Today is a very exciting day both for Planview, and for our new friends and colleagues at Projectplace. Today we announced the acquisition of Projectplace, a Stockholm-based leader in the project collaboration market. Obviously we are still Planview, but why the “new”? The new is the combination of market-leading enterprise portfolio management and project collaboration under one common brand, one common vision, and one passion for customer success.
But what’s still the same? True to our 25-year roots, Planview continues to be committed to a single vision of helping our customers optimize their limited resources through portfolio management. “It’s all about the resources” still rings true, but in an even more exciting way than ever with the addition of Projectplace.
What also continues to ring true is our single focus as a company. In an employee meeting the other day I was asked, “Are we still best-of-breed now that we have two products?” The answer to this question is an emphatic, “Yes!” The focus on portfolio and resource management is exactly the same for Planview; we just now have a broader set of market-leading, cloud-based solutions to pay off this promise for customers.
So what is “new?” What is different? A lot. The PPM market has been a vibrant place to be in for many years. But today’s portfolios are increasingly diverse, and the broadest portfolio is not defined by solely by projects managed via PPM solutions. Certainly many are managed by PPM solutions, but there is plenty of work done and resources consumed outside of traditional projects. Agile has become a mainstream methodology, and many of the PPM players have expanded their worldview to embrace a portfolio of traditional and Agile projects. Planview supports this portfolio through our strategic partnership with Rally and integrations with Jira. But that is still only part of the total portfolio.
What about all that other work we do every day with every co-worker on every team that we are a part of? You know, the stuff that just gets done; that needs to be cranked out every day? That is actually a huge part – arguably the largest part – of how we spend our time and resources. What if we had a way to make that part of our day more productive, but also could see that effort in our portfolio when appropriate? That is what ProjectPlace is all about: collaborative projects. It’s the work that is in the air we breathe every day, bringing teams together in a more effective way.
Ok, but there are other services out there like Projectplace, you say. Is that the “new?” Integrating Planview Enterprise and ProjectPlace will create a whole new portfolio for every one of our customers: one with a breadth that does not exist today. And the new Planview creates a single solution provider ready to work with every one of our customers to leverage these two great solutions either standalone or integrated to achieve their goals and drive their businesses forward – no matter how you work.
New and exciting times for sure.
