10 Greatest Challenge Portfolio Administration (PPM) Software program for 2024

Challenge portfolio administration (PPM) assists managers in figuring out which tasks are assembly aims all through a corporation. This data permits them to make data-backed judgments about which tasks to interrupt into smaller duties, find out how to allocate assets, and find out how to prioritize competing calls for on these assets.

As corporations develop, the variety of tasks will increase, with major groups and subteams managing totally different initiatives. To maintain everybody in sync and guarantee they constantly ship high quality tasks, organizations want a strategy to consolidate these varied initiatives throughout the corporate.

PPM software program centralizes the administration of a corporation’s tasks by serving to managers decide which assets to allocate to a selected challenge.

Prime Challenge Portfolio Administration (PPM) Software program: Comparability chart

The chart under incorporates a head-to-head comparability of the highest challenge portfolio administration software program.

Celoxis: Greatest for all-in-one PPM and useful resource administration

Celoxis is all-in-one enterprise-level PPM software program that additionally provides full useful resource administration capabilities to maximise challenge efficiency. It permits managers to allocate duties primarily based on abilities, roles, and availability whereas factoring in worker time zones and work shifts. Celoxis additionally offers a complete suite of real-time dashboards, reporting capabilities, and customizable workflows to assist managers measure, analyze, and optimize staff efficiency.

Pricing

Celoxis provides a pay-per-user mannequin for all staff sizes.

• Supervisor: $25 per person monthly, billed yearly.
• Group member: $15 per person monthly, billed yearly.

Along with the pay-per-user mannequin, Celoxis offers two deployment plan choices: Cloud and On-Premises. Pricing data for each On-Premises and Cloud plans is obtainable upon request. The Cloud plan requires a minimal of 5 customers.

Standout options

• Consumption administration functionality robotically captures and ranks challenge requests from net varieties, emails, and different sources.
• Useful resource administration options to optimize assets and analytics for distributed groups.
• Customizable portfolio dashboards permit customers to observe schedules, margins, and different customized metrics.
• Challenge accounting offers revenue and margin monitoring, income forecasting, and customized monetary KPIs.

Professionals and cons

Celoxis integrations

The software connects with over 400 third-party apps, together with:

• QuickBooks
• Slack
• Google
• Microsoft
• Salesforce
• Trello
• Harvest
• Slack

Why I selected Celoxis

I chosen Celoxis for its versatility. Whether or not you’re managing complicated tasks with a number of dependencies and stakeholders or easy tasks with a number of staff members, Celoxis provides PPM options that you could align to your particular wants.

See how Celoxis compares to our checklist of the high 10 challenge administration software program.

Planview PPM Professional: Greatest for capability planning

Planview PPM Professional, previously Planview Innotas, permits challenge administration professionals to prioritize duties, monitor workloads, and measure efficiency. The software centralizes challenge portfolio administration to ascertain a central data hub for all work and assets. Furthermore, Planview PPM Professional consists of the potential of managing challenge prices towards funds throughout portfolios by offering complete views into every challenge’s funds, precise and forecast.

With Planview PPM Professional, managers can measure the staff’s efficiency and look at key efficiency indicators to find out if efforts align with firm objectives.

Pricing

Planview PPM Professional pricing data is unavailable on the seller’s web site. Potential patrons can request a product demo to study extra about this software’s capabilities and obtain a customized quote.

Standout options

• Challenge planning and scheduling, together with challenge phases, duties, and milestones.
• Administration of challenge financials, together with in-flight expense monitoring to assist groups keep on funds.
• Variance reporting of efficiency measurement towards baselines to find out the variations between forecasted and precise efforts.
• Optimized useful resource allocation and danger administration.
• Automated notifications for brand new and out-of-tolerance assignments.

Professionals and cons

SEE: What’s lean challenge administration?

Planview PPM Professional Integrations

Planview PPM Professional integrates with over 60 third-party providers, together with:

• Jira
• ServiceNow
• Asana
• Microsoft Azure DevOps
• Git
• BMC Treatment
• Trello
• Zendesk
• Xray

Why I selected Planview PPM Professional

I picked Planview PPM Professional for its superior PPM options that assist you to handle all facets of your challenge portfolio on one centralized platform. It helps managers make educated choices on tasks and duties primarily based on useful resource availability, capability, and utilization to fulfill the group’s present and future calls for.

