PM3

Comments: Helping us to standardise our project practices, particularly the reporting process.

Pros: I liked the flexible structure of portfolio, programme and project which was easy to set up and adapt to our various departmental approaches. Lots of reporting options offered as standard, and easy to tweak these to suit our needs. All our portfolio of projects are now in one place where all the PMs can access them – it’s also an advantage that you can access them from anywhere rather than needing to be in the office. Helping us to standardise our project practices and particularly the reporting process.
Support and training from Bestoutcome is excellent.

Cons: Because the range of functions and options is huge, it's sometimes easy to forget where the option you need is... however, I'd sooner have the options than a simpler product without them

Comments: We have around 104 projects in total on PM3, around 30-40 of them are live ones. I have had a very positive experience with PM3 and I do really enjoy using it. I think the Best Outcome Team are also very responsive and useful and are always happy to deal with any requests, which also adds to my PM3 experience. We have many projects which are completed and finished, and over the past year there has been an increase in the uptake of staff on PM3. I think there are many useful tabs/functions in PM3 which definitely support staff in completing their projects.

Pros: I really like how PM3 is very methodical and logical and a very easy software to navigate round. You can capture all aspects of your project and it can keep track of all your actions/tasks/milestones as well as notifying users with email reminders. PM3 definitely ensures that your project remains on track and is fantastic in generating a wide range of reports that can be printed/emailed very easily. The layout is very clear and simple and when I first started my role in PMO, it did not take very long for me to come to grips with the system, there are also brilliant user help guides and videos that are available which provide you with lots of new information.

Cons: The only thing I like least about this software is that unfortunately the milestone and task pages are not linked to the actions page which causes users to duplicate information (i.e. milestones that have been completed and closed do not appear as closed on the actions page). However, I understand that these are 2 separate and independent pages and it would not be feasible to join them together, this is only a minor issue and does not cause users problems. Apart from that I see no other fault with the software.

Comments: I inherited a complex set of projects, every one reporting in a different way and with no visibility of their contribution to programme objectives. PM3 allowed my staff to turn this into a simple well-controlled portfolio with everyone pulling in the same direction.

Pros: A flexible structure of projects, programmes and portfolios allows you to easily group projects to reflect the organisational structures and strategic goals of your organisation. Fast setup out-of-the box, with no complex tailoring of processes, so managers start using the tool productively within a few days. The multi-level tracking and reporting creates valuable status reports with minimum effort. Easily controlled sharing of information across the portfolio means PMs can see what other projects are doing and proactively manage interfaces and dependencies. PM3’s huge range of standard reports has covered every reporting requirement I encountered.

Cons: The breadth of system functions can initially appear a bit daunting to new users and support staff. I understand that unused functions can now be hidden when they are not needed but haven’t yet used that function myself.

Comments: One of the things PM3 has helped us with is to connect up our projects and programmes that are running across the organisation, at local, regional and national levels.

Pros: It's easy to see the connections across the hierarchy from project up to portfolio level, plus the functionality to promote and demote risks and milestones is great.

Cons: Visually the system could look a bit more modern but it works.

Comments: Well beyond expectations. Our experienced project managers and project support offices have been able to embrace the tool without any negative impact on productivity and they are starting to see the rewards within days - measurably reduced reporting admin, increase visibility of other projects, increased consistency of approaches. PM3 has obviously been designed by, and for, portfolio managers which makes it instantly more usable than project scheduling tools that have been given a portfolio management wrapper or simple task tracking tools

Pros: Very easy to use
Very simple to configure out of the box
Highly configurable for project, programme, portfolio membership
Allows top-down portfolio management. You so not need to know minute details of projects before adding them and getting value form the tool
Provides visibility of projects without having to do much different - project managers do all the same things just in this tool rather than their own dis-jointed files and folders.
Flexible and responsive customer support during implementation
Available via government procurement frameworks

Cons: The planning function lacks some of the features of Microsoft Project so projects managers with advanced skills find it less useful. The supplier is working on enhancements for the next release. While there well over a hundred pre-configured report formats included none are exactly right for us. It would be good if there was a report-builder tool included. The lack of bulk-upload of pre-exiting documents like RAID logs or project registers increases the workload of transitioning existing projects to the tool.