7 Reasons Why SharePoint is a Great PMIS

Hey there - it's quite an honor for me to join the Bamboo Nation family as the resident expert for project management. I appreciate the fact that Bamboo recognizes the value of project management in today's project driven business environment.

To kick off my first post, I would like to discuss the value of SharePoint as a Project Management Information System (PMIS). As defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI), a PMIS is a standardized set of automated project management tools available within an organization and integrated into a system. In a perfect world, this means that a PMIS will solve every project manager's nightmare: project information scattered all over the place. Status reports in e-mail, project schedule in a USB drive, forms and templates in the network share and even worse, traceability is non-existent. In addition, a PMIS should support most, if not all, of the communication and collaboration needs of a project environment.

Today, multiple PMIS solutions are available. However, in addition to being costly, they can also require specialized skills to implement, customize, and maintain. That’s why a lot of these initiatives have failed or only achieved limited adoption. This is how SharePoint sets itself apart. Here are 7 reasons why SharePoint is such a great PMIS:

1. Empowers the project manager
   
   Prior to SharePoint, if a Project Manager (PM) wanted to create a PMIS (typically a web site), the IT department would have to be involved. Depending on the priority of the project at an organizational level, it may or may not be created in a timely manner. IT becomes a bottleneck. Don't get me wrong here, I am not bashing the IT department, it's just that they have a lot on their plate. Another issue would be defining access privileges, again, this is a major challenge, specially if project stakeholders external to the organization (such as contractors or customers) have to be a part of the PMIS.
   
   Wouldn't it be nice if the PM could easily define and manage all aspects of a PMIS without IT's intervention? More importantly, what I mean by "easily" is that the technical skillset requirement is minimal. SharePoint allows just that. Watch this quick video that I created for a recent presentation and you'll see what I am talking about:
   
     
2. Seamlessly integrates with existing project management tools
   
   As I have described in a previous blog posting "5 Essential Tools for Project Management", project managers today rely on not so high-tech tools such as e-mail, network shares, Microsoft Word, Excel, Project, and even PowerPoint as their project management tools of choice. The good news is that you don’t have to give them up! You can continue to reap the benefits of using these tools on your projects and complement their use with your SharePoint PMIS. 
   
   In the previous video, you saw how you can synchronize a project calendar in SharePoint with Microsoft Outlook.  In addition, you can also synchronize SharePoint with Excel. In a project environment, you can use SharePoint to gather project expenses from the project team and have the financial information synchronize with an Excel file sitting on the project manager's computer. Perhaps within that Excel file you can link the information to other spreadsheets to do further number crunching. Watch a demonstration of this:
   
     
     
3. Centralizes and provides traceability to project artifacts
   

   Today more than ever, project accountability is front and center due to industry standards (PMI, ITIL, CMMI, PRINCE2) and legal compliance (SOX, HIPAA, Government regulations). It is critical that all aspects of traceability be addressed: Who accessed which project information when? What change was made? Can previous versions be reviewed and perhaps restored? Again, this has been typically IT's responsibility. 

   "IT, can you please restore the backup for me?"
   
   "IT, can you pull up the access log an tell me who accessed the project charter document at 5 pm 2 weeks ago?" 

   With SharePoint, common information management features such as access control, version history, check-in/check-out and content approval can be managed by the project manager.

4. Automates project processes
   
   Sound project management practices are built on processes. This is a good thing. To make it better, how about automating it? Wouldn't it be nice if the PMIS can alert you via e-mail if an expense reimbursement form was submitted? You can then review it, click a button to approve, and automatically trigger your company's financial system to electronically send a payment. Isn't this sweet?
   
   How about building a change control system into your PMIS? Apart from automating the change control process, decisions made by the change control board (CCB) are tracked and, more importantly, are accessible to the key project stakeholders.
   
   All this can be defined and enabled by the project manager within a SharePoint PMIS through the use of SharePoint Workflows. There are out of the box workflows, and custom workflows can be created using SharePoint Designer, which does not require programming.
    
5. Provides on-demand reporting of project status
   
   If you ever want to get promoted, just use the word "Dashboard" to management. They love this don't they?  With SharePoint, this is easily achieved with Web Parts. Check out PM Girl's post on the upcoming dashboard web parts from Bamboo Solutions.
   
   In addition to Web Parts, custom views can be created for a specific project audience. For example, in your project resource list stored in SharePoint, HR wants to see contractors that cost more than $100/hour and have a security clearance. This type of "report" can be generated by creating custom views. Again, no programming necessary.
    
6. Facilitates effective project team collaboration
   
   SharePoint comes with tools such as wikis, discussion boards, and workspaces to support the three aspects of project collaboration:
   
   i. Real-time collaboration: What happens when two people are working on the requirements document at the same time? Are you playing the game "Who Saves Last Wins"?
   ii. Offline collaboration: How do you support effective communication for geographically dispersed teams across the globe? Do you rely on e-mail or voicemail as a feedback mechanism?
   iii. Remote access: Can you access pertinent project information WITHOUT your company issued laptop? Is there a way to get to your project information remotely?
    
7. Minimal learning curve for project stakeholders
   
   We all know that in every technology rollout, the biggest challenge is adoption. There's always the fear of the unknown and, even worse, people not wanting to change. The old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" is somehow stuck in everyone's head. In my experience, the last thing you want is to have your project stakeholders (customers, management, project team) perceive SharePoint as yet another burden on top of everything else they need to work on. So to get their buy-in, think along the lines of "What's in it for me?".
   
   The beauty with SharePoint as a PMIS is that it is an easier sell compared to other tools if rolled out correctly. The core advantage of SharePoint is that it leverages familiar Web technologies and is tied to familiar Microsoft products (Windows and Office). 
   
   Remember, people can change as long as they perceive it as worthwhile. They are more likely to make changes that will bring about benefits at a personal level than at the organizational level. 

I hope this has opened your mind to the possibilities of SharePoint as a PMIS. Until the next time, this is Dux signing off.

If you have any questions or comments about SharePoint as a PMIS, please visit the Project Management forum.