I am going to tell you upfront that this article is about Monday.com. I want to get that out of the way because there are a lot of “best project management tools” lists on the internet, and most of them are nonsense written by people who have never run a portfolio.
I have run a portfolio. I have tried a lot of tools. Monday.com is the one I’ve kept coming back to, and I’ll tell you exactly why — and where it falls short.
The problem with most portfolio management tools
Most tools are built for single-project tracking. Even the ones that claim portfolio capability are, in practice, a collection of projects with a rolled-up view bolted on. The result is that programme managers spend their time aggregating data from multiple sources, building reports in spreadsheets, and fighting their tooling to give them the view they need.
The tool should give you the view. That’s the job.
What Monday.com does differently
The core of Monday.com is its flexibility. Unlike Jira (which pushes you into a specific agile methodology) or MS Project (which is built around a Gantt and fights you if you want anything else), Monday gives you a board structure you can shape to your governance model.
For portfolio management, I use it like this:
A portfolio-level board with one row per programme, showing RAG status, phase, delivery lead, key milestones, and financial tracking. This is my steering group view — everything I need for a governance conversation in one place, without opening five other things.
Programme-level boards underneath, each with their own workstreams, dependencies, risk registers, and action logs. These feed upward to the portfolio view through dashboard widgets.
A risk and issues register as a separate board, linked to programmes, with ownership, status, and escalation path tracked per item.
The automation features are underrated. I have automations that alert me when a milestone status changes to red, when an action is overdue, or when a risk rating increases. It removes the manual chasing that consumes so much of a programme manager’s week.
Where it falls short
Resource management is weak compared to dedicated tools like Resource Guru or Smartsheet. If resource capacity planning is central to your governance model, you’ll hit limits quickly.
The financial tracking is basic. I track budget vs actuals in Monday but I do the detailed financial modelling elsewhere — it’s not a replacement for a proper finance system.
It’s also not cheap at enterprise scale. The pricing works for small teams; at programme level with multiple users, costs add up.
Who it’s for
If you’re managing a portfolio of work, need a flexible governance framework, and are tired of spending Monday mornings building status reports from five different sources — Monday.com is worth evaluating seriously.
They offer a free trial. I’d recommend taking it with a real piece of work rather than a test scenario. That’s the only honest way to evaluate a tool.
UserGenix 
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