As a practice, project management can benefit from a specialized skill set and a seasoned Project Management Office (PMO) at the helm. But whether you’re just getting your feet wet or you’re already part of a well-oiled project management machine, your Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software shouldn’t require a complex set of steps just to set up and manage a project. After all, if your PPM software is complicated and cumbersome, adoption will be difficult.
Solutions that offer flexibility tend to be used more often. For instance, if the software can accommodate any methodology—Waterfall, Agile, Kanban, card wall, or task lists—then it becomes more valuable to the organization. When we take a ‘one-size-fits-all” approach, we find that team members are spending an inordinate amount of time updating tasks or tracking time.
The other key area to consider is access to dashboards and reports that give project managers and stakeholders a view of everything from one convenient place. Many times, there are invested stakeholders that want to see the dashboards but do not need full access to the software. For these individuals, it is important that dashboards can be published to non-licensed users. This is great for communicating to a community as well—such as a population of internal users, students, teachers, parents, or citizens.
Taking a portfolio approach also allows organizations to best manage resources. In this approach, different but related projects roll up to a single view. A PMO or any project manager can then look at resources across multiple projects.
In summary, the top areas to consider are: flexibility/ ease of use, reporting and dashboards, and the ability to work using a portfolio approach.
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