by Stephen Danos Across all industries, IT departments provide the essential infrastructure for companies to operate more efficiently and effectively. They often coordinate and implement technology on a tremendous scale and ensure business continuity, from installing hardware upgrades to setting up single sign-on to improve data security. IDC recently reported that when considering a work execution platform, IT departments add adoption criteria that move beyond cost, customer validation, and implementation time. Among these necessary checks are enterprise-grade security, scalability, long-term use, APIs and integrations, and the platform’s access to a partner ecosystem. When stakeholders want to secure buy-in for new SaaS platforms, IT leaders want to outline value added, quantifiable benefits, and understand why stakeholders need the platform in the first place. However, IT teams that use Smartsheet can access several add-ons, templates, and integrations and Connectors that help improve planning, increase throughput, and streamline operations.
IT leaders can see immediate value for numerous team functions such as organizing your IT help desk, implementing software migration plans, tracking unresolved tickets, and developing new software. Smartsheet provides multiple approaches for streamlining existing IT workflows and managing projects with real-time, executive visibility. Here are seven Smartsheet solutions IT teams can use today: by Robin Sherwood I spend a lot of time talking with customers, particularly those who leverage Smartsheet for portfolio reporting. During the Smartsheet ENGAGE’18 customer conference, I spoke about portfolio reporting and how it can make an impact across businesses of all sizes.
I’ve worked with so many project managers (PMs) and program managers (PGMs) throughout my career, and I’ve seen a lot of traditional portfolio management tools. I believe that the generation of top-down portfolio management tools needs to be replaced by software as a service (SaaS) tools that integrate with the work being done, not just the portfolio being managed. Older tools, while effective on an individual portfolio level, force users to do extra work to manage multiple projects. This means information workers have to go out of their way to access and compile PMO status reports and tracking. by Renee Coulombe In order to help you work more efficiently, Smartsheet has four views that enable you to see and work with your data in different ways. These views help provide project clarity and visibility and let you work using your preferred way to visualize information related to your projects and processes.
Grid view, the standard view you see when setting up your sheets, displays your data in a spreadsheet format. This view is a great place to start when setting up project information and task requirements. However, exploring the three other views in Smartsheet can help you see your data in new ways, quickly visualize timelines, and organize tasks into actionable groups. Learn how card view, Gantt view, and calendar view enable you to take your sheets to the next level, expand your view, and help you work more effectively: by Brendan Regan Back in the early 00s, I was a project manager (PM). In a lot of ways, project management was the most challenging role I’ve ever worked in, and I’ve got huge respect for those who do it well.
One of the most challenging responsibilities as a PM back then was when something went wrong with a project or process, and I was asked to do a “post-mortem.” Some people call them “autopsies” or “360 reviews,” but they’re synonymous. The point was to determine why a project came in late, or low-quality, or over budget. Or, when an ongoing process was supposed to provide predictable outputs, but failed to do so. This root cause analysis and reporting back to stakeholders usually involved tedious hours, or even days, spent combing through email threads to see where things got off track, where a critical piece of information was missed, or where a requirement was changed mid-project and the change wasn’t managed properly. by Katy Beloof To compete in today’s marketplace, organizations can no longer rely solely on the old standbys of growing revenue and reducing costs. Increasingly, the success of enterprise organizations depends their ability to engage customers, accelerate product development, and attract world-class talent ahead of the competition.
These new business needs are fundamentally changing the nature of work. According to an October 2018 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Smartsheet, Deliver On Top Business Objectives With Collaborative Work Management, businesses are seeing:
by Stephen Danos Construction professionals need ways to eliminate process friction and unify everyone, from owner to architects to subcontractors, throughout the entire construction project life cycle. After all, delays often mean a construction project will go over budget, which is typically unacceptable.
Also, according to a recent McKinsey analysis of construction technology, cost-cutting technologies have gained significant momentum over the last five years. The Smartsheet platform helps construction teams save money and time, and stay connected, empowering them to improve collaboration, plan better, and maintain control over repeatable processes, audit trails, and document versioning. Below are many ways Smartsheet empowers construction professionals throughout the seven phases of construction project management by increasing visibility, centralizing key information, and rapid data collection through mobile-accessible forms. by Stephen Danos In a packed breakout session at ENGAGE’18, Margo Visitacion, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, shared expert insights on how collaborative work management platforms impact and empower employees.
She discussed and analyzed project management methodologies, how the digital transformation journey is unique for different companies, and how collaborative work management is becoming an effective toolkit to help organizations to work together more effectively, in projects and processes. by Diana Ramos Whether you're renovating or adding to an existing location, or constructing an entirely new one, properly planning for a construction project is a tremendous undertaking. Even the most experienced program managers struggle with setting proper expectations for construction projects given the unforeseen hiccups that can occur.
There’s no way to be 100 percent prepared for the realities of a construction project. Contractors may encounter changes in site conditions and need to adjust plans, or there might be sudden shortages in important building materials. But that shouldn’t stop owners from making their plan as watertight as possible, and using a reliable software platform, such as Smartsheet, to help them execute. Ensure you and your contractors are hitting your targeted budget by dividing the process into these four key phases. by Staff Writer Project managers at companies of all sizes have to choose from an ever-evolving collection of work management techniques. Out of the gate, they need to know if a given methodology — whether it’s Lean, Waterfall, or Agile — fits with their company and cross-functional department objectives, culture, and speed of business.
So, how do you know which work management techniques are the most important? And which ones will actually help make your project a success? Many factors can hinder the success of a project, but the critical path method can help keep projects on track and budget. While it was originally a time-consuming, hand-drawn set of diagrams, today you can use Smartsheet, a work execution platform, to instantly track the critical path or the most important tasks that, if missed, will delay your entire project — with just a click of a button. Here’s what you need to know about critical path, why you should use it in your next project, and how Smartsheet helps you tie critical path to automated actions, status updates, and approvals to help your team move faster than ever before. |
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