Leveraging Office 365 for Project Collaboration Success

Transcription

1 Leveraging Office 365 for Project Collaboration Success Fast Track to Project Collaboration Produced by: Caroll Ford Dux Raymond Sy, PMP, MVP Mike Taylor, PMP

2 This document is provided as-is. Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it. Some examples depicted herein are provided for illustration only and are fictitious. No real association or connection is intended or should be inferred. This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 2

3 Contents Overview... 5 Purpose... 6 Audience... 7 What you will get... 7 What you will need... 8 Scenario Narrative... 8 Overview... 8 Key players Problem Space / Pain Points Action plan Easy Creation of a Project Collaboration Site Outlook Integration Makes Project Information Accessible Real time Collaboration in a Document Simplifies Revisions Outlook Integration with Document Libraries Makes Mobile Document Collaboration Easy Project Professional 2010 Integration Makes Sharing a Project Schedule Easy Communications Management Simplifying and Accelerating Expense Reporting Using OneNote to Consolidate Project Notes (Even When You re Mobile) Providing Visual Reporting for Senior Management to Easily Review Key Project Metrics Automating Business Processes to Better Track Changes Maximizing Office 365 with other tools Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 3

4 Conclusion Next Steps Appendix 1: Related Videos References Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 4

5 Overview Are you tired of relying on to facilitate project collaboration? Wouldn t it be great if there was a more efficient project collaboration solution out there? Office 365 can take your project collaboration practices to the next level. In this white paper, learn and see how you can easily facilitate better project collaboration with your colleagues utilizing existing tools that we you already use like Windows, Microsoft Office, your mobile devices and even non-microsoft platforms. The intended audience for this whitepaper includes project teams that rely on , Microsoft Office tools like Excel, Word, Project and who have yet to implement an enterprise project management platform such as Microsoft Project Server, but need the ability to collaborate with project resources via current Microsoft Office tools or through Office 365. Through this whitepaper, you will learn how to: Utilize Office 365 to create a Project Management Information System (PMIS) Integrate Microsoft Project information with SharePoint Empower a project team to collaboratively share relevant information with MS Office Build a project management dashboard in SharePoint Online Utilize mobile devices to interact with project artifacts and communications See how Office 365 can deliver project collaboration success: IMPORTANT: The intent of this whitepaper is to show how an organization can utilize Microsoft tools the average business user is already familiar with to create an excellent collaboration solution. This is not intended to be a project management best practices guide. Rather, it is a look at typical project collaboration scenarios that can be enhanced by use of familiar Microsoft products to get quick wins for both management and project stakeholders. Far too often solutions are implemented without consideration for the effect it will have on the work patterns of the people who will use it. In order to keep the organization change impact to a minimum, the overriding theme for this whitepaper is solve a particular problem scenario while keeping the technology part of the solution as simple as possible for the end user. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 5

6 Purpose Even with all the great technologies available today, many organizations struggle with some of the most important aspects of project management. Recent surveys show that the most widely used technology tools for managing projects continue to be , Word, and Excel. But collaboration and project management tools including Microsoft SharePoint and Project are being broadly implemented among many organizations. What if a project manager could better use the tools already available in their organization, or if they don t exist, easily and cost effectively rent external systems to create a first rate project collaboration system? What would the value to the project team and key stakeholders be if this was simple and easy to setup and use with a noticeable increase in productivity? We intend to show that this is easily within the reach of project managers and their organizations. Arguably the vast majority of people who manage projects and work do so as part of their other responsibilities. Perhaps they are a manager in an IT organization, so in addition to the demands of their role, they also have to serve as project managers for their area of responsibility. The terms Casual Project Manager or Accidental Project Manager are often used to describe this type of role. For all of these roles, there is a need to collaborate with other team members to both publish and receive information and communicate project health to key stakeholders. The scenarios in this paper will show how easy it can be to create a cloud-based collaboration solution using the common employee tools to enhance the effectiveness of team collaboration. At the conclusion of this paper you will be able implement a basic project management collaboration solution that provides a team with basic schedule management, artifact storage, real-time document collaboration, alerting, mobile phone integration, and light dashboarding using Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Office 2010, and for those project managers in need of extended management capabilities, Microsoft Project Professional The scenarios are designed for organizations that are looking to standardize project collaboration activity into a repeatable system using standardized tools and methods. The completion of this activity should position the organization to readily expand their project collaboration. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 6

7 Audience Organizations looking to move from ad hoc project collaboration scenarios towards a more advanced project collaboration solution that is easily repeatable. Existing tools might include: o o o o o Spreadsheets Word documents File share or ideally SharePoint for artifact management Smart phones and other mobile technologies What you will get o Highly transparent visibility into project schedules, resource assignments, project health, and expense reporting o Integration of SharePoint Online lists, libraries, calendars, and discussions via Outlook, Excel, Word, and Windows Phone 7.5 o Ability for resources to update task information o Simple but effective dashboarding with list and spreadsheet integration o notifications for a variety of change aspects o Foundation for collaboration and schedule management What you won't get This approach will not utilize Microsoft Project Server Therefore the following capabilities will not be part of this solution: o Extensive Project Management Information System (PMIS) capabilities such as Performance Management, Resource Management, Demand Management, or Portfolio Management o Multiple Project Roll-up o True Portfolio Management capabilities to measure and analyze mapping the technology to the business needs Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 7

8 What you will need This approach will utilize the following technologies: o Office 365 o Microsoft Office 2010 o Windows Phone 7.5 o Project Professional 2010 Scenario Narrative Overview Our model company, SharePoint Café, Inc., operates a chain for internet coffee houses that provide great coffee related drinks, high-speed internet access, comfortable quiet surroundings, and business related social internet products. Our project manager Dux Sy is responsible for managing the opening of new stores in the Southeastern United States. Dux is tasked with working with both SharePoint Café employees and external vendors and tradesmen to complete store build out, order and install equipment and fixtures, stock start-up product, install and test communication systems, etc. There are over 10 different organizations that will be involved and Dux would like to reduce the amount of work necessary to round trip various documents, distill them into visual reporting for key stakeholders, find information exchanged in discussions, and speed-up on-location field status reporting. When hired, Dux was given a tight budget for tools and supplied with Microsoft Office Dux has elected to use Office 365 because it will not require any additional infrastructure or software investment in either physical assets or training to operate. Once he has proven the effectiveness of this approach, he will engage IT management to determine the best path forward to either fully integrate Office 365 with internal systems, or bring the solution in-house. Dux recognizes that SharePoint Café, Inc. as a company has a project management process maturity that falls somewhere between Level 1 and Level 2 in the following table: Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 8

9 Dux s organization has been managing rollout projects with who have fallen into the role of accidental project managers. As a result, most of the project management process has been ad-hoc dependent on the capabilities of the assigned resources. And while some templates have been established, the right process to consistently use these tools has yet to be implemented. Further, while there has been a demand for better project reporting as stated by senior management, the consistency of process and method has not matured to make this a reality. They ve hired Dux to leverage his experience and formal project manager training to move the company s project maturity level forward. To this end, Dux looks to Office 365 as the technology solution for the process change management that must take place. Having done this for his previous employers, Dux understands that technical tools alone will not drive this change, but instead serves as olutions to problems the process improvements will be addressing. Movement towards project information standardization, faster access to that information, and better visibility to the broader messages that the information reveals are all positive outcomes of the technology, but organizational changes are still necessary Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 9

10 Key players Janet Mulvany, Sr. Vice President Store Operations Janet is a key management stakeholder who needs to know that store start-ups are happening on schedule in order to hire and train staff, schedule promotions, and accurately project revenue. Dux Sy, Project Manager Dux is tasked with managing store creation activities once a site has been contracted and timelines established. Kara Goodsum, Accountant Kara is mainly concerned with expenses incurred by the project team. She has good visibility to Purchase Orders, Invoices, and Accounts Payable, but incidental expenses such as travel and small goods are more difficult to track, summarize, and report because it may take more than 30 days for these to come through various processes. If she could get quicker visibility to these, they could be better analyzed, reported, and controlled Jim Davenport, Construction Manager Jim is a project team member responsible for overseeing the site construction subcontractors. He has critical reporting responsibilities and is a key contributor for Dux to coordinate vendor timelines. Jorge Vegas, Onsite Construction Liaison Jorge travels between various installations monitoring onsite construction progress and reports to Jim. Jorge is very mobile and wishes to minimize the number of devices needed to provide this reporting. He works primarily via a smart phone and a tablet computer. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 10

11 Problem Space / Pain Points Dux needs to quickly and autonomously provide all vendors and team members with a single virtual location for: 1. Obtaining templates the company would like for all artifacts to have a consistent look and feel with content organized in the same way. This helps with reporting and understanding of information. Many of these artifacts already exist and just need to be made into generic templates which Dux already has 75% complete. 2. Document Storage One highly visible place to store documents with version history, comparison between versions, additional metadata to tie the documents to the project and other similar documents, and reliable search capability. May also require security at the document level. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 11

12 3. Sharing a project schedule that can be updated by team members with ease up until now, the project manager had to a request for project status updates from individual vendors and team members, compile those status updates from 10 different s and artifacts, and create a new visibility to the schedule status: approximate time 5 days. A webbased schedule and Outlook integration will greatly improve this experience for the project manager with updates compiled without additional work 4. Simplify and accelerate expense reporting Kara and Dux have discussed the same problem with expense reporting. Kara only does expense updates once a month because the acquisition and compilation of information from the various team members can take weeks. If she can get the information from the team into a spreadsheet weekly (a tool she works in 90% of the time), she can report each week on the expense run-rate to Janet and Dux, which will help them to control these expenses. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 12

13 5. Document Editing, Reviewing, and ing takes too long There are multiple times during the management of a store build out that Dux and Jim need to create documents together. From project charters to vendor and stakeholder communications, this is an ongoing need. While they could send documents back and forth with revisions utilizing multiple iterations, they would like to be able to do some co-authoring in real-time to speed up this process. Since Jim travels a lot, they would like to be able to do this together from multiple locations. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 13

14 6. Discussion threads get lost in and some team members are left out throughout a project there are numerous times when key communications are sent in and become hard to find when needed later. In order to have a better and a more concise way of finding inner-team communications, Dux would like to have an online discussion capability that keeps all communication in one location where it can be referred to by all. In this way, decisions that are made are easy to find and confirm. 7. Everyone has their own notes, but they are not consolidated, visible, and sometimes may not draw the same conclusions Dux, Jim, and Janet would like to have one place to keep all notes regarding a store build out. They would like to share this online notebook so that everyone s notes are in one place. They would also like to have multimedia capabilities in this notebook to aid Jorge in communicating onsite construction issues. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 14

15 8. Provide visual reporting for Sr. management stakeholders Janet has to report to the CEO and the Executive Management Team on a monthly basis as to how various store openings are progressing. She is also responsible for projecting the operational revenue, so she needs simple visualizations to use in reporting schedule achievement, expense reporting, and overall project health. Up until now, she has reported quarterly because of the time it took to compile the information. This has led to various misstatements and incorrect projections. There is pressure to get more timely information. 9. Accommodate simple change order capability During store creation, there are numerous times when changes are required due to unforeseen issues. Janet and Jim would like to have a change order process so that they can better control these changes and their impact to planning. These capabilities must provide the ability for team members to access this repository using their standard Microsoft Office tools, various computing platforms and mobile devices. Action plan SharePoint Café projects follow a standard process phase method. While these phases appear to be linear, in practice, they are interrelated and it s possible that processes within these phases are repeated throughout the project. However, for simplicity, Dux will use these project phases to help illustrate to management and the team activities and progress throughout the project. Dux will use Office 365, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Windows Phone 7.5 technologies to provide a project management collaboration platform for his team to use in the rollout of the new store. All of these technologies are designed to work together which can improve the way that SPC manages store roll-out projects. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 15

