- Benefits of Microsoft Project Online: Time Savings for Team Members
- The Organization Wins When the Team Members Win
- Timesheets Help? Since When?
- Timesheets for Resource Demand and Time Off
- Timesheets and Issue Management
- Goodbye Weekly Status Reports and Meetings!
- Fewer Logins, Less Stress, Seamless work
- End of Month and Estimate to Complete
- Wait, Someone Changed Priorities?
- I have Too Much Work!
- Conclusion: Empower Your Team with Microsoft Project Online
If you thought Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) tools were made only for Project Managers, congratulations, you’re in good company—about 99.4% of the world shares that view. But here’s a heads-up: PPM tools aren’t just for Project Managers; they’re also incredibly beneficial for Team Members—the folks getting the actual work done!
This article is part of a series I’ve put together to help various roles within organizations grasp the purpose and Benefits of Microsoft Project Online within Microsoft O365 as it pertains to benefits to the Team Members. Whether you’re in PMO Leadership, Finance, Resource Management, or the C-Suite, I’ll walk you through a comprehensive list of reasons why incorporating Microsoft Project Online into your organization is a smart move.
In this article, we’ll dive into specific use cases that illustrate how Microsoft Project Online streamlines workflows, reduces manual work, and empowers team members to focus on what matters most. By exploring these scenarios, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the tangible benefits that Microsoft Project Online brings to the table. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and explore how Microsoft Project Online revolutionizes project management for team members! So buckle up!
Benefits of Microsoft Project Online: Time Savings for Team Members
Here are five standout features of Microsoft Project Online that deliver substantial time savings and efficiency gains for team members:
- Centralized Platform: Before Microsoft Project Online, team members needed multiple logins, URLs, and applications for tasks such as timesheets, time off requests, issues, risks, and status reports. With Microsoft Project Online, all these tasks can be centralized within a single platform, saving time spent navigating between different systems.
- Integrated Activities: Team members previously entered issues, risks, actual time, remaining time, and status updates in separate systems that weren’t tied to their deliverables. With Microsoft Project Online, these tasks can be integrated into one platform, eliminating the need to switch between systems and ensuring data consistency.
- Resource Demand and Availability: Before Microsoft Project Online, team members had no visibility into their resource allocation for the next 1-12 months. With Microsoft Project Online, they can see their resource allocation in advance, allowing them to better plan their workload and avoid overallocation, thereby saving time spent on last-minute adjustments.
- Streamlined Collaboration: Team members previously had to work on proposals in other systems or spreadsheets that didn’t layer future demand on their availability. With Microsoft Project Online, they can collaborate on proposals within the platform, streamlining the process and saving time spent on manual data entry and coordination.
- Automated Task Management: Before Microsoft Project Online, team members had to request tasks be added to their timesheets from application admins or wait for days or weeks for tasks to be added. With Microsoft Project Online, they can request tasks directly within the platform, reducing delays and saving time spent on administrative tasks.
The Organization Wins When the Team Members Win
Although most organizations have disconnected systems, it’s really exciting to see how happy everyone in leadership and finance are when they find out we’re also saving money and Team Members can focus on productive work instead of administrative Overhead. Hooray!
Timesheets Help? Since When?
It’s true, my absolute feature in Microsoft Project Online is called “Timesheets”, but unlike other applications, this is tied to the schedules. Here’s the high-level steps:
- Project Manager creates a schedule and assigns tasks to a Team Member
- Team Member gets a notification from the system that they’ve been assigned
- Team Member provides updates at the end of the week that push to the schedule
**We’ve used this feature for a detailed 3 day migration that allowed us to get real-time updates without having to force Team Members to stop and provide updates. Super bonus!! - Project Manager accepts updates and it automatically updates the schedule
**Big time savings the Project Manager also!
These are the steps, really easy, straight forward and it takes less than 5 min for the Team Members. Your mind will explode when you find out how much time is saved and how many activities are eliminated for task updates and administration. We’ve seen our Daily Standups and Weekly Standups practically disappear due to this great set of features. Almost like Oprah…You get a win, you get a win, you get a win! Yes, that’s how we get the Benefits of Microsoft Project Online!
Timesheets for Resource Demand and Time Off
Another huge win of Timesheets is they’re also tied to the Resource Demand and PTO/Vacation features. Out of the box, Microsoft Project Online has the ability to see that I have 40hrs of availability per week for 52 weeks, sounds normal. Then when we update the company calendar, it removes the ability to assign me to work on those days. So, any project that I was assigned to automatically moves out by those number of days. Now we have a realistic view of my availability as well as the entire organization.
In addition, the PTO/Vacation feature allows me, as an individual to put in my vacation time for the entire year…well not that I’m taking the entire year off. But I can enter my week off in summer with my daughter and a week off for Thanksgiving and another for Christmas. Just the same as the company calendar feature, my availability is removed on those dates and any project I’m assigned to automatically moves to the right! Amazing, right!? No more last minute, end of the year project estimation trying to get everyone’s schedules and calendars synced up to see if we can hit our dates. It’s an absolute game changer for your organizational planning to understand not only what we have planned but ‘can we accomplish’ it?
Timesheets and Issue Management
If you thought that, was it, no sir/ma’am…we’re not done with timesheets yet because it can also be tied to your Issue Management. The timesheets allow the Team Member to communicate delays, slips and extensions and have that documented at the deliverable level. This is communication with the Project Manager without having to wait until the weekly status meeting Yayyy!!!
It also helps with building our narrative/status reports for the projects. By using the timesheets and issue impact communications we’re able to have the visibility of ongoing slips and it automatically documents and ties to the deliverables. If they occur across multiple project or impact our project significantly then we can surface the issues as Project Level Issues and roll those up to a Portfolio Level Issue. This part is so amazing because you can see its impact week over week or month over month. The Waterfall report with this approach is an absolute game changer!
