Another Exiting Tool for the Wooden Dagger Wariors!

You don't know how it happened or what happened; you still question yourself, was it a disguised punishment or a promotion? The point is, you've been assigned as the Project Manager. After those in Compliance, PMs are the most cherished positions by all. Anyway, you've embraced the idea that this is your destiny, and you have to start acting with determination and a positive attitude. Besides your official role and your "Wooden Dagger," with which you'll persistently press the project members to meet their deliverables on time and in good shape, what other tool will you use to manage the plan and deliverables?

Yes, there's no other way, what other option do you have in the arsenal of applications at your disposal, and that you master perfectly? Obviously, the answer is Excel, so what else?

If you ever tried to become a pro PM, you surely took a course and waded into the swampy lands of Microsoft Project, so you know how it goes: MS Project is one of those gadgets you compusively buy at 3 in the morning watching infomercials after being persuaded by the thousand and one wonders it promises to enable you to achieve. However, you end up using it only once and stashing it away; so, you decide better not to pull that monstrosity out of the closet and stick with your enthusiastic plan to use Excel.

But as Mike from Breaking Bad said, here's what's going to happen: You'll create a plan in Excel with tasks as rows and dates as columns, with additional columns like start date, end date, assigned to, status, comments. You'll craft your plan, and you'll even take the time to draw colored rectangles covering the dates to simulate a Gantt chart. Subsequently, you'll publish your immaculate "project plan" on SharePoint or a ShareDrive, and you'll ask your entourage to please update the status of their tasks and add comments where needed. But let's be realistic; after three weeks, your immaculate Excel will look like your parents' living room after a college party at 6 in the morning. It'll be unrecognizable, with comments resembling a list of excuses with dates, colored lines inserted, crossed-out activities, status that doesn't exist, or values that have nothing to do with the assigned columns, etc., etc., etc. And, as you well know: "What happens in Excel stays in Excel"; you have no way of knowing who on earth created such disorder in your project plan. Nevertheless, you have to present reports, dates, and maintain the timeline.

Allow me to sell you my innovative miraculous snake oil that will help you have everything "under control": SharePoint Tasks.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Microsoft being Microsoft, did it again! Powerful functionalities, on another level, undocumented, not promoted, hidden in software platforms that no one requested and few or no one understands. But don't worry, I'm going to give you the secret recipe to become the next rockstar in the PM realm (Godinez Awards for those in Mexico).

The first thing you have to do is become the Owner of the SharePoint (SP) in your area. Make sure the SP is at the appropriate organizational level to include everyone involved in the project, including the Stakeholders. If you can't achieve this, then ask to have an SP made for you, and let it be a Collaboration-type SP so you can invite whomever you want to the party. With your credentials ready, make sure the "Project Functionality" option is activated (Site Settings > Site Features); this will enable Task, Calendar, and Events lists on your site. This is important because they have built-in visualizations and functionalities that you won't achieve with customized Lists.

Go to the Tasks tab (if you don't see it, go to All Content) and analyze the Tasks list. By default, they have the fields you'd expect in a project plan. Surely, you'll need to add columns that fit your needs. For now, try to start creating your plan there. I recommend trying to use the Grid View to make it easier to digitize your tasks or even copy-paste from Excel.

It's important to know that you can create sub-tasks, so you can start with the stages of your project, for example, Planning, and then create sub-tasks nested under this phase. Click on the three dots to see this option. Don't pay attention to the order of tasks; what really matters is the start-end dates. In SP lists, the order isn't very relevant; you can easily fix this without breaking a sweat. In the Tasks menu, you'll be able to move tasks up or down, index them, or remove indexing. Then start establishing the precedence of tasks (three dots, open, edit, show more). Decide which tasks are important to be displayed on the timeline (three dots, Add to Timeline). Play with the options by selecting task bars on the timeline, change their color, turn them into "call outs"; add another timeline, etc., etc., etc. (have fun!)

Go to the List menu and take a tour of the different views SP has for Tasks, for example, Current View: Gantt Chart or Calendar. Modify the "All Items" View to show columns hidden by default, such as "% completed" or "Predecessors." Remember, SP allows you to create as many Views as you want on a List; so, play with the options. Maybe it's time to add additional fields to your List, such as "Scrum Team," "Release Cycle," "Area Responsible," etc. Make your Triumphal Entrance. Now with your plan in place, create a SharePoint page with sections; in each section, put relevant project issues such as Objective, Benefits, Stakeholders, Project Roster (use the People widget or Org Chart), Risk and Issues (for this, I recommend creating an ad-hoc list to manage them), etc. In the central section, put a picture of your timeline with a hyperlink to the Tasks page where your plan will be 'live' (note: the image will be a teaser of the plan). The design of your page should be a one-pager that gives the details of your project.

Execution

The most important thing is to execute your plan from your plan. Tasks must have an owner, and you can create custom views by owner with tasks that are overdue or upcoming. Set up notifications for tasks to alert you when a task changes status. Add a field for comments of type "Multiple lines of Text" with the option of "Append Changes to Existing Text," allowing you to capture multiple comment entries as if it were a log. When you need to know the status of a task or that someone updates something, use the Share option and send the task to the person who needs to do something. The secret to a successful plan is that it is genuinely collaborative, and task owners have the responsibility to update the status. Each task allows you to attach any number of documents; tell users to upload evidence of deliverables, code, documentation, or anything else required for tasks. This way, everything will be in one place. For committee presentations, go straight to Tasks and change views to what suits you, all-items to see the latest timeline, Gantt to see the critical path, due tasks to expose the wrongdoers; you can open tasks and see comments as well as visualize deliverables. On the fly, you can add more comments to the task or send reminders for those lagging behind.

Reports:

With a single click, you can export or rather create a link to an Excel page. This will allow you to send records either to a list or to a pivot table in Excel. You can create a report only once, and the next time you need it to be updated, just ask Excel to update the preparations. Changes in SP will be reflected instantly in Excel and in your reports. Generate your report and save it in the Document Library of your SP, put a link to the report on your project page so that it is accessible to everyone.

Put The Icing on the Cake

To look more professional, I recommend using the Events Calendar to schedule important meetings and milestones. At the end of the meeting, "upload" the minutes to the Event record to make it available. Use the Events widget to show "upcoming Events" on your page.

Create a list of Issues & Risks; SharePoint offers a template by default.

Use the People widget to create the Roster of your Project, put it on your page.

I hope this has opened your eyes to new possibilities, and for once and for all, you can finally Get Rid of Excel!