Explore Project Portfolio Management

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Explore Project Portfolio Management

    Project Portfolio Management (PPM) in ServiceNow is a suite of applications designed to help organizations analyze, approve, and convert ideas into projects, then manage those projects through completion. It supports managing resources and financials at the individual project level or aggregated into programs or portfolios. PPM accommodates traditional waterfall, Agile, or hybrid project execution methodologies, enabling teams to plan and execute work using the approach that best fits their needs.

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    Key Features

    • Innovation Management: Capture and evaluate ideas, promoting accepted ideas to demands, stories, epics, or projects, primarily used by Project Teams and Demand Managers.
    • Demand Management: Assess and approve demands, distinguishing between strategic and operational demands, managed by Demand Managers.
    • Project Management: Manage projects, tasks, and resources with the Project Manager and Project Team roles.
    • Program Management: Oversee programs, including multiple projects and their tasks, for Program Managers.
    • Portfolio Management: Manage multiple projects and programs across portfolios, intended for Portfolio Managers.
    • Resource Management: Develop resource plans and handle resource requests via the Resource Manager role.
    • Time Card Management: Track daily time spent on tasks to ensure accurate time reporting.
    • Analytics Solutions: Provide visibility into project, program, and portfolio status and health, aiding decision-making for managers and business stakeholders.
    • Integration with Digital Portfolio Management (DPM): Offers a unified workspace for managing services and applications through their lifecycle, allowing DPM managers to view project data and create demands linked to business applications.
    • Integration with Agile Development 2.0: Combines Scrum methodologies within project-based IT development to enhance Agile execution.
    • Integration with Test Management 2.0: Facilitates testing activities within projects managed in PPM.
    • Domain Separation: Supports data isolation for domain-specific users, with some limitations relevant to PPM.
    • PPM Standard Application: Integrates financial management with project portfolio management to provide comprehensive oversight.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By implementing PPM, ServiceNow customers can streamline the entire lifecycle of project and portfolio management, from idea generation to project completion. It enables better collaboration across roles such as demand managers, project managers, program managers, and portfolio managers, providing clear visibility into resource allocation, financials, and project health. Integration with Digital Portfolio Management and Agile or Test Management extends functionality, aligning project work with business applications and agile methodologies. Domain separation ensures secure and isolated data management for organizations with multi-domain requirements.

    Learn more about Project Portfolio Management (PPM) with a sample workflow and review the benefits it can provide for different users in your organization.

    Project Portfolio Management overview

    PPM is a collection of multiple applications that help you analyze and approve ideas and demands, convert them to projects and manage them through completion. You can manage resources and financials of individual projects or the ones that are rolled up to a program or portfolio. PPM enables your teams to plan and execute work in traditional waterfall methodology or combine an Agile approach to execute using a hybrid methodology.

    Project Portfolio Management workflow

    Figure 1. Project execution in a Waterfall, Agile, or Hybrid approach using PPM
    Project execution in a Waterfall, Agile, or Hybrid approach using PPM

    The project manager (project_manager role) includes all the manager roles for the applications included in the PPM suite.

    Project Portfolio Management benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Gather and evaluate of ideas and promote accepted ideas to demand, story, epic, or project. Innovation Management Project Teams, Demand Manager
    Assessing, approve, and promote demands to strategic and operational demands. Demand Management Demand Manager
    Manage projects, tasks, and resources. Project Management Project Manager, Project Team
    Manage programs, the projects under a program and its tasks. Program Management Program Manager
    Manage your projects and programs of different portfolios. Portfolio Management Portfolio Manager
    Create resource plans and request resources. Resource Management classic Resource Manager
    Track time on a daily basis against tasks Time Card Management
    Gain visibility into the status and health of programs, projects, and demands. Project Portfolio Management Platform Analytics Solutions Project, Program, or Portfolio Manager or Business stakeholder

    Integration with Digital Portfolio Management

    Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) provides a unified workspace for owners to view and collectively manage their services and applications through the full life cycle. Installing DPM and Project Portfolio Management enables the integration with Project Management and Demand Management. With this integration, DPM managers can view project data that may impact a business application and create demands on a business application in DPM.

    For more information, see Exploring Digital Portfolio Management.

    Integration with Agile 2.0

    TBD.

    Integration with Test Management 2.0

    TBD.

    Domain separation

    Domain separation provides complete data isolation for domain-specific users. Project Portfolio Management supports domain separation with a few limitations. For more information, see Domain separation and Project Portfolio Management.