Project management is a critical business discipline. It is key to how strategic organizational initiatives are performing. For a long time, organizations have ignored project management. Many companies lack a stable project management process, and some even don’t have the tools and solutions required to handle projects.

Incorporating SharePoint management at your workplace can do wonders and provide much-needed efficiency for your future projects. Regardless of whether your organization manages complex or simple projects, SharePoint can manage almost everything. In recent times, it has evolved at a rapid pace and hosts many aspects of project workflow.

What Is Microsoft SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint was introduced in 2001 as an online collaborative tool. Today, more than 400,000 customers in 250,000 global organizations use it – 85% of them belong to the elite Fortune 500 list.

Unlike Microsoft Excel or Word, SharePoint is not a single tool. It is a collection of tools created to empower organizations to do the following:

• Manage information and data securely with permission and version control
• Automate processes via workflows
• Boost collaboration with social sharing, forums, and wikis capabilities
• Improve access to business data
• Manage and store documents
• Build intranets and external websites

You can get SharePoint as a cloud solution, an on-premises solution, or a hybrid solution (combining Office 365 with on-premises installation).

SharePoint Components

There are four standard components that contribute to SharePoint’s brilliance as a project management tool. These include:

Lists

Project managers are required to adapt to all the project components for efficient project management. SharePoint allows them to benefit from a user-friendly approach for project handling; they can generate different lists for existing tasks. Every addition to the list allows you to add processes to your SharePoint site. These include:

• Document library with native SharePoint capabilities, including check-out, check-in, version control, document versioning, and co-authoring.
• Task lists come with the ability to organize WBS, shuffle, transfer, and outdent/indent tasks.
• Project managers can create lists related to project issues, project risks, project statements, etc.

Web Parts

Web parts in SharePoint are used to track progress in a project. This way, they can record how the project is progressing on the list. By using dashboards, you can easily track and record the progress of your process on the list. With web parts, you can work with key performance indicators (KPIs), overdue work, status reporting charts, open issues, and traffic light indicators.

SharePoint Sites

SharePoint sites offer a one-stop-shop where you can consolidate all the components – lists, web parts, and libraries – for SharePoint project management.

Each project has a dedicated project site from where you can access web parts and track/update your work. Since these sites are collaborative, it makes it easy for project members to coordinate as per their roles.

SharePoint comes with a terrific search functionality through which you can easily find a document without going through time-consuming manual searching. A project site contains all the key functionalities that are found in a SharePoint site, such as navigation, permissions, and templates.

Site Collection

SharePoint site collection is a set of SharePoint project sites. A SharePoint site collection in project management serves as a portfolio where data from different sources is stored and managed in a single place. This feature is useful, particularly when each business unit in your company has varying project needs.

Reasons to Use Microsoft SharePoint Project Management

Let’s take a look at why you should use consider SharePoint project management.

Built-In Task Dashboard

Once you integrate SharePoint into your Microsoft applications, you will realize that it has a built-in task dashboard. It has a standard user interface where the dashboard shows critical and selected tasks, along with individual task statuses. You get a wide range of approaches to review how your tasks are progressing, so you can quickly pick out areas that require attention. Besides, it is already set up and ready. Hence, your project teams can start working on tasks in no time.

Collect Content Across Project Sites

The SharePoint project management feature improves workflow throughout all teams and levels by combining and organizing content from different project sites into a single accessible and efficient framework. Rather than team members who visit an individual project site, they can search for everything needed for daily work tasks. They can also go through the progress of teams and collaborators assigned to the same tasks and monitor whether the overall project is working as expected.

Pre-Made Templates

Organizations can use SharePoint to configure pre-made templates for their projects. You can easily include them in a project site. Due to enhanced standardization, project teams have plenty of flexibility to work with and can manage the foundation for future migration or development project management solutions. It is quite easy to set up project templates, allowing key business analysis for the identification of groups and classification of project work.

Security and Control

SharePoint provides several security options, such as permissions and encryption, to help you control who can access and edit project data. If your business is already using SharePoint, you can add templates to your existing systems without extra IT overheads.

Visibility with Project Reports

Using a project site in SharePoint brings all reports, documents, and information into a single environment. This sole source of project truth can help you find answers to all questions pertaining to your projects. You can capture project information, such as:

• Tasks by the status chart (the number of late tasks and current finish date)
• Project status icons (reporting on cost, health, time, and completion percentage)
• Key Project metrics

Final Thoughts

If you have doubts over SharePoint implementation with your current framework, get peace of mind by reaching out to Bamboo Solutions. Our highly experienced and skilled SharePoint developers can offer expert guidance and assistance and will make sure you complete your projects effectively and efficiently from day one.