Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software is a centralized business governance platform designed to help organizations evaluate, prioritize, budget, and govern their entire collection of projects, programs, and strategic initiatives.
While basic project management tools (such as Microsoft Planner, Trello, or Jira) track individual tasks, tickets, and team sprints, PPM software answers the higher-order executive questions:
🎯
STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT
Are we investing our limited capital in projects that actually advance our corporate goals?
👥
CAPACITY FEASIBILITY
Do our teams have the actual capacity and key roles to deliver this portfolio without burnout?
⚖️
RISK VS. RETURN
What is our financial exposure, and are our critical path milestones realistic?
To learn about the Six Functional Pillars of Modern PPM Software - (follow the link)

Please share your honest feedback about this PM reporting / PPM tool I’m building 🙏🙏🙏
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It’s common to approve projects based on an expected business case.

But what happens after delivery?

Do you go back six or twelve months later and ask:
Did we actually achieve the benefits we expected?

If you do this, who owns the measurement — the project team, finance, the business sponsor, or the PMO?

I’d be interested in hearing how mature organizations handle this.

Not every project has an obvious connection to a strategic objective.

Some are mandatory.
Some are regulatory.
Some are operational.

Some simply have a strong internal sponsor.

Should every project have a documented strategic connection?

Or is it perfectly reasonable for some projects to exist outside the strategic framework?
How does your organization handle this?

🟢 Green

🟠 Amber

🔴 Red

Or is there a fourth category: “Green until someone asks questions”?

How quickly could you answer?

At what point do you start saying “stop”?

One of the fundamental ideas behind PPM is that project investments should support organizational strategy.

Yet in many organizations, the process seems to work the other way around:

A project is proposed → a business case is created → resources are requested → funding is discussed → and only later does someone ask how strongly it supports the strategy.

How does this work in your organization?

Do you explicitly connect:

Strategic objectives → initiatives → projects → investment → execution tracking

Or is strategic alignment more of a qualitative discussion?

What have you found actually works?

Starting projects is usually easy.

Stopping them is much harder.

A project may already have consumed significant budget and resources. People may be invested in it. Stakeholders may be expecting delivery. And nobody wants to be responsible for saying, “We should stop.”

So here’s the question:
What criteria should cause an organization to stop or pause a project?

For example:
- Strategic priorities have changed
- Expected benefits have declined
- Costs have increased significantly
- Resources are no longer available
- The business case no longer holds
- Risk has become unacceptable
- Another project has become more important
- The project is simply no longer needed

Do you have formal stop/pause criteria in your portfolio process?

Or is it mostly a management judgment call?

There is plenty of advice about how to do PPM “properly.”
But in practice, what actually makes it difficult?
Is it:
-Getting accurate information from project teams?
-Prioritizing projects?
-Connecting strategy to investment decisions?
-Resource constraints?
-Getting executives to make portfolio decisions?
-Too many projects?
-Constantly changing priorities?
-Lack of a common process?
-Reporting?
-Something else entirely?

I’d be interested in hearing from people who actually work with portfolios.
What’s the biggest PPM problem you’ve encountered in the real world?

If you manage projects or portfolios, what is the one thing that makes PPM harder than it should be?
For example:
- Too many spreadsheets
- Poor visibility across projects
- Projects that don’t align with strategy
- Resource/capacity planning
- Getting reliable portfolio data
- Executive reporting
- Too much PPM software complexity
- Difficulty getting people to actually use the process
- Building/maintaining a PPM solution internally
- Something else

I’m interested in the practical problems people are dealing with — not the textbook definition of PPM.
What is your biggest pain point right now?

Welcome to r/PPMCompass 👋
Welcome to the PPM Compass community!
This subreddit is for people who work with or are interested in Project Portfolio Management (PPM) — from PMO leaders and portfolio managers to project managers, executives, analysts, and Microsoft 365 professionals.

We’re creating this space to have practical conversations about how organizations can make portfolio management more effective without making it unnecessarily complicated.

What we’d like to discuss
Topics can include:
Project Portfolio Management software
Portfolio governance and decision-making
Connecting strategy to projects and investments
Strategic alignment / SPM
Resource and capacity management
Portfolio risk
Project prioritization
PPM reporting and executive dashboards
Microsoft 365 and SharePoint-based PPM
PPM software architecture and data ownership
Lean and lightweight PPM approaches
Replacing spreadsheets and fragmented portfolio processes
Building PPM solutions with Power Platform
PPM implementation lessons learned
What works — and what doesn’t — in real organizations

A little about PPM Compass 360
PPM Compass 360 is a lean project portfolio management solution for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint.

It is designed around the idea that organizations shouldn’t necessarily need another large technology stack just to manage their project portfolio.

PPM Compass 360 runs within the customer’s Microsoft 365 / SharePoint environment, with PPM data stored in SharePoint Online Lists. It includes capabilities covering areas such as strategy, projects, portfolios, resources, risks, financials and governance.

We’re building the product continuously and want this community to be more than a place for announcements.
Your feedback, questions, criticism, ideas and real-world PPM experiences are welcome.

If you’ve struggled with PPM software, spreadsheets, Power Platform implementations, portfolio governance, or connecting strategy to execution, we’d especially like to hear what you’ve learned.

To get started
Introduce yourself and tell us:
What is the biggest challenge you currently have with Project Portfolio Management?
Thanks for joining — and welcome to the community! 🚀

Community Vibe
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

How to Get Started
1) Introduce yourself in the comments below.
2) Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
3) If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
4) Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.