Despite the many far-reaching challenges that the pandemic brought about, it was also an eye-opener in many ways. It made organizations realize the significance of going digital. But as everyone raced towards the hybrid work model, project management became extremely difficult. Getting real-time visibility into projects and tracking KPIs for continuous improvement hasn’t been easy. 

Let’s learn how modern Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions enable effective portfolio management in the hybrid workplace.  

Hybrid Work and the Challenges of Project Management 

Enterprises that took the sluggish route to digital transformation found themselves accelerating their efforts as the pandemic spread. To keep up with changing customer expectations and, more importantly, new ways of working, almost every business embraced the hybrid work model to stay afloat. 

Although the hybrid workplace allowed employees to adjust to the new normal, streamlining the delivery of strategic initiatives while enabling teams to do their best work began to get challenging. 

Let’s look at the challenges the hybrid model brought about in the realm of PPM:

• Tracking projects in real-time, achieving end-to-end visibility, and monitoring KPIs for continuous improvement seemed like an impossible task. 
• Tracking the efficiency and productivity of teams and ROI of the initiatives is also a challenge. 
• Hybrid working led to standardization issues while making collaboration a pressing challenge. With teams working from different locations, using different devices, and across different time zones, bringing everyone together wasn’t easy. 
• Another peril brought about by hybrid teams was security. As teams began to access corporate information from personal devices and unsecured networks, enterprises had to put up a 24/7/365 cybersecurity blanket around all company data, devices, and assets.

The Limitations of Popular Tools

To cope with the challenges introduced by new ways of working, many project teams went ahead and invested in popular time and project management tools. Although most of these tools helped in the efficient tracking of projects, they also brought a unique set of limitations to the table. Let’s look at these tools and their challenges in detail: 

1.    Tempo Plugin Sets

As project teams started working remotely, many organizations invested in Tempo to gain real-time insight into their projects and act on reliable data for reporting, invoicing, and accounting. While the different Tempo plugin modules enable managers to streamline time tracking, automate invoicing, and visualize multiple projects in one place, they aren’t enough to drive effective PPM. For instance, Tempo doesn’t help project managers define RAID or  mitigate potential problems to drive the best results.  It also doesn’t give visibility on the bottlenecks from programs.

2.    BigPicture Plugin

Many organizations also embraced BigPicture to effectively manage their projects and programs. Although the tool helps teams neatly visualize complex processes and interdependencies, complex projects with a tangled network of interdependent tasks are still difficult to handle. Performance tends to get impacted at scale, and budgeting capabilities are rather limited.

3.    JIRA Advanced Roadmaps

JIRA Advanced Roadmaps have also witnessed immense popularity in the hybrid workplace. Designed to empower teams at scale, it allows for planning and tracking work strategically across multiple teams and projects. Yet, several issues limit organizations from driving true and effective PPM. For example, the roadmap view only shows issues of one project at a time, and subtasks or custom hierarchy levels don’t show up on the project roadmap view at all.

4.    JIRA Align

Another tool that has been adopted by many project teams to achieve real-time project visibility is JIRA Align. It helps teams get on the same page to determine the scope, build roadmaps, and ascertain dependencies. Yet, the tool offers very limited customization options for teams with unique requirements. Jira Align also lacks intelligent reporting capabilities and offers limited integration options with tools outside the JIRA family. 

All these tools need to be used in conjunction with Strategic Portfolio Management tools like Planview. 

How Planview Makes PPM a Breeze

Organizations looking to achieve operational delivery excellence in the hybrid era can benefit greatly from modern PPM solutions like Planview. Recognized as an industry leader by Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and more, Planview PPM offers an array of unique solutions for various requirements, enabling today’s organizations to address their PPM needs using several built-in features and plugins and elevate their PMO. 

For instance, with Planview AdaptiveWork (formerly Planview Clarizen), project teams can connect work across the enterprise and turn ideas into strategies, plans, and actions. The platform offers real-time visibility into different workstreams, helping teams focus on things that matter, so they can deliver results faster. Planview Portfolios (formerly Planview Enterprise One) allows teams to leverage integrated Gantt views to balance schedule and resource availability, get insight into portfolio performance, and build strategic roadmaps that translate into results.

Similarly, using Planview Tasktop, project teams can create an efficient and interoperable tool stack and eliminate duplicate data entry, messy handovers, and manual traceability.

In addition, using Planview, project managers can:

• Continuously plan projects and allocate (and reallocate) funding and resources based on new requirements. 
• Get detailed visibility into every aspect of complex projects: from progress and financials to resources and risks – regardless of the execution method. 
• Reprioritize tasks based on customer and market demands and drive business results with greater agility. 
• Improve customer experiences and profitability using Planview’s Professional Services Automation. 
• Prioritize high-value products, identify risks and opportunities, optimize resource capacity, and effectively evaluate product performance. 
• Drive agile transformation by evolving the way they connect strategy to delivery via Enterprise Agile Planning. 
• Integrate top-down/bottom-up planning and hybrid execution in one system and ensure teams deliver what matters most to the business.
• Optimize and automate workflows to reduce manual labor while also improving the speed and accuracy of decisions. 
• Establish the right levels of governance across projects and ensure compliance with requirements.
• Address cross-project and staffing dependencies with higher efficiency and accelerate delivery outcomes. 

The Way Forward with Planview

As businesses across the globe get used to the hybrid working environment, keeping projects organized is a critical requirement. With teams working from anywhere and everywhere, there is a pressing need for effective PPM. Instead of adopting siloed, ad-hoc tools to manage different aspects of their projects, embracing a unified PPM tool like Planview can be extremely beneficial to the business. Planview helps project teams prioritize tasks based on importance and quickly pivot to cater to new trends and requirements.

If your company is looking to drive effective PPM using Planview, we can help! As DevOps and Agile experts, over the past 10+ years, we have helped hundreds of organizations achieve operational delivery excellence by streamlining their software delivery, customer service, and business support operations. Our recent strategic partnership with Planview has now armed us with additional PPM capabilities that enable us to help you keep pace with changing business dynamics and achieve your enterprise agility objectives.

Contact us today to align your delivery practice with strategic initiatives, ensure your projects are working in perfect harmony, and drive real business value – from strategy to execution – with Planview.