Manage Projects on SharePoint

5 Templates for Project and Portfolio Management using SharePoint

Sinead O'Shaughnessy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:40:00 GMT

Yesterday we ran a live webinar where we presented 5 templates for managing a single project and a portfolio of projects on SharePoint. We had a huge sign-up. Not surprising really considering the growing application of SharePoint to a wide array of business processes.

Apart from the awesome collection of 5 (they are powerful), I was really taken with the results of the surveys we did before and after the session. At the beginning we asked attendees the following question:

“Do you use SharePoint to manage projects and portfolios today?”

24 % said No
43 % said Yes – we use SharePoint for some projects
33 % said Yes – we use Microsoft Project and SharePoint on many projects

We then presented and demonstrated each of the 5 SharePoint templates:

Projects Tracker
Project Lite
Project Standard
Project Structured
Project Office & Portfolio Office

At the end of the webinar we asked attendees “Would you now consider using SharePoint to manage projects and portfolios of projects?”

4% said No
50% said Yes – we will use SharePoint for some projects
46% said Yes – we will use Microsoft Project and SharePoint on many projects

Go figure. Watch the webinar (the recording has since been posted here: http://www.brightwork.com/recordings/), and ask yourself the same questions before and after. I’m not a betting gal, but I wager your thinking will change as you go through it.

Microsoft OneNote for Android

Donal McCarthy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:09:00 GMT

Today Microsoft announced the release of OneNote for Android. This is on top of the late 2011 release of Lync for Android (which requires an enabled Office365 account).

To sync with OneNote on your desktop, all you need is a Windows SkyDrive account.

You can install it direct to your Android phone from the Market Place.

As far as I can make out, it is Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and up only at the moment.

OneNote Mobile for Android includes the following features:

Text formatting, images, and bulleted lists
To-do lists with clickable checkboxes
Quick photo capture with your phone's camera
Quick access to recent notes
Store and access multiple OneNote notebooks
Sync to your free SkyDrive account for access anywhere
Offline access to your notes
Option to sync notebooks only over a Wi-Fi connection
Built-in spelling checker
Support for external hyperlinks
Table editing

There are a few limitations:

No handwritten notes
No Voice notes
500 note limit for the free version ($4.99 for the pro version) – not sure if Office365 customers get to bypass this
No Widgets

I would imagine that some of these limitations will be fixed pretty soon.

But apart from that it works straight out of the box. One of my favourite features is the ability to take a picture from the OneNote client and send it straight to your desktop client.

See below for a quick picture I just took of an unsuspecting colleague!

Announcing BrightWork 10 for SharePoint

William Guinan — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:48:00 GMT

Bringing Smarter Work, Project and Portfolio Management to Every Organization!

Today, BrightWork has launched a new product release, which makes project management on SharePoint even smarter for BrightWork customers.

BrightWork 10 comes with a new Project Metrics List that can automatically capture and track critical project metrics, assign warning and danger indictors to metric values, and visualize how the metrics have evolved over time (a day, week, month, quarter or year). Moreover, this new release ships pre-loaded with sample metrics in the project management templates to give project teams a faster starting point.

BrightWork 10 also features three new project management templates - Project Lite, Project Standard and Project Structured – allowing BrightWork customers to manage and collaborate on loosely structured, semi-structured and fully structured projects. As with all BrightWork templates, Project Lite, Project Standard and Project Structured are easily configurable for more precise project control and visibility.

Other smart additions to BrightWork 10 include enhanced reporting with new Periodic Status Reports and better Microsoft Project to SharePoint synchronization.

“Our mission at BrightWork is to deliver a SharePoint product that enables any organization to quickly setup and iteratively mature their work, project and portfolio management practices”, says Eamonn McGuinness, Founder and CEO at BrightWork. “The smart project management, enhanced reports and new templates in BrightWork Release 10 make it easier for our customers to achieve project success”.

If you're already a BrightWork customer, you can upgrade to BrightWork 10 by contacting support@brightwork.com.

If you're not a BrightWork customer give BrightWork 10 a try with a 30-Day Trial.

You can also see a live demo of BrightWork 10 on Wednesday, February 8th! Register Now!

Project Management on SharePoint is Easy!

William Guinan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:50:00 GMT

Is project management part of your SharePoint strategy? Consider the Project Office JumpStart offer from BrightWork and maximize your investment in SharePoint. With this offer, you can have a project office up and running on SharePoint in as little as three to four weeks. This package is designed to provide a methodical plan and starting point for project management on SharePoint.

