Watch a demo of the BrightWork 365 project and portfolio management software for Microsoft 365

Project management is an incredibly important business discipline, essential to ensuring the success of strategic organizational initiatives.

The fact of the matter is that many organizations do not have any proper project management processes in place, let alone a tool to support the methodology.

Some folks might think that project management is a nice-to-have, but “we’re doing alright with our current approach.”

Maybe project managers and team members see the additional process or the implementation of a tool simply as more work they have to do rather than a way to help them achieve better results in their job.

At BrightWork, we’re here to tell you that project management is not a luxury. It’s not a “nice to have” in your organization.

If you want to drive your business forward and be more successful with strategic projects, then you need to get serious about project management – and fast.

Here are six key benefits of using a project management solution that will help your entire team!

You’ll also see how BrightWork 365 for Microsoft 365 supports these requirements.

1. Implement a Standard Approach to Managing Projects

Without a standard approach or project management tool, you’ll end up with lots of PMs using lots of different methods to manage projects.

When that happens, there’s no way to capture all the information centrally. So project updates are time-consuming and it’s impossible to know what is going on across projects.

Now, this might be alright in a scenario where the team is small and projects are rather simple, but the approach does not scale as you add more projects of growing complexity and importance.

What you need is an approach so your project teams know that “this is the way we manage projects,” and a tool that guides them through the process.

The project management solution should support your processes and tie it all together, providing visibility into what is actually happening.

Opt for a tool with templates and other guidance to ensure projects are managed the way you want them to.

BrightWork 365 capabilities

BrightWork 365 project management solution includes three product templates to support different types of projects:

• Project Standard: This template follows a semi-structured waterfall process and is suitable for any team or department.
• Product Update: This template is used to manage maintenance-related projects generated from support request submissions.
• New Product Introduction: This template provides a structured process for developing a new product.

The best way to roll out standardized project management processes and drive adoption is to build your project management processes right into your chosen collaborative platform. You should leverage templates for project management in Microsoft 365 to deliver more effective project management in your organization.

2. Manage the Project Pipeline More Efficiently

A critical part of project success is actually choosing the right projects to carry out in the first place!  Most project management tools include some kind of facility to manage requests for new projects.  Hopefully the tool doesn’t make the process too cumbersome, especially if you are just starting out.

At the start, all you really need is a list so you can compare alternatives.  Just a simple mechanism (like the Project Requests app in BrightWork 365) where you can capture requests and review them will help with your project selection process. The key is that you can start capturing those requests somewhere.

By being able to capture project requests in a central location, you’ll be able to assess the new project pipeline and make sure that approved projects will provide the best value for your organization.

BrightWork 365 capabilities

BrightWork 365 project management solution includes four levels of Project Request Management. The levels relate to the number of approval stages a project request will go through before project creation.

At every step, the requester, the reviewer, and the approver receive automated emails. Reviewers and approvers can act on the request directly from the email or Microsoft Teams. A Power Automate workflow automatically updates the status of the request in BrightWork 365.

3. Optimize Resource Allocation

Do you know what your team is working on? Do you know what else that person has on their plate?  Can you identify work not assigned to anyone?

These kinds of questions are a bane for executives who need to ensure the optimal utilization of resources and that mission-critical work gets the attention it requires.

By leveraging a collaborative project management software, you’ll get visibility into who is assigned to what and make sure that the right resource is working on the right piece of work.

BrightWork 365 capabilities

BrightWork 365 allows project managers and senior executives to manage resource allocation using Power BI dashboards to track all work across all projects in one place.

Even if you are not using Power BI, there are out of the box My Work reports within BrightWork 365 delivered through Power Apps. This report shows the work, including stages, tasks, deliverables, risks, and issues, assigned to the logged-in user. Users can quickly find and update tasks in one place.

4. Centralize Project Reporting

When everyone is using their own method to manage projects, status reports can be time-consuming and difficult.  By the time they are created, the information presented is likely out of date.

By deploying single project management solution (on the Microsoft 365 platform), you give the entire team a central location to manage your projects (so everyone can see the big picture), where data can roll-up to project offices and reporting portfolios.

A robust reporting engine should allow you to cut and dice the information in different ways for different audiences.

By storing project data in one central system, you always know where to go for updates and can easily drill down into the project detail when necessary.

BrightWork 365 capabilities

BrightWork 365 centralizes project information in one tool, making it easy to assess the status of portfolios, programs, and projects. Easily track key indicators for health, time, and costs, and dates in one report.

5. Improve Task Management and Visibility

Using a collaborative project management tool helps everyone on the team manage and prioritize their work efficiently.  It gives them one place to go to find out what they are responsible for and how it affects the other tasks and the project at large.

Using scheduled emails can serve as reminders of work assignments so nothing falls through the cracks. It also makes it easy for team members to update their progress and bring visibility to any issues they are facing.

By using a project management tool, you enable team members to contribute to the project in a meaningful way, and the visibility helps to keep team members focused and accountable so the project can move in the right direction.

BrightWork 365 capabilities

BrightWork 365 simplifies task management with Gantt Charts, Work Reports, Status Reports, and direct integration with Microsoft Teams.

6. Collaborate Effectively With Your Team

Finally, deploying a collaborative project management tool connects your team to their work and to their colleagues.

The team can quickly build a culture of collaboration by leveraging tools and features like shared sites, document management, discussions, and social capabilities.

By getting everybody working on one uniform platform, collaboration and information sharing become much easier, so teams can work together to move work forward.

BrightWork 365 capabilities

BrightWork 365 integrates directly with Microsoft Teams. Every program has an associated Team; and every project within that program has a channel in that team.

This integration makes it easy to collaborate on the project without switching between multiple apps.

Together, BrightWork 365 and Microsoft Teams act as a complete collaboration hub with:

• Real-time chat and messaging.
• Video conferencing and meetings for up to 300 people.
• Video recording and sharing.
• Microsoft 365 Voice for cloud calling.
• Integration with third-party apps and connectors.
• Extensive search capabilities.
• Whiteboards for brainstorm sessions.
• Bots for surveys and feedback.
• Public or private channels for sensitive projects or data.

In Summary

Many organizations that we talk to are just getting by with project management. They track projects with some combination of emails and Excel or manually create status reports in Word or PowerPoint.

All of this is time consuming, and very often out of date by the time it reaches senior leadership. I once heard a senior leader say “We never like to hear bad news. We especially don’t like hearing bad news late.”

Implementing a project management solution (on the Microsoft 365 platform) will help your whole team drive more successful project outcomes by:

• Standardizing your project management processes with templates on Microsoft 365
• Processing new project requests efficiently via Power Automate
• Optimizing resource allocation with work tracking reports in Power BI
• Reporting across programs and portfolios with Power BI dashboards
• Tracking work across the team in Power Apps
• Creating a collaboration hub for all projects in Microsoft Teams