In order for a project to be successful, project stakeholders need to know what is happening at all times.
Keep your team in the loop with a free SharePoint project management template [Download here]
From team members knowing their work and responsibilities to senior management who need to know the overall status of all the projects, communicating project information clearly is crucial every step of the way.
Without open, accurate, and consistent project communication, it’s almost guaranteed your project will fail… or at least run into some major problems along the way.
These days there are so many collaboration tools designed to facilitate proper project communication. But naturally enough, our favorite here at BrightWork is SharePoint!
Here are 5 ways you can use SharePoint and BrightWork to communicate project information the right way, at the right time, and to the right audience.
5 Ways to Improve Project Communication with SharePoint
1. Notify team members of responsibilities
Planning is the first step in any project journey. Once you map out the steps needed to reach your destination, you’ll need to let team members know their roles and responsibilities.
Some ways to communicate these responsibilities to the team include:
- Hold a project kick-off meeting to review the plan, key milestones, and roles.
- Use a collaborative project site to assign tasks to team members.
- Create “My Work” reports to help team members find, do, and update their project tasks quickly.
- Use scheduled emails to share automated reminders for upcoming or late work – more on this below.
2. Centralize project reports
Your project team is time-poor and likely working on multiple projects. Likewise, stakeholders are often involved with numerous projects and portfolios at any time.
Team members and stakeholders need to easily find out what’s happening on the project. However, if everyone is using different work tools and places to store documents, easy project communication is impossible!
According to a study by Planview, inaccessible project information and poor visibility are among the top collaborative challenges facing teams.
The survey also found that teams are using around 4.5 tools to manage work with 33% of respondents reporting everyone on their team was using a different tool.
This situation can only lead to poor communication and a lack of transparency around project tasks.
A collaborative site in SharePoint solves these communication challenges by bringing all project information, tasks, and reports into one single location.
SharePoint reporting options include tasks, issues, risks, and work. It’s simple to customize the project homepage with metrics tiles and other reports to place key information at the forefront of your project.
Visual charts and display options such as Gantt charts and Kanban Boards help to present complex information for ‘at-a-glance’ updates.
The key here is that all project team members and stakeholders know where to go to understand the big picture and find their piece of the puzzle.
3. Deliver program visibility
Busy stakeholders often want high-level reports about project portfolios, with the option to drill-down in problematic projects.
A simple way to deliver this requirement and streamline communication is to add traffic light indicators, R-A-G status, and one-liners about the project using portfolio reports.
Your stakeholders can see enough information about a project without delving into nitty-gritty detail all the time.
4. Schedule automated reports to stakeholders
An easy way to keep your team up-to-date is to create tailored reports for specific audiences, which are automatically emailed out at pre-set intervals.
For team members, you can share the ‘My Work’ report every Monday morning to help the team plan their tasks for the week.
If you have a regular meeting with a project sponsor, you can share a recent status report in advance
This way, you are giving the stakeholders the information they need, when they need it.
Automated reports are not just for the team and stakeholders. You can also schedule key reports about tasks and issues to your inbox on a daily basis. This way, you can track the project without having to constantly ask your team for updates.
5. Microsoft Teams
With collaborative tools like Microsoft Teams, project teams are more connected than ever.
In addition to creating teams and channels, your team can use:
- Real-time chat and messaging
- Video meetings and live events
- Document storage
- Real-time co-editing
- Integration with third-party apps and connectors
- Search
- Public or private channels.
A key benefit of using Microsoft Teams is the ability to add links to external sites, such as a SharePoint project site, as a tab in a team.*
*Please note that there is no direct integration between the BrightWork and Microsoft Teams. This example shows how to incorporate your SharePoint project management site into Microsoft Teams for better collaboration – using out of the box capabilities of Microsoft Teams.
