I am regularly asked by clients to provide recommendations to help them address general to very specific operations issues, be it in a business, non-profit organization or educational setting.  Whenever I get the “What would you recommend for . . .?” question, unless the solution is fairly obvious (a fair number are!), I try to start by learning more about the client’s needs.  The first step is to ask “What are you trying to accomplish?”.  This is particularly critical for project management tools.  One size does not fit all!

Some of the more important questions to answer to better understand your project management needs include:

  • Is this one project or a series of individual or linked projects?
  • How complex are they? (Number of events and duration being two measures)
  • How many people will be participating in the project?
  • How many people will be managing the project? What level of project management skill and experience do they have?
  • Where are the participants and managers located? How will they need to interact with each other?
  • How will needed company information be accessed and shared with the project members?
  • How will the project status be shared with project members as well as project stakeholders and the broader organization to ensure success?

The last question is particularly important.  No project run in a vacuum can be successful.

Evaluating potential project management solutions

With answers to the above questions in hand, it is possible to wade into the vast range of potential project management solutions with the goal of selecting a particular tool that meets your immediate needs.  However, unless your company’s services are fundamentally based on project management (e.g. construction management) or unless you have a strong group dedicated to project management as a core competency, there is a major challenge inherent in this approach.

The challenge: Choosing a particular standalone project management tool that integrates seamlessly and effectively with your daily operations, is user friendly and can be scaled to meet your needs today and into the future can be a daunting task!  Why?  The harsh reality is:

  • Any single tool can be too complex (overkill) for some projects and not powerful enough for others
  • Your needs WILL change over time
  • Casual users will struggle to learn and stay current with an “add on” solution
  • Only a subset of your organization will use a standalone tool . . . typically only when they are forced to
  • It is more difficult to access and share documents and project status using a standalone tool
  • Keeping all interested parties informed of the project status is more complicated
  • With the wrong tool, project management will be viewed as “too painful” and will fall by the wayside

A recommended solution based on Microsoft SharePoint

So, what should you do?  Give up?  Not at all!  Luckily, there is a more effective approach to solving this problem that doesn’t focus on adding “one more tool” to your existing toolkit.  Instead it takes a more fundamental approach to analyze and streamline your workflow, processes, information sharing and cross organization collaboration.  It establishes a foundation that seamlessly supports all aspects of your operations, including effective project management.  That foundation is Microsoft SharePoint.

Since a general introduction and overview of SharePoint is beyond the scope of this post, I will focus on some of the specific advantages that a foundation built on SharePoint offers and why it should be considered by any company or organization that is seeking to implement effective, scalable, project management.

SharePoint offers some incredibly simple yet powerful features for managing project activities.  A broad spectrum of companies and organizations successfully utilize SharePoint to manage simple to complex projects.  One of the advantages of SharePoint is the ability to “start small” and then grow project management, over time, to create more robust and integrated solutions.  As your project management needs grow, you take advantage of the broader ranges of tools that are available and . . . this is important . . . that integrate into your daily work processes and flow of information.  Since SharePoint is a fundamental part of how your company organizes, manages and shares information, it doesn’t suffer from the weaknesses of an “add on” solution.

Project Managers can leverage SharePoint to:

  • Manage project deliverable
    • Approval workflows
    • Auditing
    • Version Control
  • Provide status reports
  • Manage requirements using customized lists
  • Track development tasks
  • Capture meetings & calendaring in workspaces
  • Share announcements and alert project teams when new and important information becomes available
  • Manage Testing tasks
  • Provide knowledge base and support functions for future projects

Where to begin? Take the first step with “Jump-Start”

So how does a company or organization implement an effective SharePoint solution, particularly if they are starting from scratch?  In-house owned SharePoint and SharePoint programmers are expensive.  The approach I recommend is the SharePoint “Jump-Start“ solution offered by TechEdge LLC. It is a low/no code, low cost, low maintenance approach to get your company or organization up and running in 45 days.

The experts at TechEdge will work with you and your team to implement an effective project management solution built on the capabilities of SharePoint.  The resulting implementation will not only provide you with an effective project management solution, but will give you a much broader set of capabilities that can enhance the efficiency, productivity and bottom line results across all of your operations.

Click here to download a pdf document that provides additional information on Jump-Start.   I’m sure you will be impressed with the capability that it can bring to your company or organization.  Then, take the next step and contact TechEdge LLC to discuss your specific needs.