Key Takeaways from the Gartner 2012 PPM Magic Quadrant

 

Gartner recently released the 2012 Gartner PPM Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Based Project and Portfolio Management Services. This magic quadrant is focused on the needs of PPM leaders to improve speed, accuracy and agility, while managing risks and costs. It profiles vendors that are providing disruptive technologies — cloud and software as a service (SaaS) — to support these needs.

In addition to the vendor analysis, Gartner identified four key trends they are seeing in the PPM marketplace:

1.    PPM Sweet Spot

Gartner has observed a growing trend of organizations focusing on enhancing the collaboration,communication and reporting that targets the information flow between the project manager (the one responsible for managing and monitoring the work) and the project sponsor (the one asking for the work). Sweet spot communication and reporting require a “just enough” approach to the level of detail required to fit the audience. For instance, key tasks or milestones or phases might be tracked, but the sweet spot does not venture any deeper into more detailed PPM activities.

 2.    PPM and Agile Development Support

With the rise of agile development, PPM applications are supporting some of the communication, collaboration and reporting nuances associated with agile development methods, such as Scrum. A typical project portfolio includes different project types based on a wide range of methodologies, including waterfall, hybrid agile/iterative and more sophisticated agile variants for new product development. PPM solutions are now supporting more integrations to providers such as Atlassian and its issue and bug tracking Jira product, as well as Rally and its products that support agile development.

3.    PPM, Social Networking and Collaboration

Gartner notes that social networking and collaboration in the PPM context seem more like fads that could fade away someday, rather than become a legitimate mainstay PPM capability. Enterprise collaboration and communication tools, including issue tracking, threaded discussions, synchronization, integration to and from email systems and applications, and other mechanisms that have been staples of PPM software products for years. With the rise of Salesforce.com’s Chatter, Jive and Yammer that could change if something more meaningful and useful evolves from this introduction of social networking and collaboration in PPM software.

4.    PPM and Mobile Device Support

Finally, PPM providers are using HTML5 to connect a PPM system to a number of mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones. PPM providers are focused on delivering three main mobile capabilities to their customers early: (1) Time reporting, allowing end users to report their time from mobile devices into the PPM system, (2) The ability to approve items within a process flow of a PPM system, and (3) Executive reporting to mobile devices, so end users (for example, business managers or project managers) can access and view reports and dashboards from their tablets or smartphones.

You can view a full copy of the 2012 Gartner PPM Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Based Project and Portfolio Management Services at http://www.daptiv.com/gartner-ppm-magic-quadrant.htm