What you need to know to choose the perfect Microsoft Partner for #AmazingPM

Are you currently considering moving to Project Online? If so, you know such a move can be difficult because of the complexities and risks of adoption. So what do you do? Many companies have found success by using a Microsoft partner to guide their Project Online implementations. But in order to ensure adoption within your organization and an overall #AmazingPM experience, there are a few things to consider before selecting a partner.

If you’re looking for help with a Project Online migration, the best method is to select a partner who will guide you in following these three principles:

• Start quickly
• Achieve winnable wins
• Sustain adoption

Any good partner should help you start quickly so your organization can see returns on your investment soon after you’ve implemented Project Online. Focusing on quick wins helps ensure adoption and growth for your investment.

Innovative-e’s solutions are designed to be successful and provide you an #AmazingPM experience right out of the box. This allows your organization to focus on the tool, and worry about the high-end customizations after the tool has been adopted by stakeholders.

Choosing the right partner to help you implement Project Online for your organization will help you experience #AmazingPM by enabling you to get started on the fly, achieve early wins to share with decision-makers and higher-ups, and encourage widespread and sustainable adoption of your implementation. A good Microsoft partner will step through the entire migration process with you so that you don’t have to worry about the risks of adoption, so you can see demonstrable returns on your investment quickly, and so that your overall project management experience is amazing.

Innovative-e is a Microsoft partner with Gold-level competencies in Project & Portfolio Management, Content & Collaboration, and Application Development. We have a well-established history of guiding organizations across multiple vertical industries migrate to Project Online. Our customers report back positive results from the implementations we’ve helped them with, and consistently give us kudos for providing #AmazingPM results.

Do you want a quick start, fast ROI, and widespread and sustained adoption of your Project Online solution? Do you want #AmazingPM? We’d love to help you! Email us today for your free consultation. You may also qualify for a free half-day or full-day Microsoft-sponsored session.

Easy OOTB Lessons Learned #AmazingPM

Most organizations that conduct projects repeat the same general steps to manage that work, steps some might call a workflow.  Ideally, a project initiation or proposal workflow includes a risk review (to the company, to the customer, to the project etc) as well as a benefit forecast so organizations can decide how to best allocate their scarce resources efficiently and productively.  Microsoft Project Online can easily help manage risks and issues as lessons learned.

Use built-in Project Online functionality to define workflows and project detail pages (PDPs) where you can define the data that users must provide as they navigate a workflow.  It is not difficult to use in terms of programming or engineering skills needed.  You will need to take the time to think through, and document, how you want your workflows to work before setting out on the journey to modify your PPM environment this way.

Add-ins such as PS+ automate methods of capturing data needed from workflows out of the box (OOTB).  Again, this technique is not difficult.  It does require PS+ (click here  for more information on PS+ or to set up a free trial).  Your simplest answer is to create a plain and simple #AmazingPM OOTB workflow in Project Online using this checklist:

1. Define workflow discrete steps followed

• Determine what must be included and which parts happen sometimes
• Decompose steps into data points – determine when data needs collecting (inputs) and when it needs disbursal (outputs)
• Put pieces into phases and stages – for more defined modelling and potential interaction with other work flows

2. Define custom PWA entities such as data content type and format
3. Build, test, and deploy in PWA – modify existing objects to leverage Project Online’s power

Use the OOTB issues management capability from Project Online to create a lessons-learned database.  A workflow analysis shows three major phases of leveraging lessons, learning lessons, and listing lessons.  After we modify the OOTB issue category list to accommodate a “lessons learned” category, we can use the OOTB filter on the Issues page to create a view or report of the lessons learned.

So, in effect, only change two OOTB features slightly and get a powerful tool to improve an organization’s project and program management by actually learning from previous project issues.

To revise the OOTB settings needed, follow these steps:

1. On the project site issues page, click the List Settings icon in Settings section of the List ribbon.
2. Click Category and then, on the category column settings page, in the Type each choice on a separate line: field, enter the label you wish to use for lessons learned and click the OK button.
3. When closing out projects (or at whatever frequency you think useful) identify lessons learned on the Issues page of the project site by setting the Category to the lessons learned choice.

Use the Category field to sort or to filter and you can easily find actual things that happened on projects that you’d like to pay attention to when planning activities that could be impacted by new, similar issues or by issues that repeat themselves.  Project Online is a powerful tool that can help you build #amazingPM and even more powerful tools to improve your PPM success.

What creates an amazing project management experience?

As it relates to a Project Management Information (PMIS), amazing experiences may mean different things to different people.  One core theme we have heard repeatedly, is that to be amazing, a project management solution must provide value to all stakeholders.

There are many types of stakeholders for a PMIS, but we find there are 3 core roles.  These have common value points they seek:

Executives are most interested in information that helps them make better decisions.  Project transparency that is surfaced via dashboards, reports, and other data analysis tools allows for better project outcomes.

For this level of management, the ability to visualize problems before or as they are happening is critical.  Whether it’s schedule, budget, cost, risks, or other dimensions of project management, near real time information anywhere, on any device, is paramount.

Project Managers want to have all the information in one place to manage their project data and resources more effectively.

Managing data in multiple sources such as individual project plans, excel, shared drives/SharePoint, email, etc. by multiple people can be inefficient at best and downright impossible at worst.

A single source of truth for all PM information is vital.

 

Team Members are the folks are the ones doing the actual project work.  They need tools that create the least disruption of this work.  Ease of use by the team members is a key factor to sustainable adoption.

Bringing data together into a single, easy to use, purpose built system with relevant information available at a click can create an Amazing Project Management solution for all!