‘Time poverty’ – or the feeling of being ‘time poor’ – is a very real issue that affects professional teams the world over, and especially those working in project management offices; managing large project portfolios and their stakeholders. So, if your team is struggling with time poverty, here’s how to improve team productivity…
How to improve team productivity
For busy teams who have a long list of daily tasks to complete, finding efficiencies is crucial to, not only minimising the time spent on those tasks, but also alleviating feelings of overwhelm and stress teams may be experiencing; feelings that can lead to mistakes, miscommunication and procrastination.
However, when your project team is at its busiest, where can you find the efficiencies they need?
Move away from copy ‘n’ paste Excel-based PMOs: Excel spreadsheets are fantastic tools with many useful functions and uses. However, when it comes to PMOs, Excel isn’t the most efficient programme to use – partly due to the fact that Excel-based PMOs aren’t editable in realtime and don’t allow multiple users to make changes at the same time. No, Excel-based PMOs require each team member working on the spreadsheet(s) to keep their own copy on their own computer – meaning multiple versions exist for multiple individuals.
Instead, moving to a Cloud or app-based PMO with real time editing and multi-user access – a PMO that can be viewed and updated by multiple users at any one time – will inevitably improve overall team efficiency.
Create reporting templates and track KPIs: PMO Leads especially spend a lot of your time creating meeting-specific reports – sharing different reports with different groups and stakeholders. As such, creating templates that track key project metrics is an extremely effective way to work more efficiently; saving you vast amounts of time, both in creating the reports and chasing the stats to populate them!
Again this is where Cloud and app-based PMO tools can help; Sycamore Gap’s PMO solution, for example, providing one-click dashboard and reporting, saving PMO Leads and Project Managers hours per week.
Automate workflows, notifications and audit logs: Within all of the above is the need for automation in your PMO – keeping your team automatically notified of changes and updates.
This is something traditional copy ‘n’ paste PMOs can’t achieve; meaning that, to manage your resources, keep up-to-date with project progress & timelines, and manage risk with a traditional PMO, you’re somewhat obligated to hold regular time-consuming meetings and/or send multiple emails to multiple team members; eating up time and often leading to misunderstandings and miscommunications.
In short, the most effective way(s) to improve team productivity is to invest in PMO software – created specifically to improve efficiency, productivity and communication, such as that offered by Sycamore Gap PMO.
Sycamore Gap’s PMO solution has been designed to help PMO Leads and Project Management teams improve productivity, communication and overall efficiency, offering professionals a way to generate comprehensive reports, track vital portfolio and project metrics, configure documents, and mitigate risks.
To find out more about how our PMO software can help you and your team, please click here or book a demo.
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