BrightWork ships with several templates and powerful reporting which provide project management structure with flexibility for projects of all shapes and sizes. BrightWork’s Project Office JumpStart accelerates an organization’s ability to deliver successful projects using Microsoft SharePoint. The JumpStart provides a roadmap for companies to leverage SharePoint for project management without investing significant time or resources, and each deployment is planned and tailored to fit each organization.

Deployment Services

Project scoping, planning and setup, and needs definition
Installation and configuration of the BrightWork solution
Build of at least 2 templates to manage 2 different project types
Build of at least 1 project office/rollup template for reporting across projects
BrightWork training for support staff and end users

Software

50 perpetual end-user licenses of BrightWork

Support and Upgrades for 1 Year

Support Desk: available to customers through email, phone or the online forum.
New Releases: access to all core product and template upgrades and releases including new platform upgrades.
Training Environment: access to the Customer Training Environment and associated training materials with the rights to customize as needed.
Health Check: your BrightWork assigned Customer Success Manager will conduct an annual Health Check to include advice and recommendations.

To see a demo, get pricing information, and additional detail on the Project Office JumpStart solution, sign up for the webcast held on January 17th, 2012.

5 Templates for Project and Portfolio Management on SharePoint

William Guinan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:28:00 GMT

Live Webcast!

Date: Wednesday February 8^th, 2012

Featuring New Templates from the upcoming BrightWork 10 Release!

SharePoint is widely seen as the de facto industry standard for collaboration. It can also be extended with project management templates to successfully manage projects and portfolios. Project management templates from BrightWork mimic different levels of project management complexity, but can be easily configured for precise project control and visibility.

This live webinar will fully explain and demonstrate how SharePoint can be extended with templates to become a comprehensive project and portfolio management solution. This session will also feature a sneak peek at the new templates that will be released with BrightWork 10.

All attendees will receive a copy of the slide deck and recording.

Project Management Change – The Big “C”

Eamonn McGuinness — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:15:00 GMT

We have a joke in our family at large that one member (who shall remain nameless!) fears change more than cancer. I know that cancer is no joke – and we have had our fair share of cancer in our family – but inside the comfort of family such humour is permissible. Certainly this family member resists change by nature. Interesting though that once this person agrees to the change – you have the most loyal supporter of the change – none better - but getting that agreement is not much fun – if I am being very honest! Yet change is inevitable – on every front – it is easy to wonder why some resist so much. What is behind change?

I am involved in a group in the local school and one of the crew sent along a message he had picked up on the subject of “Change”. The short paper in question was written David Coghlan, a Professor of Business Organisation Development at a very prestigious university. David is also a Jesuit priest. They say that the founder of the Jesuits (Ignatius) asked his companions to always keep one foot off the ground, so they were ready to move and change to the next challenge at a moments notice. That request from over 500 years ago might be very valid for business and government organizations of today.

David (who I do not know) posed six questions central to change. These questions were based on his research. In the context of getting groups to move to engage in better work, project and portfolio management, I thought the questions were simple, searching and spot-on.

Why change?
What do we want things to be like after we’ve changed?
What do we need to change in order to get there?
How do we get there?
How do we sustain what we have changed?
What have we learned that’ll help us for future change?

1. Why change?

This would be a great opening conversation to have with your team. Those two simple words – “Why change?”. The trap is to forget that while you have been days, weeks or months seeing the need for change, that others have not had those experiences or thoughts.

2. What do we want things to be like after we’ve changed?

If you all have a common vision for what work will be like post the project management change – you are well down the road to achieving that change.

3. What do we need to change in order to get there?

By talking out this question – you are doing at least two very important tasks. (1) You are identifying what needs to be done to achieve the change. (2) But you are also getting people on board – and reducing the resistance time. Maybe the second is more important, as whatever list you come up with will change (!), so you need a team open to quickly modifying the list of what needs doing.

4. How do we get there?

This is where you execute the project to change and in so doing improve the way you manage work, projects and portfolios.

5. How do we sustain what we have changed?

It is well worth assuming that regression is easily possible and identifying the regression risks. Then bake in activities that will reduce this regression risk.

6. What have we learned that’ll help us for future change?

As David suggests, why not learn about change from the change project just undertaken.

Needless to say the above 6 questions can help frame any type of change – not just changing the way you manage work, projects and portfolios.

I’d like to think that the BrightWork Deployment Approach answers these 6 questions – but we will double check! Maybe we re-phrase the questions slightly as follows and then include them as set of questions in the Strategy and Planning phase:

Why change?
What do we want things to be like after we’ve changed?
What do we need to change in order to get there?
How do we get there?
What do we expect we will have to do in order to sustain what we will have changed?
What do we expect that we will have learned that will help us for future change?

