Power PPM: The Project Portfolio Management on Power Platform

Quick answer: Power PPM means two things. It is the product name of Projectum's project portfolio management solution, and it has become shorthand for the whole category of PPM built on Microsoft Power Apps and Dataverse. The category divides into four shapes: Microsoft's own open-source accelerator, partner accelerators deployed by consultancies, commercial Dataverse products, and Microsoft-aligned solutions built on other foundations. Which shape fits depends on data residency, whether you have a Power Platform practice to own it, and how many tools your teams actually deliver work in.

Eleven or so vendors compete here, spread across six countries, and no complete map of them exists. This is an attempt at one.

Two things called Power PPM

Worth clearing up first, because it causes real confusion.

Power PPM is the name of a specific product: Projectum's project portfolio management solution, built on the Microsoft Power Platform and sold internationally through partners. It is a real product with a real customer base.

It has also become shorthand for the whole category — any PPM solution built on Power Apps and Dataverse. When someone says they are evaluating Power PPM options, they usually mean the category rather than Projectum specifically.

This article is about the category. Projectum's product is one of the entries in it.

Why PPM keeps being built here

The Power Platform has become the default foundation for Microsoft-ecosystem PPM, and the reasons are architectural rather than fashionable.

Solutions deploy into your own Microsoft tenant, so portfolio data never leaves it. Data residency is satisfied by definition rather than by contract. Identity, security and compliance inherit from Microsoft, which turns the security review that stalls a SaaS purchase into a much shorter conversation. Dataverse gives a proper relational model rather than lists bolted together. And the whole thing is extensible: if your gate process has a step no product anticipated, someone can build it.

These are genuine advantages and they are why the category exists. What comes with them is ownership, discussed at the end of this article rather than dismissed in passing.

The category has four shapes

Grouping by vendor obscures the decision. Grouping by shape clarifies it, because the shape determines what you are responsible for.

• First-party accelerators — Microsoft's own open-source starting point.
• Partner accelerators — a deployed application built by a consultancy, usually with implementation and training attached.
• Power Platform products — versioned commercial products that install into your tenant.
• Not Power Platform-native — solutions in the same shortlists built on different foundations.

First-party: Microsoft Project Accelerator

Microsoft publishes an MIT-licensed Project Accelerator on GitHub — an open-source solution you deploy into your own Power Platform environment, with a project and portfolio data model provided out of the box.

It is a legitimate starting point and free of licence cost for the solution itself. Two things shape the fit. Its terminology follows the legacy Project for the web model, which now sits behind the product line. And it is a starting point by design: deployment, every divergence you make from the template, and all subsequent maintenance are yours. Organizations with an established Power Platform practice often begin here.

Partner accelerators

Wellingtone Accelerator+

Wellingtone are a UK PPM consultancy and were named Microsoft's global Partner of the Year for PPM in 2025. Accelerator+ is a fixed-scope Power App deployed into your tenant, built on Planner Premium, covering portfolio and programme structure, resources, cost, risks, benefits, gates and baselines, with a Power BI reporting pack.

Two characteristics define the fit. Because it is built on Planner Premium, participants need Premium licensing and Basic plans are out of scope. And the advanced resource, cost and dependency capabilities are available as plugins rather than in the base app. The consultancy depth behind it is real and shows in the product.

Power Framework for Planner

Power Framework is a UK vendor with a ladder of products. Their Planner tier is a Foundation app deployed with implementation, training and a year of support, live in roughly two weeks, covering stage gates, risks, issues, benefits, status collection and Power BI reporting.

It is positioned explicitly as an entry point. The scenario modelling, investment control and multi-tool integration sit in their fuller Power Framework PPM product. Notably, Power Framework ships no scheduling engine of its own — their Schedule Hub brings Microsoft Project data into Dataverse instead. That is an architectural decision rather than a gap, and it suits organizations already standardized on Project Desktop.

