PM3 Reviews

Simplicity, ease of use, interface, flexibility of reporting, innovative approach to management of multiple portfolios. Scalability and the ability to turn on/off various modules to suit the maturity and development of our PMO.

There are no features, of those we currently utilise, that we are unhappy with and we have ample opportunity to discuss developments and improvements with colleagues at PM3.

Easy to get to grips with. Particularly like how you can select which functions you can switch on/off so you can start small and build on that as maturity and familiarity with the system grows.

Although you can configure some fields and change them to what you want, it would be useful if you could create additional fields to be able to capture more variety of information in the system.

- Wide range of reporting features and styles- Creating portfolios is straight forward- Integrated action log (pulls in actions from benefits & risks logs)- Easy to access due to being based in the cloud - Simple license management

- Training features and content could be improved - Look and feel could be more slick- Planning and scheduling is fiddly and difficult to navigate- Administrator terminology and functions are difficult to interpret- System not as smooth as envisaged

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.

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.

Easy to useEasy to manage portfolios and plansEasy to customisePM3 BI/Datamart - really useful

Reporting needs improvementNo dashboard that summarises data over multiple portfolios, but PM3 BI/Datamart allows us to do some data comparison

The software is easy to use and provides an environment in which projects can be managed successfully. It is self explanatory in terms of use and provides accurate reporting in various reports . I use this software daily in terms of the project plan and actions and i like how it allows for everything to be recorded in one place.

Programme Management, milestones cannot be added to a plan unless a project is created and how linked dependencies cannot be moved as a series and each date needs to be amended individually. More work is required on the programme aspect of PM3

Easy to use, quick to implement and more used than competitor software previously deployed in the organisation.
Customer support is first class and BestOutcome work hard at customer relations and ongoing product development

Gateway management is a bit "clunky" but is on the development roadmap for improvement in 2022.
The ability to develop customised reports within the software would be a great asset.
Portfolio dashboards for executive use on an app version would really engage executives in the system and its capabilities

The easy-to-use, intuitive and ISO27001 certified (information security) PM3 tool plays an important part in the planning, governance and reporting of portfolios, business change programmes, programmes and projects. The tool provides a valuable golden single source, providing consistency and visibility across the organisation at all levels. It’s obvious that this award-winning tool has been developed by practitioners for practitioners and that the provider understands what success looks like for the client.

Not all parts of the PM3 tool can be configured to local requirements but the benefits of a genuine long-term lasting partnership with the client and access to forums such as the Power User Group means that appropriate changes can be considered for future releases.

The simplicity of the tool allows users to be quickly trained and ensures the speed at which PM3 can be deployed is lightening fast. Don't confuse simplicity with inadequate - the tool is incredibly powerful to plan and manage a complex Portfolio and the reporting modules allow you to extract the data in clear format for Senior Leadership reporting.

I have used many PPM tools and most fail due to highly inefficient methods of doing simple tasks. PM3 is not one of those tools.

I really like how PM3 is very methodical and logical and a very easy software to navigate round. You can capture all aspects of your project and it can keep track of all your actions/tasks/milestones as well as notifying users with email reminders. PM3 definitely ensures that your project remains on track and is fantastic in generating a wide range of reports that can be printed/emailed very easily. The layout is very clear and simple and when I first started my role in PMO, it did not take very long for me to come to grips with the system, there are also brilliant user help guides and videos that are available which provide you with lots of new information.

The only thing I like least about this software is that unfortunately the milestone and task pages are not linked to the actions page which causes users to duplicate information (i.e. milestones that have been completed and closed do not appear as closed on the actions page). However, I understand that these are 2 separate and independent pages and it would not be feasible to join them together, this is only a minor issue and does not cause users problems. Apart from that I see no other fault with the software.

Focus on on top down visibility of core P3 metrics via dashboards that can be shared, without customisation, to senior stakeholders. From a delivery perspective updating is intuitive and efficient and drives consistency from all project and programme managers.
Especially like the governance dashboard, an excellent tool to provide a clear presentation of change health and compliance

PM3 isn't a one for all solution, still requiring planning tools such as MS Project for detailed scheduling, however I've not found a P3 product that does both effectively and efficiently. This is a minor gripe as most PMs are used to using separate planning and reporting toolsets

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.

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.

The ability to draw a no.of projects together into a Programme and/or Portfolio and to draw in reports form all in selected views.
The ability to hold all major project governance in one place e.g risks/issues/ dependencies.
Reporting flexibility and range across plans/projects/programmes/portfolio
Ease of user control and self configurable access controls

Plans - Gantt Chart usage - This is clunky at best and not intuitive. Convincing users of Microsoft Project to switch to using the tool has been an on going challenge. An easier import function may help resolve this.
Using X to exit the plan. Many users forget and has caused frustrations in plans with joint PM use.
Inconsistency of areas with auto save functionality and those where it requires manual save.

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.

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.

Very easy to use
Very simple to configure out of the box
Highly configurable for project, programme, portfolio membership
Allows top-down portfolio management. You so not need to know minute details of projects before adding them and getting value form the tool
Provides visibility of projects without having to do much different - project managers do all the same things just in this tool rather than their own dis-jointed files and folders.
Flexible and responsive customer support during implementation
Available via government procurement frameworks

The planning function lacks some of the features of Microsoft Project so projects managers with advanced skills find it less useful. The supplier is working on enhancements for the next release.

While there well over a hundred pre-configured report formats included none are exactly right for us. It would be good if there was a report-builder tool included.

The lack of bulk-upload of pre-exiting documents like RAID logs or project registers increases the workload of transitioning existing projects to the tool.