Project Collaboration

Project Collaboration
Project Management Manager Training, Live Online Training.

Project Management Collaboration

by Mo Haque, MSEE, MSEE, PMP

Collaboration in project management is a process where a project manager actively interacts with the stakeholders. Here stakeholder means anyone who has positive or negative interest in the project. Managing Stakeholders expectations means appropriate, timely and transparent communication must be planned and executed. This is easily achieved if appropriate collaboration tools are in place. SmartPath LLC has developed and facilitates professional continuing education training where students are taught critical ways to improve collaboration using Microsoft Project Server. SharePoint 2010 technology with integrated Project Server provides the best in class collaboration platform.

As we know 90% of a PM’s job is to communicate and make all project processes transparent, hence it is to the PM’s advantage to have a collaborative communication platform for sharing all project artifacts such as Project Plans, Project Documentation, Issue Resolutions, Change Requests, Calendars – internal & external, etc.

All collaboration requires leadership that is transparent and unbiased - that means open collaboration. Project participants must be able to effectively contribute to the project and their time must be used as efficiently as possible. This requires collaboration tools and technologies that enables the stakeholders to be collaborative.

Project managers face tremendous difficulties managing project-related information if a right collaboration environment is not present. A few of the difficulties are listed below:

• Lack of communication among the stakeholders
• Coordination of geographically disbursed teams
• Lack of visibility into the project
• Managing changing resources
• Controlling changes
• Monitoring risk triggers

To overcome the above mentioned difficulties in managing a project the collaboration solutions must map to the project management processes and facilitate the successful completion of the project. Here are some tips for creating an effective project server collaboration solution:

• Total integration between office productivity tools
• Transparency in document flow – appropriate authorization and authentication
• Incorporated change management
• Provide managers and stakeholders with visibility, accessibility and ease of data use
• Ensure remote access is available – time zone agnostic

SmartPath LLC PDU class for 4 hours duration provides ample discussion points and tips for putting together a best possible collaboration platform using SharePoint and Project Server.

If your organization is providing you with this training, you will be provided the triangle breakdown at the time of training