On Atlantic Global’s PPM Blog, they posted 11 barriers to adoption of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) systems.

I agree with many of these user adoption challenges.  However, there a few more I would add to the list:

12. PPM solutions as defined by Gartner and other analysts create yet another silo application that is mainly sponsored and owned by IT. Project Workforce Management takes a different approach. By providing a solution that caters to the entire project and service-driven enterprise, the solution is far more likely to gain acceptance and to become a core system. Many of the PPM projects we saw in the past start with a lot of energy and then get abandoned with IT management changes, get labeled as something that is useful for IT only, or other line of business executives pushing for their own silo software investments.

13. PPM solutions as the name implies do not focus on the needs of workforce; this creates even more resistance. That is why so many PPM projects fail. The workforce management aspect of project execution is ignored in such systems.

14. Without a common workflow architecture and user interface, PPM solutions are really a set of disconnected applications assembled together to manage projects. A common workflow framework, once adopted, is used to drive all project and workforce related processes and change requests. Without a standard and powerful workflow engine at its core PPM applications end up adding new unfamiliar functionality based on the needs of various departments which increases creates more overhead and resistance.

15. PPM applications are not connected to payroll and billing. PPM vendors are so focused on project management that they fail to realize that the only way a system can truly add value to an organization is for it to become a business critical system. Project workforce management ties into payroll, billing and accounting systems, making it a business critical system everyone has to work with and adopt to get their jobs done.

16. PPM solutions do not directly address the compliance challenges of a company that has to deal with labor laws, Sarbanes-Oxley and GAAP (accounting) regulations. Project Workforce Management has extensive compliance automation capabilities that enforce the company’s work policies, cost accounting/expense reporting/billing processes, and other corporate procedures and guidelines that facilitate compliances and audits; since compliance is not an option this substantially decreases the user adoption challenge.