Posted by The capabilities and features of SharePoint and Office 365 are unmatched. The document management, collaboration, and customization capabilities make it the go-to solution for almost 80% of the Fortune 800 companies. Apart from content management, SharePoint works great as a project management tool. Using SharePoint for PM, the project managers can create task lists for better task management. You can create a project plan and a document library to store project documents within the project site.
SharePoint For Project Management
From the beginning to the project’s closing, this tool facilitates all of the five stages of collaborative project management.
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Initiation of Project
SharePoint assists project managers in building a robust foundation for future work. At the initial stage, when you create a project site on SharePoint, you can share the site with sponsors. It makes it convenient to get sponsorships, resourcing, or approval. The project site offers collaboration so that the parties involved can easily work together to define the project’s approach. Using the site, you can set the object, timeline, and scope of the project and can create a project charter as well.
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Planning And Setting Up
After creating a project site, you can use the tool to create a document repository on the site and create specific task lists. With the project’s progress, the users can update the timelines and tasks. You can share the project plan with other team members and sponsors and use SharePoint to desk check. Project managers can notify other team members about their duties and activate the acknowledgment feature to ensure everyone is aware of their assigned role.
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Working
The project managers can show the task list on the homepage of the project site. It will enhance the visibility of the tasks at hand. Team members can easily know what their assigned tasks are and mark them complete after finishing them. You can also create reports and monitor the progress of the projects you’re working on.
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Tracking and Re-Planning
SharePoint for PM enables continuous monitoring of the project. It makes it convenient for the project managers to track the project, and if it is not running according to the plan, they can re-plan the project. Using the homepage of the project site, you can pin the KPIs. Thus, everyone can easily check and understand the status of the project.
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Closing
SharePoint also simplifies the closing of a project. Project managers can create a post mortem report to determine the course of action for future projects and can also create a punch list. They can mark the completed tasks once done on the project sites and update the related documents. This tool also enables you to run a project review and add a lesson learned document to the site.
What Makes SharePoint a Powerful Project Management Tool?
There are four key components of the software that makes it a powerful project management tool.
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Web Parts
Web parts of SharePoint allow its users to keep track of their project’s progress and offer an option to report the progress directly on the list. They make it quite simple to report and track the process’s progress on the list using dashboards. You can use web parts to for:
- Open issues
- Overdue work
- Traffic light indicator
- Status reporting chart
- KPIs, etc.
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SharePoint Site Collection
As the name indicates, SharePoint site collection is a collection of SharePoint project sites. A SharePoint site collection acts as a portfolio when it comes to project management enabling you to store information from a variety of sources in one place. The feature is quite handy, particularly if each of the organization’s business units possesses its own unique project requirements.
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SharePoint Lists
To ensure efficient project management, project managers must keep up with all the components of the project. SharePoint offers a simple way for managing projects and entering project updates. The users can create various lists for tasks at hand. Whenever you add a list, you are actually adding a project management process to your SharePoint site. The lists may include the following:
- Document library having native SharePoint capabilities such as document versioning, check-in, co-authoring, version control, check-out, etc.
- Task lists that have the ability to indent or outdent, organize work breakdown structure, shuffle, and transfer tasks.
- There are also some other lists that you can create for efficient project management, including project risks, project issues, project statements, etc.
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SharePoint Sites
SharePoint sites bring together all the components of your SharePoint project management tools such as web parts, lists, libraries. Thus, it acts as a one-stop shop. Every project can have a dedicated project site from where you can easily update or track your work and access web parts. The project sites are collaborative to facilitate project members to work together according to their assigned roles. SharePoint offers search functionality, making it easier to find a document without wasting time doing manual searches across different folders or networks. A project site contains all the critical features of a SharePoint site which include permissions, navigation, and templates.
Conclusion
SharePoint for PM tool brings a lot to the table, offering a centralized location to collaborate, manage, and track the progress of the project. SharePoint Migration Services and SharePoint migration from 2013 to 2019. To leverage the potential of this tool for project management, you can consult a number of vendors, such as Xavor Corporation. With more than 25 years of experience in the industry, Xavor helps you use SharePoint for PM and keep the platform optimized so that your teams can innovate faster, be more productive, and stay focused on achieving the business goals.