance, and this is why the right tool adoption is crucial. Regarding the implementation of OpenText Project and Portfolio Management, I would suggest others be onboard in an incremental process by focusing on the quick wins and urgent challenges and keep improving.  

I believe that, as per the market trend, every PPM tool will embed artificial intelligence. OpenText has already onboarded the trend and announced the release of a massive AI cloud. The vendor has its own AI engine embedded in OpenText Project and Portfolio Management and other tools from the vendor as well. 

The product brings multiple benefits to an organization through increased transparency, visibility on projects, tasks, and capacity, and also showcases financial spending patterns or budget savings. OpenText Project and Portfolio Management is able to increase the overall productivity of the organization and also measure it through certain benchmarks.