Smartsheet: Greatest for reporting

Smartsheet permits customers to create formulation, handle tasks, monitor progress, automate handbook processes, and customise workflows. Challenge groups and managers acquainted with spreadsheets will discover Smartsheet straightforward to make use of as a result of its spreadsheet-style dashboard.

Smartsheet’s challenge and portfolio reporting functionality permits customers to visualise and report on portfolio knowledge with configurable widget-based views. Smartsheet robotically provides knowledge from new tasks to the staff’s portfolio stories and dashboards. Challenge groups may also monitor tasks, budgets, and assets to make sure they align with the group’s objectives.

Pricing

The Smartsheet Superior Work Administration plan is the one tier choice that features challenge portfolio administration. Smartsheet doesn’t promote the speed for this plan on the web site, however as a substitute encourages potential patrons to contact its gross sales staff for quotes. The Free, Professional, Enterprise, and Enterprise variations lack the PPM function.

• Free: No price for one person and as much as two editors.
• Professional: $9 per person monthly, billed yearly, or $12 per person billed month-to-month.
• Enterprise: $19 per person monthly, billed yearly, or $24 per person billed month-to-month.
• Enterprise: Contact gross sales for a customized quote.
• Superior Work Administration: Customized quote. This plan consists of portfolio administration.

Standout options

• Captures and compares variances between deliberate and precise schedules.
• Gives report grouping into logical classes or classifications.
• Affords grid, Gantt chart, card, and calendar views.
• Automates repetitive duties and processes.

Professionals and cons

Smartsheet integrations

Smartsheet connects with 96 third-party providers. Among the standard integrations embrace:

• Slack
• Quip
• Tibco Spotfire
• Google Docs
• Microsoft Groups
• Dropbox
• Simple Perception
• Jira
• Okta

Why I selected Smartsheet

I chosen Smartsheet for its sturdy reporting capabilities in challenge portfolio administration. The platform provides interactive dashboards that assist you to drill down into particular challenge particulars for a complete view of your portfolio.

For extra data, try our full Smartsheet overview.

Standout options

• Useful resource utilization and capability planning.
• Superior reporting and analytics.
• Over 200 templates obtainable.
• 99.9% uptime service-level settlement.

Professionals and cons

monday.com integrations

monday.com integrates with over 200 third-party providers, together with:

• Pipedrive
• Slack
• Jira
• Trello
• Mailchimp
• Zendesk
• HubSpot
• Zoom
• Gitlab
• Stripe

Why I selected monday.com

monday.com combines flexibility and customization with superior options, making it a wonderful selection for challenge portfolio administration. As a PPM platform, it offers high quality instruments for managing tasks, duties, and assets, providing you with worth on your cash.

For extra data, try our full monday.com overview.

Wrike: Greatest for process monitoring

Wrike is primarily a challenge administration service supplier, with the addition of PPM capabilities that assist groups handle a number of tasks and prioritize assets for a greater workflow. The software has a ready-to-use PPM template and challenge portfolio evaluation capabilities. These options assist groups handle a number of tasks, monitor progress, and handle assets effectively.

Wrike’s collaboration options additionally assist groups collaborate, talk, and coordinate duties. Wrike is obtainable as a cloud-based, desktop, and/or cell app resolution for companies of all sizes.

Pricing

Wrike’s challenge portfolio administration options are solely obtainable within the Enterprise, Enterprise, and Pinnacle pricing tiers:

• Free: Free for limitless customers with entry to fundamental options.
• Group: $10 per person monthly for 2 to 25 customers.
• Enterprise: $24.80 per person monthly for 5 to 200 customers.
• Enterprise: Contact gross sales for a customized quote.
• Pinnacle: Contact gross sales for a customized quote.

Standout options

• Superior useful resource and capability planning.
• Workflow automation to eradicate handbook processes.
• Drag-and-drop capabilities.
• Time monitoring functionality.

Professionals and cons

Wrike Integrations

Wrike integrates with 400+ third-party purposes. A few of their high integrations, embrace:

• Tableau
• Slack
• Salesforce
• Zoom
• Microsoft Groups
• Jira
• HubSpot
• Energy BI

Why I selected Wrike

Throughout my analysis, I discovered that Wrike makes use of AI to reduce your challenge portfolio’s danger and it maintains a danger log to make sure constantly excessive requirements throughout your portfolio. Wrike additionally ranks extremely for useful resource utilization—it evaluates capacities and distribution of labor by visualizing upcoming necessities, in the end serving to to keep away from worker burnout.

For extra data, try our full Wrike overview.

Asana: Greatest for small companies and contractors

Asana PPM helps challenge managers monitor their staff’s initiatives, comparable to challenge standing, progress and useful resource allocation, in a unified dashboard. Asana offers a complete view of a corporation’s challenge portfolio, enabling managers to prioritize tasks, allocate assets, and handle budgets extra successfully.

With Asana, groups can monitor challenge progress, collaborate on duties and arrange reminders and deadlines. It additionally features a workload view, which helps managers establish staff members’ capability and steadiness their workloads.

Pricing

Asana’s PPM options are solely obtainable in its Superior plan, which is priced at $24.99 per person monthly when billed yearly, or $30.49 per person when billed month-to-month.

Standout options

• Challenge views for timeline, checklist, board, and calendar.
• Customized workflow automation.
• Challenge planning, process administration, danger administration, and subject administration.

Professionals and cons

Asana integrations

Asana integrates with over 100 third-party apps, together with:

• Adobe Inventive Cloud
• Okta
• Tableau
• Google Drive
• ServiceNow
• Looker
• Canva
• OneDrive
• InVision
• GitHub
• Trello

Why I selected Asana

I selected Asana for its means to handle a number of tasks and large-scale initiatives, whereas simply visualizing progress throughout initiatives for govt stakeholders. Asana Portfolios may also provide help to monitor challenge timelines and dependencies, permitting you to prioritize and allocate assets successfully.

For extra data, try our full Asana overview.

ClickUp: Greatest for personalization

ClickUp consolidates productiveness, challenge administration, work administration, doc collaboration, and communication on a unified platform. It’s designed to be an all-in-one platform that may be custom-made to go well with the wants of assorted groups and industries, from small companies to massive enterprises. ClickUp offers stakeholders with insights into all tasks’ progress and stories on milestones.

ClickUp has over 15 customizable challenge views and an intensive template library for varied use circumstances. The software has over 50 native integrations, making it straightforward for groups to attach with current apps of their toolkits.

Pricing

• Free Endlessly: No price for 100MB storage and limitless duties.
• Limitless: $7 per person monthly, billed yearly, or $10 per person billed month-to-month.
• Enterprise: $12 per person monthly, billed yearly, or $19 per person billed month-to-month.
• Enterprise: Contact gross sales for a customized quote.

Standout options

• Superior process views, comparable to Gantt chart, desk, timeline, workload, field, exercise, thoughts map, checklist, and calendar.
• Process dependencies functionality.
• Pure language processing.
• Work in progress limits.
• ClickApp cell utility.
• Threat administration functionality to evaluate a number of tasks’ efficiency towards strategic organizational aims.

Professionals and cons

ClickUp integrations

ClickUp provides over 50 native integrations. The favored ones embrace:

• Slack
• Google Drive
• GitHub
• HubSpot
• Loom
• Figma
• Vimeo
• Zoom
• Zendesk
• Tableau

Why I selected ClickUp

I picked ClickUp as a result of it offers templates that will help you handle assets, duties, and aims, visualize progress and efficiency and align your groups round objectives and priorities. It permits you to arrange duties into sixteen totally different statuses, together with new, full, in danger and in progress.

For extra data, try our full ClickUp overview.

LiquidPlanner: Greatest for managing shared assets

LiquidPlanner provides challenge and portfolio administration capabilities that assist groups prioritize work, handle assets, and monitor progress in actual time. My analysis discovered that its PPM capabilities can be found to all person tiers, permitting groups of all sizes to simply create and handle challenge schedules, allocate assets, and ensure everybody works on the proper duties on the proper time. It additionally serves as a unified hub for groups to entry and share paperwork and assets.

