ProjectPlace user review

This APM independent user review was based on input from practising project professionals, asked to rate the effectiveness of Planview’s ProjectPlace in the workplace.

Overview

With more than 1.1 million registered users in more than 177,000 projects, Projectplace by Planview is a popular all-in-one cloud project management tool used by project professionals to execute projects and manage teams.

The tool aims to help project managers collaborate, organise, visualise and keep track of projects. Allowing users to share their work and their documents fosters collaboration among teams, ensuring that the latest documents are used and avoiding version conflicts.

The software is available to use on mobile devices, also, which allows users to work and stay up to date while on-the-go.

Benefits

An online tool that allows users to actively manage all the project management aspects of their business is becoming increasingly important, according to project professionals we spoke to. 

Reviewers of ProjectPlace highlighted ‘communication’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘document management’ as key benefits. One reviewer – with 40 projects coming on stream shortly – singled out the portfolio feature as “very valuable”; another said they used the tool to collaborate with “multiple stakeholders from both within and outside our organisation”. 

In terms of day-to-day performance reviewers praised the “intuitive user interface”, which works across multiple device platforms, including PC, Mac, tablets and mobiles. They also liked the 'tag' facility for rapidly searching archive posts and milestone reminders, which featured prominently on the dashboard design. Access to reports and information, including Gantt charts and Kanban boards, in a single place was also helpful. 

In summary, it was like having all “the essentials, but without the complexity of other project management packages like Microsoft Project”, one reviewer remarked.

Challenges

There were a few minor irritations expressed in the feedback. One reviewer said: “When ‘all members’ are mentioned in a post, each member receives an email alert notifying them of the item. Yet the subject line of the email gives no indication of the subject matter. Consequently, these alerts risk being viewed as spam – as a result, this means the 'all members' function can only be used sparingly.” Another said it does occasionally suffer from “erratic performance”, but was confident that the product would keep on improving. 

As far as additional features go, one suggestion was the option to keep some conversations private.

Summary

A useful tool that offers real benefits to users involved in the management of projects. ProjectPlace had very few dislikes and was generally found to assist in terms of project accountability, assurance and overall oversight – including performance reporting, prioritisation and workforce planning. 

Adoption rates and ease of use scored highly, thanks in large part of the intuitive nature of the software, while levels of technical support were widely praised. “I would definitely recommend it to other project professionals,” one of our reviewers concluded.