PM3

PM3 in NHS Northumberland

Comments: PM3 has enabled us to move away from our previous PMO processes which were spreadsheet (MS Excel) based and cumbersome. PM3 provides us with the 'single version of the truth' in terms of the development and delivery of our operational plan and progress towards achieving our strategic objectives. PM3 is now the 'golden thread' which runs through all of our operational delivery of projects, change, and major transformation and the flexibility of reporting means that we can generate numerous reports and monitoring documents for operational and strategic delivery groups and corporate decision-making committees with ease and the touch of a button. The overall experience with PM3 has been excellent and we have quickly built excellent relationships with the team at Bestoutcome who have been very supportive and responsive to our needs. We look forward to further developing our use of PM3 as the CCG transitions into the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System and hope to be able to use the work we have already done as an exemplar to colleagues from other CCGs/ICSs.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Highly configurable and user friendly

Comments: Very positive. The Bestoutcome team have been very supportive through the initial trial to implementation and training. Looking forward to building on the current configuration and putting the system to the test fully.

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.

Alternatives Considered: KeyedIn, monday.com, Wrike and Planview ProjectPlace

Reasons for Switching to PM3: Ability to configure functionality and start small was a key factor. Other products were too large/complex for our set up and culture, and often focussed more on project task management rather than portfolio management.

Refinement

Comments: As a business we are still in the very early stages of using the tool. Initial observations are that it is excellent on some things and other areas need much more work to make the tool intuitive to use. This can be resolved via more updates I'm sure.
Support via the help desk and via my account managers has been first class and Best Outcome have shown great flexibility around changes in Licence application during the Covid 19 period when our Programme was put on hold.
Management of updates is clear and very thorough with release notes easy to follow.

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.

Procurement, implementation and deployment of PM3 in an NHS environment.

Comments: Great overall first-hand personable support from the whole PM3 team including at [SENSITIVE CONTENT]. Responsive and understanding in procurement negotiations. Vastly experienced practitioners on hand to support the implementation of the tool. Flexibility shown with short notice changes in training requirements during deployment. Data is entered into PM3 once where oversight can then be sought through a suite of over 100 ready to use configurable reports, saving time at all levels from project teams to the PMO to Director level committees and boards. Project documentation can be uploaded onto the tool, again helping to ensure golden source data and information. Can be used for Agile projects along with the more traditional waterfall projects. The PM3 mobile app helps with being able to access information while on the move. For NHS users: The partitioning function allow for multiple organisations such as Integrated Care providers (ICP) and Integrated Care Systems to capture appropriate related programmes and projects therefore avoiding duplication of effort and misreporting. The Cost Improvement Plan (CIP) functionality allows for the planning, capturing, measuring and monitoring of CIP projects and schemes with a suite of reports built specifically for the NHS and financial savings programme.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Great intuitive tool.Enables us to drive best practice and consistency across the portfolio.

Comments: PM3 has helped drive consistency and standards across our portfolio. Following our upgrade to PM3 Cloud, we have also been able to drive efficiencies through the removal of duplication (e.g. Excel RAIDD) and manual reporting.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.