Pricing

• Important: $15 per person monthly, billed yearly.
• Skilled: $28 per person monthly, billed yearly.
• Final: $42 per person monthly, billed yearly.

Standout options

• Portfolio-wide search.
• Portfolio workload views.
• Alerts and insights.
• Schedule insights and dependencies.

Professionals and cons

LiquidPlanner integrations

• Slack
• Field
• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• OpenAI
• Zapier

Why I selected LiquidPlanner

I chosen the software due to its excessive degree of customization in challenge and portfolio administration. For example, its customized knowledge performance helps you to categorize your knowledge by shopper, program, and danger degree with varied knowledge subject varieties. Its integration with OpenAI additionally helps you to filter and obtain schedule knowledge for evaluation.

For extra data, try our full LiquidPlanner overview.

Simple Challenge: Greatest for progress visibility

Simple Challenge is a strong challenge and portfolio administration software program that permits customers to plan, monitor and monitor their tasks centrally. It offers a complete overview of challenge efficiency, assets, time, and funds.

With options comparable to International Gantt for correct challenge planning, Portfolio Assertion for creating detailed stories and Portfolio Tree for an outline of all tasks, Simple Challenge simplifies challenge and portfolio administration processes, permitting customers to streamline workflows, optimize useful resource allocation, and obtain challenge objectives.

Pricing

Simple Challenge has each an on-premises version and a cloud version. The on-premises resolution prices $5.90 per person monthly.

Cloud pricing

• Important: $5.90 per person monthly.
• Enterprise: $11.90 per person monthly.
• Platform: $23.90 per person monthly.
• Enterprise: Contact gross sales for a customized quote.

Standout options

• Useful resource administration.
• Agile instruments, together with scrum boards, kanban boards, and dashboards, for product house owners and scrum masters.
• Help portfolio statements for budgets, frolicked, and assets.
• Time-tracking functionality.

SEE: Study extra in regards to the scrum methodology for challenge administration.

Professionals and cons

Simple Challenge integrations

• Outlook plugin
• Make.com
• Jira
• Microsoft Challenge

Why I selected Simple Challenge

Easy challenge monitoring and administration — the Portfolio Tree function in Simple Challenge offers customers a fast overview of all their tasks, with color-coded indicators for vital challenge options comparable to overdue duties, time spent and present standing. This function helps customers keep organized and simply monitor challenge progress.

ActiveCollab: Greatest for small to midsize groups

With ActiveCollab, customers can monitor progress, allocate assets and monitor budgets to make sure profitable challenge supply. The platform permits for simple collaboration amongst staff members, with options like process task, file sharing, and real-time updates. Moreover, ActiveCollab offers a chicken’s eye view of all ongoing tasks, permitting customers to prioritize duties and handle deadlines. Customers may also generate detailed challenge profitability stories to achieve insights into the monetary well being of their tasks.

Pricing

• Free: Plan consists of as much as three members.
• Plus: $9.50 monthly, billed yearly or $11 month-to-month for 3 members.
• Professional: $8 per member monthly billed yearly or $9 per member month-to-month.
• Professional + Get Paid: $11.75 per member monthly billed yearly or $14 per member month-to-month.

Standout options

• Work administration
• Group collaboration
• Time administration
• Useful resource administration
• Shopper administration

Professionals and cons

ActiveCollab integrations

• QuickBooks
• Slack
• Google Drive
• Dropbox

Why I selected ActiveCollab

I selected ActiveCollab for being straightforward to make use of, even for non-technical staff members. It has a easy and intuitive interface, making it easy for staff members to navigate and collaborate on tasks with out a lot coaching or technical data.

For extra data, try our full ActiveCollab overview.

Key options of challenge portfolio administration software program

Challenge portfolio administration software program offers analytics and dashboards to assist managers and stakeholders acquire insights into challenge efficiency. Its options embrace challenge monitoring and reporting, monetary administration, collaboration and communication. Different key PPM software program options embrace:

Portfolio dashboard

PPM instruments typically present a dashboard that shows a corporation’s challenge portfolio overview. It provides a real-time snapshot of the portfolio’s well being, together with KPIs and OKRs, challenge standing, useful resource utilization, and funds, plus a forecast versus the precise baseline. With this function, challenge stakeholders can establish and deal with potential points, taking a look at useful resource constraints and breaking down massive tasks to extend success charges.

