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DEATH TO SPREADSHEETS 3 Ways to Increase Visibility Into IT Projects

Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

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Lack of visibility is one of the top frustrations reported by IT project managers. Can you relate? Managing projects in scattered tools like spreadsheets and task management tools, without visibility, inevitably leads to increased project failure, wasted money and time, disjointed teams, and a world of frustration. But there are things you can start doing now to get visibility like you've never seen before.

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Page 1: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

DEATH TO SPREADSHEETS3 Ways to Increase Visibility Into IT Projects

Page 2: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

WHY VISIBILITY MATTERS TO ENTERPRISE IT TEAMS

Page 3: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

WHY VISIBILITY MATTERS TO ENTERPRISE IT TEAMS

• Often have shifting business needs and demanding stakeholders

• Teams heavily rely on data management and need to be able to track and provide hard numbers and facts with little notice

• Expected to comply with industry standards, which requires lots of documentation and auditing

• IT projects have low success rates if there’s no way to identify a failing project early

Page 4: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

WHY VISIBILITY MATTERS TO ENTERPRISE IT TEAMS

• IT teams receive tons of new project requests daily• Sensitive time, budget, and scope constraints that

need to be monitored accurately and regularly• IT teams rarely have enough resources and thus must

use what resources they do have wisely

Page 5: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

5 MAIN REASONS ENTERPRISE IT PROJECTS LACK VISIBILITY

Page 6: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

Most enterprise IT departments employ multiple tools to manage different stages of a project:

• Spreadsheets • MS project (complex

on-prem tools)• Light task management

tools• White boards/sticky notes• Google docs/doc sharing

tools, etc. presentations

The Result:

• Spreadsheet wars (my spreadsheet is better than yours)

• Scattered/varying project information

• Wasted time gathering and entering data manually

• Difficulty keeping the team on the same page

1. USING TOO MANY TOOLS

Page 7: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

When each team member uses his/her own tool(s) to organize their work (i.e. task management apps, personal spreadsheets or Google docs, etc.), you end up with:

• Islands of project data• Important updates getting lost in translation• Everyone with different information• An un-synced IT team

2. TEAM MEMBERS USING DIFFERENT TOOLS

Page 8: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

3. DOING TOO MANY THINGS MANUALLY

Manual processes are a direct result of using too many (and different) tools. Scattered updates and

project data means:

• Manually having to keep schedules and spreadsheets up-to-date

• Wasted man hours from manual data entry

• Unnecessary frustration

• Only being able to ‘hope’ that your manual reports are accurate

• Increased difficulty giving team members, executives, and stakeholders the visibility they each need

Page 9: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

4. LITTLE-TO-NO COLLABORATION

There are so many IT teams working in silos (especially distributed teams) because they

have no real way to collaborate on their IT projects. (And no, email is NOT a collaboration

tool.)

The Result?

• Inability to assess where dependencies lie

• Increase in unproductive, time-sucking meetings

• Spending too much time in long email chains just to figure out

what’s going on

Page 10: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

5. LITTLE-TO-NO ACCOUNTABILITY

Many IT teams have no real system in place to help team members take ownership of their work or be held accountable for the work they do. The Result?• Excessive finger pointing• Procrastination• Vague updates like “I’m 80% done.”• Team members are disengaged with their work• No visibility into what anyone else is working on

Page 11: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

THE ULTIMATE RESULTS OF NO VISIBILITY

• Increased project failure (over budget, past due, scope creep)

• Wasted money• Wasted time• Wasted resources• Disjointed teams (nobody on the same page)• Difficulty proving IT team’s value• Loss of years off your life from increased stress,

frustration, and caffeine intake

Page 12: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

3 WAYS TO GET BETTER VISIBILITY INTO YOUR IT PROJECTS

Page 13: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

1. ESTABLISH A CENTRAL SOURCE FOR PROJECT INFORMATION

How?2. Consolidate. If there’s not one tool that can help you manage

every stage of a project, then at least use the least amount of tools possible. Cut out excess.

3. Share. Make sure everyone on your team has access to the tool(s) you do decide to use. And the more collaborative those tools, the better. (Look for commenting/feedback functions, editing rights, etc.)

4. Sync. Get all team members using the same tools and following the same processes for managing their work.

Page 14: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

1. ESTABLISH A CENTRAL SOURCE FOR PROJECT INFORMATION

The Result?• The entire IT team has access and visibility• Decreased manual processes• All project updates, data, documentation, and tasks live in one

place• Everyone stays on the same page• Increased communication

Page 15: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

2.BECOME MORE COLLABORATIVE

How?3. Embrace social. 83% of project managers agree that social

media and enterprise collaboration tools can or do improve the way they manage projects. Use social media tools to your benefit and incorporate them to make projects more collaborative.

4. Talk face-to-face. Working on a distributed team? That’s what Skype, Google+ Hangouts, Facebook video chats, FaceTime, etc. are for. Even if you can’t be there in person, include your entire team in meetings using the tools available to you.

5. Include the team. Spend time brainstorming together with your team. Include them in the project planning process.

Page 16: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

2. BECOME MORE COLLABORATIVE

The Result?• Save time gathering, compiling, and reporting • Data is easy to access and readily available• Updates come with conversational context• Eliminate unnecessary email chains and status meetings • Communication and visibility happens in real-time, in one place

Page 17: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

3. INVEST IN INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM ACCOUNTABILITY

How?

Make everyone’s responsibilities and commitments visible to the entire team. 4. Use social/collaboration tools

5. Collaborative task/project management tools

6. Google docs

7. Be creative – is there a better way?

Page 18: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

3. INVEST IN INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM ACCOUNTABILITY

The Result?

• Decreased finger pointing• Team members will hold each other accountable• Increased commitment to IT projects from team members• Everyone is more engaged in their work

Page 19: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

ABOUT AtTASK ENTERPRISE WORK MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

Page 20: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

AtTask solves the visibility problem by providing enterprise IT teams with the following:

Page 21: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

1. A SINGLE TOOL THAT COVERS THE END-TO-END IT WORK LIFECYCLE

• With AtTask, you get one tool to manage every phase of your IT projects, from initial request through to completion. It’s a central location for all your project and non-project work available to all team members and stakeholders.

Page 22: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

2. A UNIFIED SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT TOOL

• AtTask is an intuitive work management solution with an easy-to-use social media-inspired interface that enables collaboration, the gathering of real-time contextual updates, increased visibility, and accountability for all team members.

Page 23: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

3. TRUSTABLE VISIBILITY FOR EVERY LEVEL OF THE ORGANIZATION

• AtTask delivers real context in real-time that equips senior managers, project managers, team members and stakeholders with project and work data they can be confident in.

Page 24: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility

USING AtTASK

Using AtTask can help you save time, save money, manage resources more efficiently, catch troubled projects early-on, collaborate, get real context, keep all your data in one place, eliminate excess tools, keep everyone informed, appease your stakeholders, create/deliver reports quickly and easily, prove your team’s value, and ultimately, get visibility at all levels that everyone can trust.

Visit www.attask.com/it-pmo for more information and to view a free demo.

Page 25: Death to Spreadsheets: 3 Ways to Increase Your IT Project Visibility