Great intuitive tool.Enables us to drive best practice and consistency across the portfolio.

PM3 has helped drive consistency and standards across our portfolio. Following our upgrade to PM3 Cloud, we have also been able to drive efficiencies through the removal of duplication (e.g. Excel RAIDD) and manual reporting.

Pros

Great intuitive tool that enables us to drive best practice and consistency across the portfolio. We use it as the single source for our portfolio of change. It helps our project and programme management teams manage end to end delivery, as well as providing our stakeholders with timely status reporting.
The ‘out of the box’ reports have been designed with stakeholders at all levels in mind and the choice is far greater than other project management tool that I have used. The inbuilt governance features are a great fit with our project governance framework and hep provide additional assurance of project control.
The Bestoutome team are great to work with. They not only listen, but bring a considerable amount of practical PPM and technical knowledge, experience and expertise. Their support has been invaluable not only in preparing for the PM3 cloud upgrade and on boarding our users, but also the on-going embedding and service support.
PM3 is a great tool for any organisation, regardless of maturity.

Cons

Plan lock is a common issue when users finish their session. However, Bestoutcome have built in a flag that tells the user that the plan is locked and who to. Despite training and reminders, some users forget to do this correctly. It will be great if we could have a message appear telling the user that they have not logged out of their session, when exiting said session or logging out of the tool.

PM3 PPM Tool

PM3 is a very user intuitive tool. It is very easy to coach people how to use. There is new functionality which means that you can customise the experience for every different type of user that may require access to the tool, hiding the information they are not required to update and showing that they are.

Pros

PM3 has recently moved to a new cloud based version and it has made the tool even more intuitive for the users. It is a great tool for users and administrators alike as you can make many setting amendments as an Administrator that will apply to the users in real-time. Customisable fields mean that you have the flexibility to build the tool to fit the needs of your business. The way the tool is structured means that the information captured by your Project managers can be easily sliced using the portfolios structure and reported either immediately or at specified times for your recipients.

Cons

You need to think about the structure in tool when planning how you want to report as there are three levels within the reporting structure. This works well for a Project > Programme > Portfolio structure but needs amendment if you need to capture lots of detail around workstreams. However, there is always a work around within the tool that means it can work if you shift everything up a level or consider the levels you want to report at when structuring your tiers in the tool.

A practical, affordable tool for manging complex project portfolios

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.

In my opinion, the best cloud-based PMO and change management platform in the market today

We are now able to drive the end-to-end delivery of all of our service improvement and change programmes consistently, and through robust governance. We will be able to provide executive delivery assurance, and manage each element of our programmes and projects effectively and efficiently.

Pros

From initial discussions and product demonstrations, it was clear that PM3 was an industry-strength portfolio, programme and project management software platform that we could set up, configure and start using quickly and effectively.

The product is very configurable and we were able to set it up to our particular specification. The Bestoutcome team were very easy to work with, and because of their expertise working with other clients in health and social care, they were able to help us with our implementation.

PM3 is competitively priced and is fairly straightforward to use. Comprehensive reporting is included in the standard platform, and there are also extra plug-ins that can be used with BI tools, such as PowerBI, which we use.

We were given detailed initial training, and then further specific training with the service improvement change champions and administrators.

Overall, the process from purchase to implementation was simple and hassle-free.

Cons

We have recently completed the initial training, and are now starting to upload our change programmes. To date, we have not found anything negative about the software.

Since its introduction, PM3 has greatly improved our company's ability to track project progress

Pros

Up to date Project information being available all in one place
Improved accountability for tasks, milestones and work packages
Created better communication lines between PMs and Admin in order to track project progress
Introduction of new Resource Tracker has enabled better tracking of availabiity versus demand. Able to assign personnel to the appropriate project depending upon importance and the need to implement any mitigating actions

Cons

Constraints in changing workflow dates
Failed to fully replace the need for Microsoft Office tools such as Excel and Project
Not always kept informed concerning server upgrades/system updates
Can be difficult for PMs to remember certain user functionalities if they have not logged into to the system for a period of time following previous project completions. Can result in re-training.

PM3 - PMO

PM3 is a very good tool which fits into my role as a project manager. We have had excellent support from Jack Watson, also quick to email back solutions, and always helpful. I would recommend PM3 to all trust.

Pros

PM3 dashboard easy to read, moving from one module to another easy to understand.
I did not have to wait to for information to be saved
Easy to delete and amend plans
Inputting of finance data very easy
Highlight reports easy to read, can also convert into excel format.

Cons

Changing and formatting reports very difficult
I couldnt change columns and rows

Have used PM3 before in another organisation. The upgraded package is excellent

Pros

Monitor-able information all in one place to allow PMO to see where potential problems are with individual projects and how these may impact on others.
Ease of use essential it means that project managers use the system
Reports can be emailed to colleagues to allow for accountability to be taken
We regularly go through the system in meetings to allow us to discuss progress with project managers live
It would be amazing to be able to use this across systems

Cons

Stakeholder management and communications would be a great addition
I don't think we are using the system to it's optimum level yet
Although we understand that this is a commercial product and the cost isn't that high, we need to think carefully about how many licenses we have in order to be able to afford to continue with it

Flexible, versatile solution to managing portfolios, programmes & projects

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

PM3 - Transforming our Portfolio Management

PM3 has helped us manage and track our portfolio. It has driven consistency and the project managers like using the tool, definitely a good sign.

Pros

Its really simple, intuitive tool which enable you to "get working" really quickly. We can start start just with the initial functionality required and then we can add more tabs as we need to turn on that functionality. Its great also being able to have reports available without having to consider and create them. We don’t need to waste time writing our own reports as Bestoutcome have already thought of many of the reports I'd want to use. The reports are high quality and it is saving us a lot of time in not having to amend or create highlight reports. Being able to automatically email of reports is also very useful and saves a lot of time. The videos that are available really help when getting to grips with the product and when there is something that needs further explanation, they're very quick to respond.

Cons

We've been using PM3 for about 2 months and we can't think of any drawbacks so far. We're considering how we'll be able to use it in managing IT and line of business projects.

PM3

PM3 is in use at TCD to manage major capital projects and provide governance, reporting and query facilties for this portfolio. Our experience with the software and its support has been positive and we would definitely recommend it as a cost-effective option for any organisation seeking to manage project portfolios in a consistent and auditable manner.

Pros

Very intuitive and well-designed, it contains all of the features you'd expect from a PPM tool, with greater flexibility in reporting and dashboards.

Cons

While the interface has improved in the latest version, it still needs some upgrading to keep it in line with competitors. Not as much of an issue once you've become familiar with the product.