Useful resource administration

PPM instruments normally supply useful resource administration performance, which permits organizations to plan and allocate assets throughout a number of tasks. Given useful resource constraints, this function helps guarantee assets are usually not under- or over-utilized and challenge timelines are real looking. Useful resource administration performance additionally permits organizations to establish and deal with useful resource conflicts earlier than they develop into essential points.

Challenge prioritization

Challenge prioritization permits stakeholders to make data-driven choices about which tasks to pursue and find out how to allocate assets. By prioritizing tasks primarily based on strategic objectives and aims, organizations can maximize the worth of their challenge portfolios.

Threat administration

The most effective PPM instruments embrace performance to assist organizations establish, assess, and handle dangers related to tasks and packages. When potential challenge dangers are recognized and addressed early within the challenge life cycle, there may be a right away enhance within the challenge success fee.

Nonetheless, if dangers are usually not correctly managed, they might delay supply, price the staff extra money and have an effect on its general efficiency.

Reporting and analytics

The flexibility to make choices about challenge choice, useful resource allocation and different strategic initiatives is important for a corporation’s general well being. With PPM reporting and analytics options, organizations can establish developments and patterns in challenge efficiency, enabling them to trace KPIs and measure the success of their challenge portfolio.

How do I select the most effective challenge portfolio administration software for my enterprise?

Choosing the proper PPM software is essential to your group’s challenge portfolio administration success. Listed here are some key components to contemplate when deciding on a PPM software:

• Alignment with organizational objectives.
• Consumer-friendly interface.
• Integration with different instruments.
• Availability of options: challenge monitoring and reporting, useful resource allocation and scheduling, danger administration, and portfolio evaluation.
• Customization and adaptability.
• Vendor help and coaching.

Finally, the most effective PPM resolution for you is dependent upon your organization’s necessities.

Based mostly on my analysis, I discovered that Smartsheet, Planview PPM Professional, Celoxis, and Wrike are complete when it comes to PPM options, protecting all key areas from portfolio and useful resource administration to danger administration and budgeting. monday.com, ClickUp and Asana are wonderful for process administration, automation, and staff collaboration.

LiquidPlanner and Simple Challenge supply sturdy help for challenge monitoring, useful resource allocation, and portfolio administration, whereas ActiveCollab is extra centered on challenge execution and collaboration however lacks some superior portfolio and danger administration options.

Methodology

After I evaluated the most effective PPM software program, I thought of a number of standards. As a baseline, I reviewed software program options to make sure every resolution provides challenge portfolio administration capabilities. I additionally thought of the price of the software program, the benefit of implementation and use and customer support and help. Lastly, I examined the evaluations and scores every resolution has obtained.

Regularly requested questions (FAQs)

What’s PPM?

PPM is the centralized administration of a number of tasks inside a corporation. It permits companies to prioritize and allocate assets and handle dangers throughout all tasks within the portfolio to align with strategic aims.

How a lot do PPM instruments price?

The price of PPM instruments varies broadly relying on the options, variety of customers, and deployment choices (cloud-based or on-premises). My analyses discovered that ActiveCollab provides essentially the most reasonably priced fee at $11 flat payment for 3 members monthly whereas Asana is the costliest at $30.49 per person when billed month-to-month. Some distributors additionally supply customized pricing primarily based on the scale and complexity of the portfolio.

What are the advantages of PPM software program?

• Centralized administration.
• Higher useful resource administration.
• Threat administration.
• Enhanced collaboration.
• Improved challenge visibility.
• Knowledgeable choice making.
• Efficiency monitoring.

What’s the distinction between challenge administration and portfolio administration?

Challenge administration focuses on the execution of particular person tasks, managing duties, timelines and assets to ship particular outcomes or merchandise inside outlined constraints (scope, time, funds).

Portfolio administration, alternatively, oversees a group of tasks, making certain they align with the group’s broader enterprise objectives. It’s involved with balancing priorities, assets and dangers throughout a number of tasks to maximise the general worth to the group.