Leverage Your SharePoint Investment for Project Management
The first reaction from a lot of IT departments to the proposed introduction of any new enterprise tool is generally “No!” — even for something as important as project management (which they need as well)!
But they have solid reasons for this response.
Start managing projects on SharePoint with your free, pre-configured template!
IT resources are always constrained and they know from prior experience that introducing new enterprise tools can be an expensive and time-consuming process.
This previous negative experience has left the team wary of introducing new enterprise tools.
They are also concerned about post-deployment management/configuration of the new system and end-user training.
Basically, if they introduce this new tool, will they become the first port of call for anything that goes wrong, or any help the users may need.
For these reasons, leveraging your existing SharePoint infrastructure is a practical, cost-effective approach to project management.
Three reasons to leverage SharePoint investment for project management:
- Quick deployment on your existing collaborative platform.
- SharePoint templates make it a practical starting point.
- Grow organization project management at scale.
1. Quick deployment on your existing collaborative platform
One of the best reasons for organizations to deploy a project management solution on SharePoint is that it leverages the existing, approved, and secure collaboration infrastructure that is already in place.
If your organization already has SharePoint deployed as an intranet or for document management, for example, you can tap into this pre-existing infrastructure and security (something that will make your IT team very happy!)
BrightWork is a project and portfolio management solution that plugs right into your SharePoint environment and can be installed within a couple of hours.
BrightWork keeps the same consistent interface as the rest of your SharePoint environment so you can leverage your prior expertise and accelerate user adoption.
And better yet, BrightWork builds on the SharePoint foundation of self-service, no-code configuration by end-users, and adds further options so users can see project data in the way they want.
2. SharePoint templates make it a practical starting point
Not only does using SharePoint leverage your existing infrastructure, but it also has the idea of saving sites as “templates”.
BrightWork, for example, comes with a range of best-practice project management templates to get projects under control quickly and confidently.
Your organization can start to manage projects by deploying BrightWork on your existing SharePoint infrastructure, using a simple and structured approach for an effective deployment that includes training and coaching.
The template-based approach lets you Start where you are ready, and gradually Evolve with more project management as the team uses the tool and their processes mature.
Further, SharePoint (and BrightWork by extension) integrates with the tools you already use.
Microsoft Project for project scheduling? You don’t have to give that up.
Already using Nintex Workflows to intelligently automate business processes? You can leverage Nintex to automate and accelerate your project management on SharePoint.
And the list goes on.
3. Grow organizational project management at scale
Using a template-based approach in SharePoint lets you easily create, use, reuse, and update your project management best-practices on an organizational scale.
The beauty of SharePoint templates is that any changes you make to the site can be saved and then re-used for subsequent projects.
This approach will enable you to evolve organizational project management with configurable templates and scalable performance.
BrightWork takes this concept a step further.
When a BrightWork template is updated to reflect organization best practices, those changes can then be rolled out to projects already in flight using the BrightWork Template Design Sync.
Not only does this save significant time — it’s easy to maintain consistency and standards across multiple projects, teams, and departments.
By leveraging your existing SharePoint infrastructure for project management, you can accelerate user adoption, support project teams, and scale performance.
Originally published at www.brightwork.com.
