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RFP Package · Enterprise Applications

Project & Portfolio Management (PPM / SPM) RFP questions and template

130 questions, 10 demo scenarios and a five-vendor scorecard for choosing Project & Portfolio Management (PPM / SPM) software, in one Excel workbook.

Buy the workbook, from $499Read sample questions

What this package is for

Use it to run a Project & Portfolio Management (PPM / SPM) software selection, from the first long list to the final scorecard.

What the category covers. Software that plans and tracks projects and portfolios: scheduling, tasks, agile delivery, resource capacity, intake and prioritization, scenarios, financials, risks, collaboration and reporting. Bought by PMOs, IT and transformation leaders replacing spreadsheets or an older PPM tool, or rolling team work up into portfolio decisions.

A selection usually runs in three rounds. The package has questions for each:

  • RFI, to the long list. 29 questions screen out products that lack something you need.
  • RFP, to the shortlist. 67 questions ask how each product does the work.
  • Deep dive, to the finalists. 34 questions ask for proof on your own data.

10 demo scenarios tell each vendor what to load and what to show, so every product does the same work in front of you. 100 due-diligence questions cover security, integration, implementation and exit. The scorecard weights the answers and ranks up to five vendors.

Each question comes with why it matters, what a good answer looks like and the red flags, so the people scoring the replies know what to look for.

3 questions from the package

From the RFI round. The first shows part of the guide each question carries; the workbook adds follow-ups, how to verify the answer, a priority and a weight.

1. State which of the finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish and start-to-finish dependency types your product supports with lead and lag.

Why it matters. Without all four types and lead or lag, planners model overlapping or staggered work with dummy tasks. Dummy tasks distort durations and the critical path.

Good answer
  • All four types are listed, each accepting a lead or lag
  • Lead and lag can be expressed in working time or as a percentage of the predecessor's duration
  • Dependencies can link tasks at any level of the work breakdown structure, including milestones
Red flags
  • Only finish-to-start is supported
  • Lag must be modeled with placeholder tasks
  • Lag ignores working calendars

2. Does your product give each user one list of the tasks and subtasks assigned to them across all projects they belong to, sortable by due date?

Why it matters. If a person must open each project to find their work, they miss tasks and keep a personal list elsewhere, which leaves the plan out of date.

3. Does your product synchronize work items in both directions with [delivery tool] in [delivery tool deployment type] without custom code?

Why it matters. If teams cannot keep working in the delivery tool they already use, someone must re-enter status by hand. The portfolio data then falls behind the real work.

Capability areas

Project Planning & Scheduling (12)

Project setup, work breakdown structure, working calendars, the four dependency types with lead and lag, automatic rescheduling, Gantt editing, critical path, milestones at risk, baselines and variance, project templates, stakeholder register, and schedule load and recalculation on large projects. Cross-project dependencies are covered under Portfolio Governance.

Tasks, Workflow & Team Intake (11)

Task and subtask structure, owners at each level, custom statuses and workflows per work type, custom and formula fields, team request forms, no-code automation rules, approval routing with escalation, cross-project personal task lists, saved shared filters, tags, recurring tasks and bulk edit. Portfolio-level demand intake is covered under Portfolio Governance.

Agile, Hybrid & Delivery-Tool Sync (12)

Scrum backlogs and sprints, Kanban boards with WIP limits, user stories and estimates, burndown, velocity and cumulative flow, board and Gantt views of the same work, two-way status sync with the issue-tracking and DevOps tools teams already use, and roll-up of team work to epics, increments and value streams. Generic API and connector questions are covered by the integration module.

Resource & Capacity Management (13)

Named, role, skill and non-human resource assignment in hours or percent, workload against capacity across projects, over-allocation, resource requests and fulfillment by role or skill, team-level and named-resource views, capacity sourced from HR data, estimated versus actual effort, and timesheets with submit and approve. Cost of effort is covered under Financial Management.

Portfolio Intake, Prioritization & Governance (12)

Idea and demand intake, business-defined scoring and ranking, stage-gate and continuous funding governance, grouping into programs and portfolios with roll-up, links to strategic goals and OKRs, cross-project dependencies with slip impact, and portfolio analysis by status, cost, risk and strategic fit. What-if modeling is covered under Scenario Planning.

Scenario & What-If Planning (8)

Modeling the addition, delay or cancellation of initiatives without changing live plans, comparing scenarios on capacity, cost and strategic fit, showing which initiatives slip when new demand is accepted, and promoting a chosen scenario to the live plan. Base capacity data is covered under Resource & Capacity Management.

Project & Portfolio Financials (11)

Labor and non-labor budgets, cost estimates from effort and rate tables, actuals and forecast against budget, capex and opex classification and capitalization, benefit and ROI tracking, chargeback, funding of persistent teams and value streams, and financial data exchange with ERP and corporate planning. Commercial terms for the product itself are out of scope.

Risks, Issues & Change Control (8)

Registers of risks, assumptions, issues and decisions with owner, probability, impact and response, issue tracking linked to affected tasks, change requests with scope, schedule and cost impact routed for approval, and roll-up of risk exposure to programs and portfolios.

Collaboration, Files & Notifications (12)

Project spaces holding tasks, files, notes and discussions, comments and @mentions, foldered and versioned attachments, wiki pages, concurrent editing, in-place markup, activity feeds, following, favorites, and per-user in-app, email and mobile notifications. Also covers links to file storage, team chat, calendar, email-to-task, video meetings and whiteboards.

Reporting, Dashboards & Status Roll-Up (11)

Project, personal and executive dashboards, status at every level of the hierarchy, periodic red-amber-green status reports with history, no-code report building, report templates, scheduled distribution, dashboard refresh after project changes, and AI-generated status summaries and predicted delivery risk. Export to external BI tools is covered by the integration module.

Adoption & Everyday Usability (9)

Time and steps for an individual contributor to update work end to end, mobile apps covering tasks, comments, approvals and time entry, offline edit and sync, and the controls that stop teams from keeping a shadow plan in spreadsheets. Formal training programs are covered by the training module.

Configuration, Access & Administration (11)

Project and feature roles, access restrictions on projects, fields and reports, project visibility settings, scoped and expiring external collaborator access, user onboarding from templates and full removal on deactivation, change history, archiving, restore of a single deleted project or task, sandbox-to-production promotion of configuration, retention and legal hold on project content, license-use visibility, import of plans from CSV and our current tool, and workspace scale limits. Identity federation, encryption and certifications are covered by the security and integration modules.

Demo scenarios

Each scenario lists the data to load before the demo, then the steps to show, and the questions it scores.

  1. New initiative in an over-committed quarter
  2. A team member's week on desktop and mobile
  3. Template project with a slipped predecessor
  4. From idea to funded project
  5. Agile team and milestone plan in one program
  6. Month-end close with capitalization
  7. Risk becomes an issue and a change request
  8. Executive portfolio review
  9. Funding a persistent team by value stream
  10. New work type from sandbox to production

Due diligence

The workbook carries the screening questions from these modules. Each module is also sold on its own.

Questions about this package

How many Project & Portfolio Management (PPM / SPM) RFP questions are there?

130 solution questions in 12 capability areas: 29 for the RFI, 67 for the RFP and 34 deep-dive questions for the finalists. The workbook adds 100 due-diligence questions on security, integration, implementation and exit.

What comes with each question?

Why it matters, good-answer signals, red flags, follow-up questions, how to verify the answer (a demo step, a test or a document), and a suggested priority and weight for scoring.

Can I edit the questions?

Yes. The workbook is an ordinary Excel file. Change, add or remove questions, and change the weights; the scorecard recalculates.

Which license do I need?

The Enterprise License covers any number of evaluations inside one organization. The Consultancy License covers use with any number of clients. Neither allows reselling or republishing the questions.

Before you shortlist

The buyer guide compares the products in this category and what decides between them.

Buyer Guide
Project & Portfolio Management (PPM / SPM)

For the business side of the same change: