Once the exclusive domain of specialists, elements of project management have quietly woven themselves into the fabric of modern work. From tracking deadlines and approvals, to monitoring budgets and reporting progress, many jobs now require skills that used to belong to a specific profession. But are there tools that can help everyone, as well as specialists, to work and collaborate more effectively?
“Project management is bleeding into the everyday life of a lot more workers, and evidently some of the large, rigid and expensive tools aren’t positioned for that,” says James Ferrier, manager of large enterprise solutions engineering at Smartsheet, a cloud-based work management platform.
The democratisation of project management also means that organisations may lack a comprehensive overview of all the projects underway across different teams and departments. “Without being able to see the whole real estate, how can you know whether all of those projects align with your goals?” asks Ferrier.
Remote and hybrid work environments have added further complexity to the task of managing teams and resources effectively. Organisations that lack consistent mechanisms for reporting project progress also tend to experience a disconnect between project management teams and senior management. This can result in issues being missed, deadlines being missed, and ultimately more projects failing.
Enabling adoption and automation
To address these issues, employees need access to a powerful project management tool that isn’t overly complicated. “The biggest barrier to collaboration is adoption [of a tool],” says Ferrier. “People need something that’s very easy to use – that can be leveraged with little to no training.”
One tool that almost everyone understands on some level is the spreadsheet. “It’s estimated that between 500 million to a billion people use Excel, so it’s a ubiquitous tool,” says Ferrier. Taking the grid view that people are familiar with as a starting point, Smartsheet’s software adds in intuitive collaborative features, workflow automations and integrations with other software that are needed to manage projects effectively today. “Although you can work in a number of different views within Smartsheet – cards, kanban boards, Gantt charts, timeline – the initial grid view provides a familiar starting point that helps to get people on board.”
Users can also create threaded conversations with comments in a workspace, sheet, specific row, or piece of content. Features such as automated alerts, reminders and requests for updates also help to keep projects on track without the need for constant intervention. “The great thing about these automations is that they don’t just come through the tool – they come via email or Microsoft Teams or Slack thanks to one of our integrations,” says Ferrier.
By automating workflows in this way, Smartsheet helps to reduce the pressure on everyone, increase their productivity in other areas, and free up valuable time for more strategic work. “They can focus on the big important things coming down the line that they really need to solve,” says Ferrier.
Thanks in part to these automation features, Uber succeeded in cutting planning and lifecycle development time in half after adopting Smartsheet, saving around 1,000 staff hours. The company is also benefitting from a single source of truth for planning, executing and reporting on projects.
Dashboards and templates
Powerful project reporting tools are essential for keeping projects on track, as well as communicating progress and outcomes to team members and clients. Smartsheet includes user-friendly dashboarding features that enable employees to create and customise dashboards without the need for technical expertise or IT support. These dashboards also update in real-time as data changes within Smartsheet.
Smartsheet’s template library also includes pre-built templates that cater to various project management needs, such as risk registers and project plans, which come equipped with pre-configured automations and recommendations. This effectively means that even a small team can very quickly get into the platform, create some assets, and start managing their projects, says Ferrier.
Smartsheet also offers more advanced templating capabilities that cater to the needs of larger organisations with complex project portfolios. They can create and deploy standardised templates at scale, for example, thereby ensuring consistency across hundreds or even thousands of projects. “One thing that Smartsheet really does is build an organisation’s path toward standardisation,” Ferrier explains. “It’s effectively making things repeatable, manageable and measurable.”
Because larger organisations also use a large number of applications, Smartsheet is designed to seamlessly connect with existing systems and workflows. It includes direct integrations with Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google Workspace, to name a few, as well as connectors for applications like Salesforce and an open API for building custom integrations.
Connecting these different applications via Smartsheet can help to reduce manual data entry and eliminate redundancies. “One of our clients gained a 40% increase in PMO [project management office] productivity because they integrated everything into Smartsheet effectively,” says Ferrier. It also means that organisations can continue benefitting from key business processes that rely upon the use of specific, well-established applications without disruption.
Recently Smartsheet has begun integrating AI into a number of user features to make it easier for people to make the most of the platform. The AI can assist users with building complex formulas, for instance, or generate data summaries to unlock quick insights. Indeed, it’s yet another example of how Smartsheet makes project management simple and effective for everyone, not just the experts.
Learn more about how Smartsheet enables everyone to work better at scale