Oh Yeah, that’s how we get the Benefits of Microsoft Project Online!
Goodbye Weekly Status Reports and Meetings!
Who doesn’t hate status meetings? Sitting around waiting for your 5 min update and then you have to still be in the meeting the entire time…so painful! Well, I can’t promise you that they’ll ALL disappear, but I can tell you that the daily standups and weekly status meetings ALMOST shrink to minutes per week instead of hours!
Here’s how it works to eliminate the majority of the status meetings. Typically, everyone works on their deliverables and then we meet (virtually, in person or hybrid) during the week to give updates, changes, impacts, issues, risks, new estimates, etc and everyone attends.
Alternatively, with the Timesheet functionality, the Project Manager has already created the deliverable in the schedule in the order that is prioritized by the stakeholders. Each deliverable has Team Member assignments so they know what they should be focused on that week. Then each person updates their Timesheet with actuals and remaining work which pushes updates to the project manager.
Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner! No one needs to stop their work for a weekly status meeting, they just update it less than 5 min a week by a specific day. Status Meeting avoided!!!
That’s if everything is on track, there’s no problems no meeting…but, if people identify issues, they CAN communicate that through their timesheet and that lets the Project Manager who has problems and who should attend the status meeting that week. Or even better, the Project Manager can use Microsoft Teams for that Project to have open dialogue with the team to resolve any issues. See, I couldn’t promise to eliminate the status meetings completely but we’ll make a big dent in reducing them!
Fewer Logins, Less Stress, Seamless work
Gone are the days of juggling multiple cloud applications without a single sign-on—talk about confusion central! But fear not, with Microsoft Project Online and Office 365, life just got a whole lot simpler. Just one login and you’re good to go! Say goodbye to chasing down admins for timesheets, time off requests, or dealing with issues and risks—all those hassles are a thing of the past.
And let’s not forget about security—your IT team will breathe a sigh of relief knowing there’s no need to open up a million ports or scatter passwords across a bunch of different applications. It’s all neatly housed within your organization’s secure Office 365 environment.
Managing deliverables? Piece of cake. Once it’s all set up, the Project Managers handle their schedules, which in turn takes care of those Deliverable Assignments. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!
So, not only do you save precious time for administrators to focus on more productive tasks, but the cherry on top? Huge cost savings on licenses that’ll make your finance and leadership teams do a happy dance!
End of Month and Estimate to Complete
Does your organization dread the monthly and yearly “true ups” where everyone has to pause their work to double-check timesheets, project statuses, and future predictions? Talk about a productivity killer!
Well, fear not—Microsoft Project Online sweeps those headaches under the rug. With automatic updates to estimate completion as you make progress in your timesheets, the days of manual true ups are gone for good. Plus, say goodbye to end-of-year headaches thanks to handy features like company holiday calendars and vacation tracking integrated right into the timesheets. It’s like magic—those tasks are totally eliminated!
Wait, Someone Changed Priorities?
As much as I despise weekly status meetings, they pale in comparison to daily stand ups…regurgitating the same information that we planned months ago, ugh!! In addition to practically eliminating the daily standups, Microsoft Project Online also has a notification feature that works with the Timesheets to send email notifications to you for the following use cases:
- A new task was assigned to me.
- My deliverables are modified/priorities change. Dates moved in or out or I’m removed from a deliverable.
- Reminders before my Deliverables start and I’m able to customize the number of days before it reminds me.
- Reminders before my Deliverables are due. And with the same customizable timeframes.
- Reminders for incomplete or late tasks.
I don’t know about you but those are all the reminders I could imagine and I won’t need a project coordinator to hound my Team Members for updates. Success, I’ll take it!
I have Too Much Work!
One thing that was so painful to be a part of during my early days as a developer or Project Manager was having to work nights and weekends because we didn’t plan our work and didn’t have a way to communicate with leadership ahead of time to get additional help. Those organizations had huge turnover and very unhappy Team Members. By using the Timesheets with the company holiday calendars and the capacity planning features; each individual has the ability to review their current and future demand and easily communicate with the Project Managers and their manager when they see overallocations.
One of my favorite success stories was an organization that used this and found out one of their managers was doing the work of 4 people, once leadership saw the amount of hours and followed up with her, she was able to hire 4 more people to help get all of her work done. A few months later I received a Thank You card from her husband that said “Thank you for giving me my wife back..”. To this day, I still tear up thinking about how much happier they both must be. : )
Conclusion: Empower Your Team with Microsoft Project Online
As we’ve explored throughout this article, Microsoft Project Online offers a plethora of benefits for team members, from streamlined workflows to automated task management and beyond. By leveraging the power of this robust platform within Microsoft O365, organizations can unlock new levels of efficiency, productivity, and collaboration.
But implementing Microsoft Project Online isn’t just about adopting new software—it’s about transforming the way your organization manages projects and empowers its team members. That’s where I come in. As a seasoned expert in project management and Microsoft Project Online, I specialize in creating customized roadmaps for organizations looking to implement this powerful tool effectively.
Whether you’re a project manager looking to streamline your workflows, a team member seeking to optimize your productivity, or a leader striving to enhance your organization’s project management capabilities, I’m here to help. From initial planning, training and implementation to ongoing support and optimization, my consulting services are tailored to meet your unique needs and goals.
So, if you’re ready to revolutionize your project management processes and empower your team with Microsoft Project Online, let’s connect. Together, we’ll chart a course for success and unlock the full potential of your organization’s projects.
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