Power Platform products

BrightWork 365

Irish, with a long history in Microsoft-ecosystem project management going back to SharePoint. BrightWork 365 spans Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Teams and SharePoint with Dataverse underneath. Their distinguishing approach is template-led and deliberately incremental — start with a light template, evolve as the organization matures — supported by a structured customer success programme.

Sensei IQ

US-based, from Sensei Project Solutions. Sensei IQ installs as a managed solution in your tenant, and its most interesting architectural choice is a customization layer that survives vendor updates — the cleanest answer anyone in this category has to the upgrade problem, and worth understanding properly if you expect to tailor heavily. It also pulls task data from Planner, Project Online, Jira and Smartsheet.

Projectum

Danish, with two products: Power PPM and xPM. Enterprise strategy-to-execution positioning, strong in Northern Europe, sold substantially through partners. The product that gave the category its shorthand name.

pmo365

Australian, with a broad solution library covering the full PMO surface — intake, governance, resources, financials, benefits, reporting. Deployment, configuration and support are bundled into the subscription rather than scoped separately, which is unusual in this category. You own the data and the IP in your own environment.

Altus

US-based, and the most complete governance registers in the category. Its Microsoft Project Desktop add-in is deeper than anything else here, which matters if you have schedulers who work in Project and will not move. Tiered by scope, from portfolio delivery through to strategy and prioritization.

TPG ProjectPowerPack

German, from The Project Group, a long-established Microsoft PPM partner. Built on Dataverse and positioned explicitly as the Project Online successor, with attention paid to connecting Microsoft Project Desktop clients to a central Dataverse database — which speaks directly to organizations with a heavy Project Professional estate.

edison365

UK-based, entering from a different direction: ideas and innovation first, then business case, then delivery. If your problem is as much about what should be in the portfolio as about running what is already in it, this is a different and legitimate framing.

In the same shortlists, different foundation

Two categories of solution appear alongside these without being Power Platform builds.

OnePlan is Microsoft-first and appears in most of these evaluations, but is built on Azure rather than deployed into your Dataverse environment.

Hosted portfolio layers, including PPM Express, sit outside the tenant entirely and read your Microsoft data. That is a genuinely different architecture with a different trade-off, covered at the end of this article.

What actually separates them

Feature grids in this category are close to useless, because at the level of a capability list the products converge. Almost all of them do portfolios, programmes, gates, resources, financials, benefits, risks and Power BI reporting. The real differences are structural.

1. Product or configured solution. Is this versioned software with an upgrade path, or a solution shaped to you? What happens to your customizations at the next release? This is the question buyers most often fail to ask and most often regret.

2. Scheduling foundation. Some build their own engine, some rely on Planner Premium, some deliberately have none and integrate Microsoft Project instead.

3. Planner Basic coverage. Solutions built on Planner Premium exclude Basic plans. If parts of your organization run on Basic, this is decisive rather than a detail.

4. Non-Microsoft delivery tools. Jira and Azure DevOps coverage varies widely, and often sits in a higher tier.

5. Regional presence. Support and implementation are frequently partner-delivered. Ask who actually does the work in your region.

6. Ownership after go-live. Which tasks are yours, and how many hours a month are they?

The question everyone underweights

Deployment is a project with a budget, a plan and an end date, and the vendors in this category handle it well.

Ownership is not a project. After go-live somebody administers the environment, manages solution layers, tests releases and works out what to do when a connector changes or a control is deprecated. That person usually has another job.

This is the single most common surprise in year two, and it is not the vendors' fault — it is simply not theirs to own.

There is a second version of the same question about the platform itself. Microsoft has retired or consolidated several project management products in under two years: Project for the web folded into Planner Premium in May 2025, Viva Goals retired at the end of 2025, Project Online retiring on 30 September 2026. The direction is coherent and the notice periods were reasonable. But when the product, the platform beneath it and the tooling around it all come from one vendor, that vendor's roadmap is not a risk you can spread — your lever is your partner's ability to respond. That is an acceptable trade for many organizations, and it should be an explicit one rather than an assumed one.

Which shape fits which organization

• Tenant residency is a hard requirement — you are choosing between the Power Platform options and the rest of this article is a shortlist exercise. This is the strongest reason to be in this category and no hosted product can match it.
• You have an established Power Platform practice with capacity to own another solution — the marginal cost of adding PPM here is genuinely low.
• Your process is unusual enough that no product fits — an accelerator plus your own build is the honest answer.
• You want a portfolio view without a deployment project, and delivery is spread across several tools — a hosted layer is the better structural match.

Where PPM Express Enterprise sits

PPM Express is not a Power Platform build, and it would be strange to end a category map by pretending otherwise.

PPM Express Enterprise is a hosted portfolio layer. There is nothing to deploy into Dataverse, no environment to administer and no configuration project before the first portfolio view. You connect the Planner plans that represent real initiatives — Basic and Premium, including plans created in Teams — and the portfolio sits above them: programmes and portfolios, resource capacity and utilization, budgets, forecasts and benefits, risks and issues, prioritization and funding scenarios, and reporting executives open themselves. The integration reads and never writes back.

Two differences are worth naming against the products above. Planner Basic is fully in scope, which matters in organizations where Premium licensing is uneven. And Jira, Azure DevOps, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet and monday.com connect into the same portfolio, so a mixed estate produces one portfolio rather than one per tool.

AI runs at portfolio level. Status summaries are generated from live delivery data when requested or when a project syncs; AI agents monitor and propose rather than execute. Copilot integration for PPM Express Enterprise is in development.

And the trade-off, stated as plainly as the advantages: your portfolio data is hosted by us rather than sitting in your own tenant. If that is a requirement you cannot move on, one of the products above is your answer, and you should hear that from us rather than discover it in week six of an evaluation.

Frequently asked questions

What is Power PPM? It is both a product and a category label. Projectum sells a product called Power PPM, built on the Microsoft Power Platform. The term is also used generically for any project portfolio management solution built on Power Apps and Dataverse and deployed into an organization's own Microsoft tenant.

Which PPM solutions are built on the Power Platform? BrightWork 365, Sensei IQ, Projectum Power PPM and xPM, Power Framework, pmo365, Altus, TPG ProjectPowerPack and edison365 are commercial Dataverse products. Microsoft's Project Accelerator is a first-party open-source starting point, and Wellingtone Accelerator+ and Power Framework for Planner are partner-deployed accelerators.

What is the advantage of a Power Platform PPM solution? The portfolio data stays inside your own Microsoft tenant, so data residency requirements are met by architecture rather than by contract, identity and security inherit from Microsoft, and the solution is extensible in ways a hosted product is not.

What is the disadvantage? Ownership. Deployment ends but administration does not — the environment, solution layers, release testing and response to platform changes become permanent internal responsibilities. Organizations without an established Power Platform practice consistently underestimate this.

Do Power Platform PPM solutions work with Microsoft Planner Basic? It varies, and it is worth checking specifically. Solutions built on Planner Premium — Wellingtone Accelerator+ among them — require Premium licensing and exclude Basic plans, which matters if parts of your organization run on Basic.

The short version

The Power Platform PPM category is larger and more fragmented than most shortlists suggest — eleven-plus vendors across Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Australia and the US, with no dominant player. At the level of a feature list they converge. What actually separates them is structural: whether you are buying a product or a configured solution, what the scheduling foundation is, whether Planner Basic is in scope, and who owns the environment after go-live. Decide the shape before you shortlist the vendors, and the evaluation gets considerably shorter.

If your delivery is spread across Planner, Jira, Azure DevOps and Microsoft Project, the mixed-estate case is the one a hosted layer handles more cleanly than anything deployed inside a single tenant. PPM Express reads all of them into one portfolio, including Planner Basic. Worth a look if that is the shape of your problem — and if tenant residency is non-negotiable, one of the products above will serve you better.