16 Easy Creation of a Project Collaboration Site Dux spent some time after arriving at the SharePoint Café headquarters working with the Cup of Collaboration team to develop a SharePoint Online-based site template that will be used as the basis for all SharePoint Café Project Collaboration Sites. The team s SharePoint experts helped to define Dux s vision and convert those requirements into a site template that can be deployed by Dux without any further intervention by the Cup of Collaboration team. After receiving notification from Janet that the Buckhead store project was ready to begin, he goes to the SharePoint Café PMO site and creates a new site for the Buckhead project. With three clicks Dux has selected the café site template and fills in the Project Title and URL name. With one more click, Dux has created the Buckhead Café project collaboration site. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 16

17 With the site Dux created, he has everything he needs to begin populating the site with the information he has on the Buckhead project. Numerous project artifact examples and templates are already part of the document library and so after adding his team members to the Member and Visitor groups, Dux can begin working with team members to get the project underway. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 17

18 As Dux builds out the contacts list, he will be able to use the presence indicators that are part of the SharePoint/Lync integration to see when members are online and available to establish a chat or video call session. See this video on how to easily create a project site on Office 365: Outlook Integration Makes Project Information Accessible One thing that Dux does first is integrate the calendar on the Buckhead site with his Outlook client so that he can easily begin to create meetings with team members and vendors without having to go to the Buckhead project collaboration site. Doing this is simple with Outlook 2010 and Office 365. Clicking on the calendar link in the Office 365 site and choosing the Calendar tab shows the button that Dux and the team members need to connect the calendar with their Outlook instance Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 18

19 Clicking this button and acknowledging a couple of security warnings will bring Dux to a dialogue box, allowing the calendar to be added to Outlook. The result is the Buckhead calendar is fully available in Dux s Outlook and he can set up his kickoff meeting and regularly scheduled meeting cadence. Once other team members have added the calendar to their Outlook client they will be able to have the project calendar available in the place that they visit most: . Using the overlay feature in Outlook the Buckhead calendar can be combined with all of the calendars already in Dux s Outlook client. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 19

20 External project members that don t have Outlook can request an alert for the Buckhead calendar and receive an any time a meeting is scheduled or changed. Or they can just go to the site to check the calendar. See this video on Outlook integration: Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 20

21 Real time Collaboration in a Document Simplifies Revisions Dux is working on the Change Impact Analysis for the Buckhead project and decides he needs some of Jim s help. Since SharePoint Online allows Word 2010 users to co-author a document at the same time, they will be able to make changes in the document at the same time. Dux quickly finds Jim on Lync and seeing that he s available sends him a chat to ask for help. Jim responds and begins to edit the document with Dux. When Jim begins to edit the document, Dux will get a notification in the lower left of his screen that tells him that Jim is now editing the document. If Dux clicks on the icon where the message appears, he will see that he and Jim are both authoring the document at the same time. There is no technical limit to the number of authors, but obviously, there is a practical use limit. Here we see the dialogue that shows that Dux and Jim are editing the document: Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 21

22 Once Jim has finished making some changes to the header color in the document, he saves his changes and the document then refreshes to show not only his changes, but any changes made by Dux. Here we see the color change made by Jim: In addition to Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010 also provide this capability. So, whether the Buckhead team is working on a RFP, slide presentation, or just consolidated notes, co-authoring will help multiple team members to use their time effectively on the same documents. See this video on Document Co-Authoring: Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 22

23 Outlook Integration with Document Libraries Makes Mobile Document Collaboration Easy Another time saving feature for Buckhead team members is the ability to add the document library to their Outlook client. Having the documents available in Outlook will enable team members on laptops that may be disconnected while away from the office to have all documents with them and to update documents offline. When they have connectivity again, they can open the offline documents and update the SharePoint site with their latest version. Since the Planning phase is heavily document oriented, having the templates readily available regardless of connectivity will make it easy for the team members to work on their planning documents. To add a document library to Outlook, Buckhead team members would click on the Document Library and under the Library settings click the Connect to Outlook button. The process is just like adding the SharePoint calendar to Outlook and would be quick and easy as expected. Once the document library has been added to Outlook, the Buckhead team members can work offline with the documents from the SharePoint document library and then synchronize them to their SharePoint site when they are reconnected. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 23

