Common Project Portfolio Management FAQs
Why do companies use portfolio management?
Companies use project portfolio management (PPM) to help them choose and manage a mix of projects. PPM helps companies stay on track with their strategic goals. They use it to make the best use of limited resources. PPM also provides clarity of work to everyone in the organization. This lowers risk and improves decision making.
What are common project portfolio management (PPM) challenges?
One of the most common challenges with PPM is that it does not always allow leaders to execute strategy consistently with the resources available. It also often involves multiple tools and complicated reporting, making it difficult to track performance. Many businesses don’t have a centralized source of truth, or struggle to see all projects at once.
What is the difference between project management and portfolio management?
Portfolio management and project management are distinct yet related disciplines. Portfolio management is about choosing the right projects and combinations of projects so that they support strategic goals and provide the most value. Project management is ensuring that each project is finished on schedule, within budget, and to the right scope.
How does business process automation improve project portfolio management?
Business process automation helps PPM by cutting down on human error and improving consistency across workflows. It also allows for presenting real-time data faster and encourages flexibility throughout the portfolio. Automation gives a clear view of project and portfolio health and how resources are being spent.
How can you measure PPM maturity?
PPM maturity is best measured by evaluating your organization across key metrics. These include governance, portfolio definition, optimization, resource management, performance monitoring, data, and analytics.
What is the best enterprise project portfolio management software?
The best enterprise project portfolio management software depends on your organization’s size, industry, and maturity level. Here’s a list of the top options and what each is best suited for:
- Smartsheet: Ideal for companies wanting a highly adaptable platform that can scale across departments without requiring heavy configuration or IT involvement.
- Celoxis: A strong match for larger teams that need advanced scheduling tools, detailed cost tracking, and robust resource planning.
- Monday.com: Works well for organizations that prefer visually driven boards and dashboards to manage work and monitor progress.
- Microsoft Project: Suited for PMOs and IT teams who rely on Microsoft 365 and need support for traditional, agile, or blended methodologies.
- Oracle Primavera P6: Designed for industries like engineering and construction that rely on complex scheduling and large, capital-intensive projects.
- Planview: Best for enterprises with mature project practices and a need for deep portfolio governance and capacity planning.
- ProofHub: A good fit for smaller teams and creative agencies that benefit from built-in review and approval tools.
- Workfront: Tailored for creative, marketing, and content teams—especially those already using Adobe tools and needing structured approval workflows.
- Wrike: Strong for digital and marketing groups that require enterprise-level controls, detailed reporting, and customizable workspaces.
For a full comparison, see this guide to the best enterprise project management software.How can you measure return on investment (ROI) of adopting a PPM software?
To find out how much money PPM software saves you, compare the cost of the system with the benefits you can see after implementing the software. You can measure current performance by metrics like delays, cost overruns, and reporting time. After that, set goals for the metrics you want to improve. Track those metrics after you make adjustments.
When making a decision, be sure to compare licensing, training, and installation costs against the added value of fewer labor hours and delays. Learn more about Smartsheet ROI.
Smartsheet FAQs for Project Portfolio Management
What are the main benefits of using Smartsheet for PPM?
One of the main benefits of using the Smartsheet platform is that it brings all of your data together and displays it in real time across all of your portfolios. It is simple to use and can be customized to fit your business. This makes it easier to implement and lessens the administrative strain.
Smartsheet supports many different project management methodologies, like Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid. It's an excellent way to find project and budget information and aligns work with strategy. The platform can also automate tasks and ensure things are delivered on time with tools like Control Center.What features does Smartsheet have for project and portfolio management?
Smartsheet has all the PPM features you need, like portfolio input, capacity management, governance workflows, and performance reporting. Control Center and other add-ons automate and standardize project development.
Resource Management helps you allocate and forecast resources correctly. WorkApps, Data Shuttle, and system connectors connect company data, making it visible in real time and minimizing the need for manual data entry.Will Smartsheet integrate with your existing PMO frameworks (Waterfall, Agile, hybrid)?
Yes, Smartsheet works with all the main PMO frameworks, such as Waterfall, Agile, and hybrid. Teams can utilize Gantt, grid, card, or calendar views and mix and combine them as needed. This gives PMOs the flexibility to establish guidelines while allowing their teams to use the processes that work best for them.
How well does Smartsheet scale for large enterprises with hundreds of projects?
Smartsheet can handle thousands of projects. It standardizes project creation, automating reporting and displaying data in one system or dashboard. This avoids the confusion of multiple tools, and the risk of inconsistency. Control Center and other add-ons help ensure every new project has the same templates, naming standards, workflows, and KPIs.
What is Control Center within Smartsheet?
Control Center is the business-level engine at Smartsheet. It is used for automating and managing project portfolio management. It makes standard project blueprints, automates provisioning and archiving, and puts all the project data into portfolio dashboards.
Control Center enforces governance norms and makes it easy for all teams to follow the same standards. It also gives leaders real-time access to information on risks, resources, and finances in their portfolios.How does Smartsheet handle resource and capacity planning across multiple projects?
Resource Management by Smartsheet provides real-time data on each team member’s workload and availability. It also shows you how their time is being used on all projects. Heat maps let managers see how much work can be done, compare anticipated hours to actual hours, and redistribute workloads.
With Control Center, Smartsheet can automatically send resource and financial data to dashboards. It assists with scenario planning and lets portfolio executives change schedules or priorities based on limitations.How can you ensure data consistency and standardization across different project teams in Smartsheet?
Smartsheet uses Control Center to enforce standardization by generating all new projects from approved templates and blueprints. This ensures consistent structures such as project plans, RAID logs, dashboards, intake forms, and reports.
What controls can you put in place for governance and compliance in Smartsheet?
Businesses can use Smartsheet to design standard procedures for intake, approval, change management, and archiving. This will help them consistently meet auditing and regulatory requirements.
Control Center supports governance by automatically creating projects, using approved templates and permissions. This keeps workflows consistent across your portfolio. Smartsheet also has authorization levels, workplace access restrictions, and automated lifecycle management to help keep up with compliance needs.Can Smartsheet integrate with our CRM, ERP, and BI tools?
Yes, Smartsheet integrates with CRM, ERP, and BI tools. It works with Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Okta, and Tableau, among others. These connections keep data in sync between systems so that teams don’t have to enter it repeatedly.
For bigger systems, Data Shuttle moves data into and out of Smartsheet on a schedule. This ensures that all platforms have the same information at all times.How easy is Smartsheet to learn and use? How can I trust my team will actually use the solution?
The spreadsheet-style interface on Smartsheet makes it familiar to users, and therefore easier to adopt than other PPM systems. Users report that Smartsheet workflows are intuitive. Independent evaluations give it high customer sentiment rankings. Teams using Smartsheet are more likely to keep their project data updated because of its familiarity and ease of use.
Can Smartsheet pull together accurate information across the company to confidently make decisions about the business?
Yes, Smartsheet centralizes project, resource, and budget data across the organization. It provides real-time dashboards for executives and PMO leaders. Features like DataMesh prevent duplicate data entry and keep information synced across sheets, reducing errors.
Does Smartsheet support audit trails, role-based controls, and approval workflows?
Smartsheet has audit logs and change histories that track edits, sharing, permission updates, and activities across sheets. It also has detailed role-based permissions for both sheets and workspaces. Teams can create automatic approval workflows that send requests to the right approvers, either in order or at the same time. This helps businesses satisfy governance and compliance needs.