Would that not be a great start to any change project?

SharePoint Improves Business Processes, Collaboration and the Bottom Line

William Guinan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:32:00 GMT

Free, Full-Day Seminars on Leveraging SharePoint!

Please join us at one of three full-day seminars to discover ways you can quickly and easily leverage SharePoint to improve your business processes. The seminars are free of charge.

Each seminar will have 6 informative sessions, deliver by leading SharePoint partners:

1. Business Intelligence with SharePoint (Tribridge)

2. Tales from the Field – Business Process Drivers and Successful SharePoint Governance (AvePoint)

3. Using SharePoint for Work, Project and Portfolio Management (BrightWork)

4. Increase Productivity by Integrating any Line of Business Application with SharePoint for True Enterprise Content Management (KnowledgeLake)

5. Increase Productivity and Improve Records Management Compliance using SharePoint and CLM (Collabware)

6. Business Process Management with SharePoint (K2)

Dates and Locations

Atlanta, GA

Date: Tuesday, February 7
Time: 9:00am – 4:00pm ET
Location: The Ravinia Club, Two Ravinia Drive, Suite 100, Atlanta, GA 30346
Register Now!

Tampa, FL

Date: Thursday, February 9
Time: 9:00am – 4:00pm
Location: Microsoft Office, 5426 Bay Center Dr., Suite 700, Tampa, FL 33609
Register Now!

Waltham, MA

Date: Thursday, February 16
Time: 9:00am – 4:00pm
Location: Microsoft Office, 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451
Register Now!

Don’t miss out, RSVP today! Seating at the events is limited. Please forward this to anyone at your organization who may want to attend.

SharePoint for Project Management: School Districts

William Guinan — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:49:00 GMT

The Durham Public School district (DPS) is a K-12 public education district in North Carolina, encompassing 53 schools. There are 29 elementary schools and 24 secondary institutions, comprised of 34,000 students and 4,000 faculty and staff. The mission of DPS is to work together with parents and the community to ensure that every student receives the best possible education that enables them to discover their interests and reach their full potential.

Challenge

In North Carolina, the state mandated that every school district track School Improvement Plans (SIPs), which before the introduction of BrightWork, was a paper document that principals submitted once a year and was subsequently tucked away in a file. Follow up was cumbersome. As a result, the progress and adherence to plans was not evident, as the status of SIPs were not reported or tracked consistently at every school in the district. When new leadership took over the helm, they expected more consistent, high-level tracking of SIPs, and instituted the full project management discipline to do that. Also, external stakeholders were interested to track the progress of lower schools performing throughout the entire school year.

Solution

DPS wanted a methodology and not just the tool, so the first step for leadership was to develop a Plan Management Methodology that the tool could be based on. After researching several project management tools, DPS chose to implement BrightWork. While implementing BrightWork, the system was customized to meet the requirements of the methodology, creating a true “Plan Management System”.

There was a strong emphasis on customer requirements during this deployment. A lot of effort was made to ensure the tool was not too “business” focused, but rather education focused, using educational terminology and ideas while still staying true to the project management discipline. It was important from the start that school principals saw BrightWork as an enhancement to their work that they could embrace as a value-add, rather than just extra work they had to do because leadership wanted more up-to-date status.

Now, with a fully customized BrightWork environment, school principals are able to log in and log out and track their plan without a lot of effort. They have a Plan Checklist which maps to the methodology so principals can easily mark a task complete once it is finished. The dashboards are designed to map to the methodology as well, with a section to Define and Plan the work and another section to Monitor and Control the plan. As the principals were trained on the plan management methodology, the BrightWork screens and forms were configured to follow that process. With customized forms in the BrightWork environment, principals can set goals and track the plans’ progress. Once goals are set, principals can assign tasks and see the project schedule in a list or Gantt view. As the data is updated, principals and leadership can view a “snapshot” report which shows whether the goals are on schedule, delayed, or off-track, allowing them to know where to focus their attention.

There has been great adoption of the system among the principals and stakeholders are pleased that they can use the tool to oversee SIPs and provide feedback to the plan. The benefit of this system is that as principals keep their plans updated they know exactly what tasks in their plan require attention. For the district leadership, BrightWork enables the visibility to keep track of all SIPs at a high level, across the entire school district.

To check out more case studies like this one, including links to videos demonstrating the ideas and approached described, download our eBook Project and Portfolio Management using SharePoint today!

Start Managing Your Projects on SharePoint Today!

