PM3

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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