Microsoft SharePoint is the preferred and practical platform for project management teams. By leveraging SharePoint, project managers can easily apply a standard approach to project management, allowing teams to collaborate easily with improved visibility of the overall effort.
Quite often, project managers are tempted to manage projects on single tools such as Word or Excel and as a result lose out on the collaborative features within SharePoint.
SharePoint has a number of features that facilitate collaboration in a secure environment including:
- Document management and sharing
- Intranet portals
- A newsfeed
- Wikis and forums
- Knowledge management.
SharePoint for Project Management
As projects require input from many team members, SharePoint is the obvious tool to manage your projects. It directly addresses common project management challenges such as no process, lack of visibility, multiple versions of the same document, manual reports, poor communication and so on.
SharePoint offers project managers a single repository to keep all project files, information and tasks in one project site. This site can then be structured and further configured to match your project management methodology.
There is a caveat however; SharePoint doesn’t look like a project management tool out of the box.
If you decide to use out-of-the-box SharePoint for project management, you will need to configure your site – or ask your IT team to do so. Creating a SharePoint project site involves a number of steps including:
- Deciding the site architecture, i.e., where the site will site in your SharePoint environment.
- Figuring out what lists and web parts you need to add to the site.
- Creating the site.
- Adding and configuring the web parts.
This can be a long, time consuming process requiring not only experience in configuring and developing SharePoint but also project management knowledge to ensure you are using your time wisely and building out your site with the best approach.
The formula for a successful project on SharePoint looks a bit like:
SharePoint Knowledge + Project Management knowledge + a project site = success.
This is where the Free SharePoint Project Management Template from BrightWork will give you a head start. It has everything you need to initiate, plan, track, and report on a project using SharePoint – straight out-of-the-box.
What is the Free SharePoint Project Management Template?
The BrightWork Free Template is a simple and intuitive tool that allows teams to move project management away from single-use tools such as Microsoft Excel and Word and into collaborative team sites on SharePoint.
Modelled on the Project Lite template in the BrightWork solution, the Free Template ships with a pre-configured project site, reports, and metric tiles.
Using the template means you don’t waste any time building a project site in SharePoint or trying to find someone to do it for you. All you need to do is download and install the template, and deploy a pre-configured project site – all in less than five minutes – with no coding required.
Leverage SharePoint
The template is built specifically for SharePoint by leveraging existing features such as lists and web parts into a fully functioning project management site.
SharePoint Lists, like an Excel spreadsheet, consist of headings, rows, and columns but with more flexibility) are moulded to address common project management headaches such as:
- Tasks: Add tasks and subtasks to create the project timeline. You can also assign tasks to individual team members and track their progress
- Document Libraries: Used to create a single repository for all project documents. Users can upload, download, delete, and rename the documents – depending on the permissions you have set for each team member.
- Issues: Used to track and manage issues.
Having one homepage to manage every aspect of your project, along with accompanying metric tiles, allows you to judge the health of your project at a glance. This not only empowers the project managers to make more informed decisions but keeps the team and stakeholders informed and engaged with accurate data.
Start the right way
As stated earlier, project management is not simply about knowing how to configure SharePoint but also about having a playbook for managing projects. Organizations often have no standard way of managing a project and there are so many different project management approaches and software options to choose from.
The Free Template from BrightWork is developed by project management consultants with inputs from BrightWork customers to deliver a fast and easy way to start managing projects. It also applies the guidance outlined in ‘Collaborative Project Management: A Handbook’, written by BrightWork CEO, Éamonn McGuinness and is trusted by over 40,000 organizations across all industries.
Standardise your Approach
Is your team working with email and spreadsheets? Are they consistently formatted and kept up to date? Have you had to chase your colleagues for the most recent figures or version of a document?
Without project management rules or a standardised approach, you have to be creative about tracking work which can be frustrating and affect team morale
SharePoint addresses this challenge by making it simple for your team to update key information and tasks in one place. The lists are available to all team members, making it easy to track and account for work so that nothing falls between the cracks. Your project management approach doesn’t have to be the same as every other company but it does have to be the same for all your team members.
Start/Evolve
The beauty of the BrightWork Free Template and indeed SharePoint is that it is non-restrictive and doesn’t dictate your process but merely starts you on the right foot. The best practice wiki is always present to consult but if you find your team is moving its project in a certain way, SharePoint’s flexibility allows you to evolve your project site to with your project management approach.
Best of all, the Free Template is free forever! Unlike other “Free Trials” that are difficult to evaluate over a short period of time, there is no worry of making a hasty decision and picking the wrong solution for your team. You can manage as many projects as you wish for as long as you need, for absolutely nothing!
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