24 See this video on Outlook integration: Project Professional 2010 Integration Makes Sharing a Project Schedule Easy Dux wants to integrate the Project Tasks list in the Buckhead Store site with his Project Pro 2010 desktop application. Dux could have just created a Project Tasks template that had all of the same default tasks needed for each store, but being a Project Manager that already uses Microsoft Project to leverage task items to get better visibility into planned Resource Utilization, scheduling and tracking features, he has chosen to use the out of the box integration between these two technologies. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 24

25 To do this, Dux opens the Café Project template from the Buckhead Store document library using Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and then under File/Save, Dux chooses Sync to List. Dux enters the URL to the Buckhead store site and then chooses the Project Tasks list: After clicking Sync, the list is now populated and connected to the SharePoint Here we see the Project Task list in the Buckhead Store site and it is now synchronized to the Café Project file that is open on Dux s workstation in Project Professional Notice that even the Gantt chart is visible in the Project Task list to help others visualize the project timeline. Dux Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 25

26 now changes the start date on the project to be December 1 st, 2011 on his workstation and syncs it to the Buckhead Store site to begin filling in the project plan for the store roll-out. See this video on MS Project synchronization: Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 26

27 Communications Management In previous projects, the majority of communication that was not face-to-face between team members has been through . One of the downsides to this practice is that often project related threads are not located in one place for historical reference. Instead, team members have to search threads on different workstations to find specific topical communications. Because Dux is familiar with the capabilities of Office 365, he will setup a discussions area and require the team to create threads there for discussion where they are broadly available for reference. The challenge is that most people work in Outlook for communication. Dux will show them how the Office 365 discussions can be integrated with their Outlook clients to keep all of their messaging in their primary communication application. The SharePoint Café project site template already comes with a Discussion area included. So, all that s needed here is to add the Discussion area to the team members Outlook application. To do this, Dux goes to the Buckhead site and clicks on the Discussions link, selects the List tab, and clicks on Connect to Outlook. This works the same as connecting the other site functions to Outlook. Once completed, the Project Discussion Board for the Buckhead site appears in the same SharePoint list area of Outlook. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 27

28 Buckhead Discussion Board synched to Outlook. See this video on Outlook integration: See this video on streamlining meeting management: Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 28

29 Simplifying and Accelerating Expense Reporting Dux discusses how costs can better be controlled with the Buckhead project. Kara would like to speed up visibility to travel and procurement expense information for team members. Kara in the past has used a spreadsheet to gather this information from team members, compare the information to what has been formally entered into the accounting system, make adjustments, and then provide this information to key stakeholders. Dux recognizes that if the spreadsheet could be synched to a list in the Buckhead project site, the web interface for the project site would provide an easier way to gather all expense information from the team and allow Kara to synch this with her spreadsheet for adjustment and then synch back for access by the key stakeholders. To make this happen, Dux assists Kara with adding the Excel Synchronize WSS add-in to her Excel instance and showing her how to synch her expense spreadsheet with the Buckhead site. To publish her spreadsheet, she will highlight the expense cells in her spreadsheet, create a table, and then synch it with the Buckhead site. Kara will call the new list Travel Expenses. Here s what it will look like: Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 29

30 Once this is completed, this spreadsheet will now be synched to a list in the Buckhead site called Travel expenses. Any changes made within this list by team members can then be synched to Kara s spreadsheet by her opening the spreadsheet and refreshing the data. She can then use the data in her spreadsheet to prepare other summary spreadsheets to synch to the PMO site and provide data visualizations for the key stakeholders. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 30

