Project Management

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Project & Portfolio Management tool

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Martin Sierra Contributing to add value to the PMO World| Aeromexico Mexico, Mexico
Hi there,

I'm looking for input on what would be the best tool to manage Project & Portfolio. What I have been reviewing are tools ro manage components of the portfolio, however, I have not enable to identify what tool can add value. Factors to be considered are; prioritize initiatives aligned with business goals, benefits measurement, projects & Portfolio performance, agile practices

Thank you in advance for your comments
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Ahamed Sajid Head of Customer Success & Solution Delivery| Aufait Technologies Kozhikode, Kl, India
I tried and tested many of the tools above-mentioned. But I couldn't rightly build a dashboard sort of thing with right data for the portfolio review, except without making needful modifications using Excel. We have around 50-60 projects running in our organization in total.

Currently we ensure each project managers have their tool and process clearly defined, and the data from PMs are aggregated into a common Excel, which then generates required dashboard. This is working fine, and not much overheads are coming at least for now. I'm not quite sure how to scale it if our team size goes way beyond what it is now (around 150 members now). Probably in such a situation, I would invest on developing a small web application tailored to our needs.
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Olivia bennett Pm-tool-insights Austin,Texas, United States
From my experience, the hard part isn't finding a tool that can manage projects. Almost all of them can do that. The bigger question is how well they help you manage the portfolio as a whole.

I'd be looking at things like whether you can see resource capacity across projects, how easy it is to prioritize work against business goals, whether benefits can actually be tracked after projects are delivered, and if leadership can get useful reports without spending hours pulling data into Excel.

Planview is definitely one of the well-known options if you're in the enterprise space. I'd also put Celoxis on the shortlist if you're looking for something that combines portfolio management, resource planning, budgeting, and reporting without feeling overly complicated.

One thing I'd recommend is running a real pilot with your own projects instead of relying on demos. Every platform looks great in a sales presentation, but using it with your actual workflows usually tells you much more.
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lara walker arizona, United States

The best PPM tool is usually the one that matches your organization's processes and decision-making needs, rather than the one with the longest feature list.

Based on what you've described, I'd focus on finding a solution that can:

  • Prioritize initiatives based on strategic business objectives.
  • Manage project intake, evaluation, and approvals.
  • Track expected benefits alongside project progress.
  • Provide portfolio-level dashboards and executive reporting.
  • Support both Agile and traditional project delivery.
  • Include resource and capacity planning to ensure priorities are realistic.

It's also worth considering ease of adoption, integration with your existing tools, and reporting flexibility, as these often have a bigger impact on long-term success than individual features.

I'd recommend starting by documenting your must-have requirements and then evaluating a few PPM platforms against those criteria through a pilot or trial. That approach usually leads to a much better decision than comparing feature lists alone.
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Julia Cooper California, United States
For the requirements you’ve listed, I’d look beyond a traditional project management tool and focus on true PPM capabilities. In particular, I’d evaluate how well the platform supports strategic prioritization, benefits tracking, portfolio health, resource capacity, and executive-level reporting.
Tools such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Planview, and Celoxis can approach PPM differently, so the best fit really depends on how mature your PMO is and how much governance you need.
I’d also make agile support part of the evaluation rather than treating it separately. A useful platform should allow different delivery approaches while still giving leadership one consistent view of portfolio performance.
One practical approach is to test the shortlisted tools using a few real initiatives and see whether you can move from strategy - prioritization - funding - execution - benefits realization without relying heavily on spreadsheets or disconnected systems. That usually makes the differences between PPM platforms much clearer.
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