In part one of this five-part series, we will discuss the topic of collaboration, with the aim of supporting project managers and their teams to become more effective in the use of PPO, and thus complete more successful projects.

Best Practice #1: Collaboration

In order to keep a project moving towards successful completion, project managers, team members and stakeholders need to be aware of progress made, as well as issues and obstacles encountered by the project team. This type of collaborative environment can easily be created with the use of an online project portfolio management (PPM) software application like Project Portfolio Office (PPO).

PPO allows teams to work, plan and complete projects together, and provides the required communication and alerts to keep all members informed. Making use of these pieces of functionality and driving the correct behaviours within your team sets the framework for collaboration and will result in improved efficiency and reduced administration.

So, how do you go about creating a collaborative environment? Here are some ways in which PPO coordinates the collaboration efforts of teams:

Home pages

Team members often work across multiple projects and, with the help of PPO’s home page, can focus their attention on all work items allocated to them, across all projects. It is therefore good practice to access your home page on a daily basis to review new items and provide updates on existing items awaiting further action, such as tasks, issues and risks.

Project managers should ensure that all work is discussed at project meetings with the team, recorded within PPO and assigned to the applicable resources. This only works when all resources are using PPO, so ensure your entire team has the relevant access. Another way to promote collaboration is to ensure that all updates are made prior to project meetings, which will change the focus to exception based meetings, making a huge impact to the efficiency of project meetings.

E-mail notifications

PPO’s e-mail engine provides real-time alerts, improving visibility and allowing stakeholders to take quicker action. Because e-mail events can be set up for any entity in PPO, it is recommended that, with input from the team, careful consideration be given to the type and number of e-mail events that are set-up to avoid the perception of spam. Ensuring your e-mail events are active, correctly configured and encourage resources to provide real time feedback on work, instead of waiting for weekly progress or status meetings to do this, further driving collaboration.

Scheduled report mailers

Like any good project portfolio management application, PPO extends the collaborative approach to executives through its report mailer component, allowing any PPO report or dashboard to be sent out on a scheduled (daily, weekly or monthly) basis via e-mail. In this way, governance and portfolio health reports are made available to executives for decision-making. It is therefore recommended that you spend time understanding executives’ and management’s reporting requirements, thereby making it easier for them to access the status of the organisation’s portfolio. Once the reporting requirements have been understood, the next step is get your executives to accept system generated reports only, which will eliminate different versions of the truth and drive data integrity across the portfolio.

Are you looking to introduce these best practices in your project environment? If so, try a free 30-day trial of Project Portfolio Office’s (PPO) project management software today at www.go2ppo.com/try.php.

PPO is an award winning online project portfolio management and collaboration application. PPO is simple, immediate, secure and affordable. PPO is flexible and can be configured to support any methodology.