William Guinan — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:16:00 GMT

What is your SharePoint strategy for 2012? Many organizations want to use SharePoint for project management but are not sure where to start or are afraid of a long and complicated deployment process. The Project Office JumpStart from BrightWork is ideal for organizations who want to deploy a fully working project management solution on SharePoint quickly and at a low cost. As you plan for a new year and a new budget, consider the Project Office JumpStart from BrightWork to maximize your investment in SharePoint.

BrightWork combines project management structure with flexibility for projects of all shapes and sizes, and with the JumpStart offer you can have your project office up and running in as little as three to four weeks. The JumpStart package uses best practices and proven deployment patterns to rapidly deploy a complete project office on Microsoft SharePoint.

Deployment Services

Project scoping, planning and setup, and needs definition
Installation and configuration of the BrightWork solution
Build of at least 2 templates to manage 2 different project types
Build of at least 1 project office/rollup template for reporting across projects
BrightWork training for support staff and end users

Software

50 perpetual end-user licenses of BrightWork

Support and Upgrades for 1 Year

Support Desk: available to customers through email, phone or the online forum.
New Releases: access to all core product and template upgrades and releases including new platform upgrades.
Training Environment: access to the Customer Training Environment and associated training materials with the rights to customize as needed.
Health Check: your BrightWork assigned Customer Success Manager will conduct an annual Health Check to include advice and recommendations.

Register for the recorded webcast in which BrightWork walks through the JumpStart offer, explains the deployment process and demonstrates the software. Register Now!

For Project Management - BrightWork on SharePoint or Microsoft Project Server – which to deploy?

Eamonn McGuinness — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:30:00 GMT

We often get asked whether customers should … “manage their projects on SharePoint (with a plug-in like BrightWork) or on Microsoft Project Server?”.

Of course the answer is – “it depends” – and the other part of the answer is – “in certain scenarios you can and may need and will want to use both platforms”. In fact as organizations mature their work, project and portfolio management, we see the latter scenario as more usual.

This earlier blog article answers the question posed in this new blog post pretty directly and clearly …. Work, Project and Portfolio Management – Crawl, Walk, Run – Quickly! If this earlier blog post answers the question to your satisfaction, you need read no further!

It is also important to point out that BrightWork is a partner of the Microsoft Project Server team and product set and we are not comfortable competing with Microsoft Project Server and see no benefits to our customers to do so. To compete would imply we are real alternative (either / or) choices, which is not the case.

We often then get asked a related question … “what is the main product difference between BrightWork (which sits on SharePoint) and Microsoft Project Server?”.

We again refer customers to the same blog article for the best answer to this second question … Work, Project and Portfolio Management – Crawl, Walk, Run – Quickly!

Of course customers do press us for a more direct answer on the phone and here is what we say:

Microsoft Project Server is an amazing product – it is really suitable for well managed and very structured projects that have a high degree of project management with a clean schedule in Microsoft Project that is well maintained. The key for Project Server is that the projects need to be structured and have a Microsoft Project plan, as the Microsoft project plan (the .mpp file) is the engine that fuels and feeds the Project Server dashboards.

In the main Microsoft Project Server provides the following three extras over BrightWork:

Enterprise Class Time-sheeting
Enterprise Resource Levelling and Costing
Very slick visual Portfolio Optimization (the UMT company that Microsoft bought)

Microsoft Project Server is however not designed or intended for a mix of:

non-project-work (e.g. support requests, tasks, etc.)
smaller less formal projects (that have no Microsoft Project)
medium sized projects (that have no Microsoft Project)
larger projects (with and without Microsoft plans)

This is the exact need that BrightWork on the SharePoint platform serves.

It should be easy to select between managing projects on SharePoint (with BrightWork) and Microsoft Project Server or of course deploying both. We really do serve complimentary needs. Project Server serves the “everything is structured” and BrightWork serves the “there is a mix of structured and unstructured – and also a mix of work and projects”.

“We at Microsoft are very pleased that BrightWork have shown Project 2010 and BrightWork integration working so early in the 2010 release cycle,” said Seth Patton, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Microsoft Project. “We do believe that the ability for customers to see a dashboard of reports in SharePoint that reports across many project sites with data synchronized in from Project Professional 2010 will be very appealing, and will provide a natural stepping stone to the full capabilities of Project Server 2010.”

I hope this blog post helps your decision process and also saves your team time and effort in making this decision. And again even though the information contained in this blog post is a valid answer to the above question, the best answer is still to be found in this blog post … Work, Project and Portfolio Management – Crawl, Walk, Run – Quickly!