If your goal is to manage a large portfolio of complex projects—not just track tasks—I’d put Planview Portfolios at the top of the shortlist.
The market has shifted from traditional PPM toward Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM): connecting strategy → investments → capacity → projects/products → outcomes. Gartner’s June 2026 SPM research evaluates vendors specifically around enterprise-wide portfolio modeling and continuous strategic planning.
My shortlist
| Platform | Best fit | My take |
|---|
| Planview Portfolios | Complex enterprise portfolios & mature PMOs | 🥇 Best overall |
| ServiceNow SPM | Enterprises already heavily invested in ServiceNow | 🥈 Best platform/ecosystem choice |
| Broadcom Clarity | Governance-heavy PMOs, IT, financial/resource controls | 🥉 Excellent traditional PPM |
| Planisware | R&D, product development, engineering portfolios | Best for highly complex product/R&D |
| Smartsheet | Flexible cross-functional portfolio management | Best for usability/adoption |
| Jira Align | Large-scale software/Agile organizations | Best for Agile/product portfolios |
1. 🥇 Planview Portfolios — my default recommendation
Planview is the one I'd evaluate first for your use case.
It is designed around portfolio-level decisions, rather than simply aggregating project schedules. Its capabilities include scenario planning, prioritization, resource/capacity visibility, financial management, risk/dependency management, and support for Agile, waterfall, and hybrid delivery.
It's particularly strong if you need to answer questions like:
- Which projects should we fund?
- What happens if priorities change?
- Where are our constrained resources?
- Which initiatives depend on one another?
- Are we spending against the strategy we actually care about?
- What projects should we stop, defer, or accelerate?
- How do project-level changes affect the overall portfolio?
Planview was included as a Leader in Gartner's 2026 Strategic Portfolio Management research, alongside Broadcom, Planisware, and others.
The tradeoff: it's a serious enterprise system. Expect configuration, governance work, implementation effort, and a learning curve rather than something a PMO can simply switch on next week.
2. ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management
Choose ServiceNow SPM if your organization already has a substantial ServiceNow footprint.
Its advantage isn't necessarily that it's a better pure PPM product than Planview; it's that portfolio planning can become part of the broader ServiceNow operating model. It supports portfolio/program/project management, demand management, financial and resource planning, scenario analysis, and outcome tracking.
I'd favor it when IT/service management + portfolio management need to live together.
3. Broadcom Clarity
Broadcom Clarity is particularly compelling for a large, governance-heavy PMO where financials, capacity, investment planning, and rigorous portfolio controls matter.
It's a better fit than lighter work-management products when you're managing hundreds or thousands of initiatives and need portfolio-level financial/resource governance. Current enterprise PPM comparisons continue to put Clarity alongside Planview and ServiceNow as the heavyweight options.
4. Planisware
If "complex projects" means R&D, engineering, product development, pharmaceutical development, aerospace, or other long-horizon technical programs, I'd seriously consider Planisware.
That's a somewhat different problem from an enterprise PMO managing business transformation initiatives. Planisware is particularly strong where the portfolio itself involves sophisticated product/R&D planning.
5. Smartsheet
Smartsheet is attractive if adoption and flexibility matter more than deep portfolio governance.
It's much easier for ordinary teams to understand than a heavyweight PPM suite, and its spreadsheet-like interface makes portfolio reporting approachable. But if you truly have a huge, highly interdependent portfolio with sophisticated resource, financial, and scenario modeling, I'd generally choose Planview/Clarity/ServiceNow instead.
What I'd choose for different situations
- "We have a mature enterprise PMO and hundreds of complex initiatives." → Planview
- "We're already deeply standardized on ServiceNow." → ServiceNow SPM
- "We're highly governance/finance/resource-management oriented." → Broadcom Clarity
- "We're managing massive R&D/product/engineering portfolios." → Planisware
- "We need something people will actually adopt without a huge transformation." → Smartsheet
- "Most of our portfolio is software/product development and Agile." → Jira Align
The important distinction
I wouldn't select based primarily on Gantt charts, task management, or project status reporting.
For a large complex portfolio, I'd weight the evaluation roughly like this:
- Portfolio prioritization & scenario modeling — 20%
- Resource/capacity management — 20%
- Financial/investment management — 15%
- Dependencies, risks & cross-project impact — 15%
- Strategy/outcome alignment — 10%
- Execution/project management — 10%
- Reporting, integrations & usability — 10%
That weighting tends to push you toward Planview, ServiceNow SPM, Clarity, or Planisware, rather than tools that are excellent project/work managers but weren't designed primarily for enterprise portfolio optimization.
Bottom line: if you gave me no other information and asked me to pick one enterprise PPM platform to evaluate first, I'd pick Planview. The next two I'd put through a serious bake-off would be ServiceNow SPM and Broadcom Clarity. Gartner's 2026 market research also places these kinds of heavyweight SPM vendors at the center of the enterprise market.
If you tell me your industry, approximate number of projects, number of users, Agile vs. waterfall, and whether you're already a Microsoft/ServiceNow/SAP/Oracle shop, I can narrow this to a top 2–3 and give you a detailed feature-by-feature comparison and selection scorecard.
Broadcom Clarity is particularly compelling for a large, governance-heavy PMO where financials, capacity, investment planning, and rigorous portfolio controls matter.
It's a better fit than lighter work-management products when you're managing hundreds or thousands of initiatives and need portfolio-level financial/resource governance. Current enterprise PPM comparisons continue to put Clarity alongside Planview and ServiceNow as the heavyweight options.
4. Planisware
If "complex projects" means R&D, engineering, product development, pharmaceutical development, aerospace, or other long-horizon technical programs, I'd seriously consider Planisware.
That's a somewhat different problem from an enterprise PMO managing business transformation initiatives. Planisware is particularly strong where the portfolio itself involves sophisticated product/R&D planning.
5. Smartsheet
Smartsheet is attractive if adoption and flexibility matter more than deep portfolio governance.