How to Use SharePoint to Overcome 7 Project Management Challenges
Despite a long history and an increasingly important role in modern organizations, project still fail every day. Challenges are multiple, ranging from no clear organizational approach to projects to poor project sponsorship, lack of communication, rapid changes in technology, and complex business environments.
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Unfortunately, we don’t have to look too far to find examples of failed projects, such as Target’s entry into Canada, the NHS’ Civilian IT Project, and the launch of New Coke in 1985.
Recent research by the Project Management Institute found 9.9% of every dollar is wasted due to poor project performance, equating to $99 million for every $1 billion invested.
The same report from the PMI also noted significant improvements within the discipline of project management in recent years, enabling organizations to be more agile and achieve more success.
It’s worth noting the economic potential of project management, which is forecast to add $20.2 trillion to the global economy over the next 20 years.
With the right tools and mindset, organizations can deliver better projects and accelerate business performance.
Let’s take a look at how SharePoint can help solve common project management challenges, which prevent organizations from achieving their strategic goals.
1. Configure to Match your Approach
Quite often, project teams have to create their own ways of working. Not only do they waste time starting from scratch with every project, it’s impossible to report across projects consistently.
Once you have defined your project management approach, it’s easy to configure SharePoint sites to match your process using templates. This makes success accessible and repeatable for all levels of project management experience.
2. Cultivate a Project Management Culture
Introducing a standardized project management tool acts as a signal to the wider organization. It’s a statement — ‘this is how we manage projects here’.
Over time, projects become repeatable and scalable with more support for all teams. SharePoint is also easily adapted to team or department processes; users still have some control over how they work.
3. Get Visibility
By creating a single environment for all project documents, tracking, and information, it’s much easier to generate accurate reports and identify risks.
Automated reports ensure the team and stakeholders have the right information to contribute to the project when they need it.
4. Improve Sponsor and Stakeholder Engagement
Time-constraints, multiple commitments, and a lack of information make it difficult for project sponsors to provide input when needed.
SharePoint reports, dashboards, and scorecards keep stakeholders in the loop and support decision-making as needed.
5. Communication
At its core, SharePoint is a collaborative tool. Users can leverage real-time document editing with colleagues, wikis, forums, and collaborative sites.
As mentioned above, it’s possible to configure and automate reports to improve communication with senior management.
6. Remote teams
Building on these communication capabilities, SharePoint helps remote teams to communicate effectively. A collaborative project site is a useful way to align team members with the project goal and track work.
7. Knowledge management
There are many ways to close projects and capture lessons learned in SharePoint, including surveys and wikis. If you amend your project site based on this feedback, it’s simple to replicate these changes on other sites using Template Design Sync.
Finally, access to project history, documents, and reports is a helpful way to onboard new team members.
Originally published at www.brightwork.com.
