Planview AdaptiveWork Project Portfolio Management Training Course

Course overview

Project and portfolio teams often struggle to turn strategic priorities into reliable delivery data. Requests arrive through email, spreadsheets and informal conversations; project plans use inconsistent milestones; resource demand is difficult to compare across workstreams; and leaders receive status reports that are already out of date. This Planview AdaptiveWork Project Portfolio Management Training Course helps professionals establish a controlled, visible operating model for selecting, planning, tracking and reporting work in Planview AdaptiveWork.

Participants learn to configure and use core AdaptiveWork capabilities for project portfolio management, including work intake, project hierarchies, workflows, schedules, milestones, dependencies, resource and financial tracking, risk and issue management, dashboards and reports. They practise converting business demand into governed work records, building project plans, defining role-based responsibilities, monitoring portfolio health and producing decision-ready views for sponsors. The course also addresses practical administration choices such as fields, forms, permissions, templates and data quality rules.

Training is delivered through instructor demonstrations, guided system exercises and a running portfolio case study. Each participant works through the lifecycle of a realistic initiative portfolio: capturing requests, prioritising work, planning delivery, assigning resources and presenting portfolio performance. They leave with a completed AdaptiveWork portfolio configuration workbook, a project template, a dashboard design and an action plan for applying the approach in their own organisation.

The course is suited to project managers, PMO staff, portfolio analysts, resource managers and system administrators who need to use AdaptiveWork consistently rather than merely record task updates. It is equally valuable for organisations implementing the platform, standardising an existing configuration or improving the quality of portfolio governance data.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Configure Planview AdaptiveWork project types, fields, forms and workflows for controlled work intake
• Create project plans with tasks, milestones, dependencies, owners and baseline dates
• Build demand intake records and prioritisation criteria for evaluating proposed initiatives
• Assign roles and resources while identifying capacity conflicts across a portfolio
• Track budgets, actuals, forecasts and schedule variance using AdaptiveWork financial and status fields
• Design portfolio dashboards and reports that expose delivery health, risks and decision points
• Apply permission groups, templates and data quality controls to support consistent platform use
• Produce an AdaptiveWork implementation action plan and portfolio governance configuration workbook

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Project Managers — who need to plan, update and report projects consistently in AdaptiveWork
• PMO Managers — who need governed intake, standard templates and comparable portfolio reporting
• Portfolio Managers — who must prioritise investments and monitor strategic delivery performance
• Resource Managers — who need visibility of role demand, assignments and capacity conflicts
• Project Coordinators — who maintain project data, milestones, risks and management reports
• Planview AdaptiveWork Administrators — who configure forms, workflows, permissions and reporting structures

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable with core project management concepts, including tasks, milestones, dependencies, project status, risks, issues and basic resource assignments. Experience using a web-based business application and working with spreadsheet data is expected, as exercises involve entering, filtering and interpreting project records. Access to a Planview AdaptiveWork training environment is provided or arranged for the course. Prior AdaptiveWork experience is not required; this is suitable for complete beginners to the platform. Participants do not need programming, database administration or advanced financial analysis skills, although familiarity with their organisation's project lifecycle will make the application planning more useful.

Training methodology

The course combines focused instructor-led demonstrations with guided work in Planview AdaptiveWork. Participants use a continuing case study based on a multi-project change portfolio, configuring intake records, project plans, resources, financial fields and executive reporting views as each topic is introduced. Short group workshops examine prioritisation and governance decisions rather than treating configuration as a purely technical activity. The final day includes an application-planning session in which participants adapt the course workbook, template and dashboard concepts to their own PMO or delivery environment.

Course outline

Day 1: AdaptiveWork foundations and governed work intake

• Planview AdaptiveWork navigation, work item hierarchy and portfolio terminology
• Project, program, request and task record relationships
• Custom fields, field sets and data types for project governance
• Forms and layouts for role-specific data capture
• Workflow states, approvals and business rules
• Demand intake forms and request qualification criteria
• User roles, permission groups and access considerations

Workshop: Participants configure a structured intake form and workflow for a new strategic initiative request, producing a draft demand-record design.

Day 2: Project planning, scheduling and delivery control

• Creating projects from templates and approved demand records
• Work breakdown structures and task hierarchy design
• Milestones, dependencies and critical delivery sequences
• Task ownership, role assignments and responsibility definitions
• Schedule baselines, planned dates and progress updates
• Project status indicators and exception-based management
• Risks, issues and action tracking within project records

Workshop: Participants build a delivery-ready project plan with milestones, dependencies, owners, risks and a baseline schedule for the case study initiative.

Day 3: Resource, financial and portfolio planning

• Resource pools, named resources and role-based staffing
• Assignment demand, allocation units and availability concepts
• Capacity views and identification of resource conflicts
• Project cost categories, budgets and planned financial values
• Actuals, forecasts and estimate-to-complete tracking
• Portfolio hierarchy and grouping projects by strategy or business unit
• Prioritisation scoring models and investment decision criteria

Workshop: Participants score competing initiative requests, assign provisional roles and identify the capacity and budget implications of an approved portfolio.

Day 4: Reporting, dashboards and portfolio insight

• Report types, filters, groupings and calculated columns
• Building project health and milestone exception reports
• Creating portfolio views for schedule, risk and financial performance
• Dashboard components, widgets and audience-specific layouts
• Drill-down paths from executive metrics to project detail
• Data quality checks for missing dates, owners and status values
• Exporting and sharing AdaptiveWork information with stakeholders

Workshop: Participants create an executive portfolio dashboard and supporting exception report that identify projects requiring sponsor decisions.

Day 5: Operating model, adoption and workplace application

• PMO operating model choices for AdaptiveWork ownership
• Project templates, standard fields and reusable workflow patterns
• Governance cadence for intake, status review and portfolio decisions
• Data stewardship roles and quality assurance routines
• User adoption practices for project managers and executives
• Integration considerations with Microsoft Project, Excel and Power BI
• Implementation roadmap, success measures and configuration backlog

Workshop: Participants complete an AdaptiveWork application plan containing priority configuration changes, a project template, dashboard requirements and adoption actions for their organisation.

Tools & standards covered

Planview AdaptiveWork, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions