MCKINSEY WAVE ALTERNATIVE

Break Free from Wave’s Limitations

Don’t settle for tunnel vision when you can see your entire enterprise landscape. Planview’s Strategic Portfolio Management solution is a powerful McKinsey Wave alternative that lets you expand your strategic vision by connecting strategy to execution at every level.

How Planview delivers what McKinsey can’t

  • Enterprise integrations that actually work

    Don’t leave your strategic decisions stranded on disconnected data islands. Wave by McKinsey offers limited API capabilities that lead to siloed data and visibility gaps.

    Planview delivers robust integration with your entire tech ecosystem. JIRA, DevOps tools, ERP, CRM, and financial systems – all popular enterprise tools seamlessly integrate with Planview’s Strategic Portfolio Management solution for better visibility and collaboration. Create real data flow instead of the manual imports Wave relies on.

    Become a truly connected enterprise where strategic decisions are powered by complete, accurate information.

  • See beyond Wave’s blind spots

    Wave’s underwhelming reporting capabilities make getting a holistic view of work across the enterprise impossible. It offers a keyhole view into your enterprise, turning your strategic execution into a guessing game. Planview’s data-driven insights give you a complete picture that lets you seamlessly connect strategy to execution across all levels of your organization. Where Wave struggles to provide consistently actionable metrics, Planview SPM delivers timely data that promotes confident decision making. Empower your business leaders to make their biggest decisions using complete information, not fragmented snapshots like Wave delivers.

  • Comprehensive portfolio management for your specific needs

    Wave can track high-level initiatives like transformation efforts, but then what? It lacks the enterprise scalability needed to manage complex, company-wide portfolios and strategic initiatives across multiple teams and departments. You’re left with patches of opacity throughout the organization that hide the important information, like the progress made towards your strategic goals or who’s working on what. This makes it incredibly difficult to seamlessly deliver on your big-picture plans, as Wave’s limitations undermine efficiency and make it harder to make informed decisions.

    There’s an ongoing theme with Wave and limited visibility. Compare that with Planview’s SPM solution. Planview delivers a unified platform that brings company strategy to the forefront and aligns it with the work you fund, prioritize, and allocate resources to – not just at the top levels of your company, but across the entire enterprise. Gain a complete view of the organization to link strategy, teams, and outcomes together, weaving a golden thread through your enterprise’s top initiatives down to the associated work.

    Don’t settle for eyes on just the high-level initiatives when Planview gives you visibility into everything.

  • Scale without limits

    Your organization is going to grow at some point. After all, that’s a big part of the strategy in strategic portfolio management. So, what’s the use of an SPM tool like Wave if it struggles to support your enterprise as it grows?

    They may brag about their modern UI and quick team adoption, but the truth is Wave isn’t equipped to handle the growing pains that come with scaling your organization. When your business needs expand, Wave creates additional complexity and inefficiency by forcing you to add external tools. This can lead to painful disconnects like siloed departments, data scattered across systems, and missed opportunities due to slow decision making.

    Planview understands that scalability is an essential element of strategic portfolio management. That’s why Planview’s SPM solution is built for enterprise scalability by integrating workflows and housing data into a single source of truth. After all, your SPM solution should reduce growing pains and complexities – not add to them. Instead of external tools, Planview uses native integrations so you don’t need to acquire more technical debt or create additional complexities through custom developments and manual processes. As a result, actionable insights continue to flow smoothly across your entire enterprise so even as you grow, your business leaders are equipped to make quick, informed decisions that drive value.

  • Adapt quickly without waiting for consultant availability

    Wave claims to provide rapid deployment through its web-based platform, but there’s a caveat: any configuration changes will need to go through McKinsey. This consultant-first approach means you’re perpetually dependent on a third party to modify your SPM software whenever your business needs change.

    Business agility is more important than ever in today’s fast-paced world. You can’t afford to consult a middleman when you’re navigating economic headwinds, tech disruption, and changing customer demands. Planview’s SPM solution enables your organization to respond quickly to change and disruption with no-code configurations that allow you to use your software to support your unique needs without requiring help from consultants.

2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Strategic Portfolio Management

Planview was named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Strategic Portfolio Management for the third year in a row, based on its Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.

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Why choose a McKinsey Wave competitor like Planview?

  • Planview
  • Wave by McKinsey
    • Integrations

      Seamlessly maximize connectivity, visibility, and productivity across your enterprise.

    • 60+ pre-built, no-code integrations for popular DevOps, Agile, and collaborative work management tools, such as Jira Software, Jira Core, and Jira Service Desk, as well as, Azure DevOps, Digital.ai, and more.

    • Wave emphasizes flexibility through APIs that require custom development, but lacks pre-built integrations with popular enterprise systems.

    • Vendor support

      Comprehensive approach to partnership and Customer Success, including internal implementation assistance and strong support for solution roadmap.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: 50%
    • Support for different work delivery methods

      Support for Traditional, Agile, and Hybrid teams, allowing all work to occur under one roof.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: none
    • Driving Agile transformation

      Native support for hybrid teams transitioning from traditional to Agile that supports different methodologies in a single place.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: none
    • Dashboard, analytics, and reporting

      Drive business value with easy access to accurate, up-to-date metrics on the performance and progress of your projects, project portfolios, and strategic initiatives.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: 50%
    • Unparallel customer support

      Support for accelerating on-strategy delivery, for companies of all sizes and PPM maturity levels — not just strategic partners.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: 50%
    • Project management

      Improve planning, execution, and delivery of work across your project portfolio.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: 50%
    • Financial and resource management

      Track and manage investments, budgets, resources, and capacity confidently and in real-time.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: 50%
    • Strategic alignment

      Invest in the right business initiatives with strategic roadmaps, OKRs, and strategic financial planning.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Wave by McKinsey offers: none

Planview’s Strategic Portfolio Management solution

Don’t accept limitations when driving enterprise growth. Wave goodbye to McKinsey by choosing a solution that’s built to scale with you. Deliver business value on your own terms, without waiting on approval from consultants, with Planview’s Strategic Portfolio Management solution. Make missed opportunities and setbacks caused by integration barriers, siloed data, and manual processes a thing of the past. Planview’s SPM solution delivers enterprise-wide visibility and real-time insights so you can connect strategy to execution across your entire organization, turning your strategic goals into tangible outcomes.

  • Improve speed-to-value and market responsiveness

    Adapt strategic initiatives and assess the impacts of changes on investments, staffing, and outcomes.
  • Increase confidence in strategic investments

    Make informed investment decisions based on complete, actionable data with a shared view into dependencies and risks.
  • Unlock organizational capacity for priority initiatives

    Reprioritize and shift capacity to meet the organization’s demands, make trade-offs, and ensure teams remain focused on strategic goals.
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“We’re at a point now in the evolution of our organization where we have to have this type of platform. I don’t view Planview® Portfolios, or Planview® ProjectPlace, as an application – this is truly a platform that has tremendous and robust capabilities.”


Sandy Pittman

Vice President of EPMO, UPS

Read case study • Sandy Pittman

“There should always be something you are reaching towards. It can be confusing at first, but over time, you can solidify and calibrate it, so it becomes something you’re good at. We are adding value with the Planview platform, and the Planview configuration support has been the key to our success.”


Adriana Callerio

IT Performance and PMO Leader, Ingram Micro

Read case study • Adriana Callerio

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