In today’s diverse, fast-paced corporate environment we are often pushed to deliver quality projects with less time and budget than ever before. Fortunately for us, technology is giving us new ways to think about how we work together in order to keep up with demand.
Whether you are a seasoned project management expert or have just been handed your first ever project, there are tools at your fingertips to help you stay on the road to successful execution. By making the most out of your company’s investment in SharePoint, you can capitalize on the platform’s ability to foster collaboration and communication.
There are several key factors that have a direct impact on project success. Over this series, we will explore a few of these critical areas and how SharePoint can enable you to increase effectiveness.
Communication
Communication is imperative to project management success. In fact, many projects that fail often cite lack of communication as the top contributing factor. There are many moving parts in a project where something could (and most likely, will) go wrong. Without a clear way to alert key participants in these potential areas, many of your team are essentially operating blind.
► Scenario
- Your project team has just wrapped a critical status update meeting with key stakeholders and during the debrief you notice that many of the team’s members have completely different ideas of the necessary next steps and who will be carrying out specific tasks.*
► The SharePoint Solution
- Create a list on the project site that will serve as the one source of the truth for action items. Following every meeting, a designated team member will gather feedback and enter action items into the list with assignments made. Through the use of workflows or alerts, you can configure an email notification to go out automatically when an action item is created so the applicable parties are immediately aware.*
At the core of SharePoint’s feature set lies a communication delivery vehicle. Through the use of the native list functionality and workflows, you can configure robust messaging and alert processes. These tools will allow you to communicate out to a team, keep up on task progress, approve or deny key items or even serve as a system of record to ensure a single source of the truth is available to those on the team and that everyone knows what is going on and how to get updates.
Stay tuned for more ways to foster project management excellence with SharePoint!