31 Kara s Travel expenses for Buckhead as a synched list in the Buckhead site! See this video on Excel synchronization: Using OneNote to Consolidate Project Notes (Even When You re Mobile) Jorge is onsite at the build-out of the Buckhead store. Checking the data connection in the wiring closet he determines that it is not to specification. He decides that since he s using a Windows Phone 7.5 smartphone with Microsoft Office loaded, he will take a picture of the installation, open the SharePoint Café OneNote notebook on his phone and add the picture of the installation. Once he saves the picture to the SharePoint Café OneNote notebook, the rest of his team will have this available immediately. Jorge will also add some notes with specifics with the image so that it will capture the date and time that the information was captured. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 31

32 The vendor who has access to the project site, will be able to access the notebook and see the information, but will not be allowed to change it. When Jorge leaves the site later, he will contact Dux with the Lync mobile app on his Windows Phone and let him know that they have an issue and that the vendor needs to be alerted to correct the issue. Since it s added to the SharePoint Café notebook, it s permanently recorded and available to the whole team within seconds. Dux will have instant access, can even discuss it with Jorge while reviewing the image, conference in the vendor using Lync and get the vendor working on the issue while Jorge is traveling to a new location. Communications on steroids!! See this video on Mobile Collaboration with Windows Phone: Providing Visual Reporting for Senior Management to Easily Review Key Project Metrics Project expenses are being tracked on the project site with a custom list. Senior management wants to quickly see these expenses in a pie chart so they can have a good understanding of how the project budget is being spent. Using a charting tools that come with SharePoint Online, Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 32

33 Dux creates a real-time chart on the project site home page to visually illustrate the project s expense information for Janet and other senior project stakeholders. See this video on creating a project dashboard: Automating Business Processes to Better Track Changes In order to improve the project s manual change control process, Dux utilized the out of the box workflow capabilities of SharePoint online so any change request in the project can be automated, tracked and acted upon in a more timely manner. More importantly, a history of change request activities are kept in case it need to be reviewed in the future. See this video for automating business processes: Maximizing Office 365 with other tools Dux is also able to utilize his home computer which is a Mac to interact with Office 365. Similar to what he can do in a PC, he is able to access the project site to update documents, review critical information and collaborate with his colleagues using Safari and Office for Mac 2011 with Office 365. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 33

34 See this video for maximizing Office 365 on a Mac: Conclusion In this whitepaper we ve demonstrated how you can leverage Office 365, Project Professional 2010, Microsoft Office 2010, and Windows Phone 7.5 to create a powerful project collaboration platform that can: Utilize Office 365 to create a Project Management Information System (PMIS) Integrate Microsoft Project information with SharePoint Empower a project team to collaboratively share relevant information with MS Office Build a project management dashboard in SharePoint Online Utilize mobile devices to interact with project artifacts and communications Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 34

35 Next Steps Get started today by signing up for an Office 365 account at Then when you ve proven the value for your organization, expand this to achieve even more efficiencies and productivity. Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 35

36 Appendix 1: Related Videos Title Duration URL Leveraging Office 365 for Project Collaboration Success 20 mins Project Site Creation 5 mins Outlook Integration 6 mins Document Co-Authoring 6 mins Synchronize MS Project with SharePoint Online 9 mins Synchronize Excel with SharePoint Online 4 mins Mobile Collaboration with Windows Phone 5 mins Creating a Project Dashboard 5 mins Automating Business Processes 7 mins Streamline Meeting Management 4 mins Maximizing Office 365 on a Mac 6 mins Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 36

37 References Product information Office 365 product site: Project 2010 product site: Project Team Blog: Case Studies: White papers: End-User Product Help Project 2010 Help Project 2010 Help Interactive content - Videos & Sessions & Webcasts Project Professional 2010 and Project 2010 Demo Image: Download: Hosted Virtual Lab: IT Professional related - TechNet Tech Center: Admin Blog: Developer related - MSDN Developer center: Programmability blog: Got Questions? Search or ask in the official Microsoft Forums! US/category/projectserver2010,projectprofessional2010/ Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved 37