Product Operations Program ManagerBarcelona, Cataluña, Spain
I'd like to hear your feedback (pros and cons) on managing projects with simultaneous (integrated) usage of MS Project with a web application platform like Share Point and an ERP like Navision. Saving Changes...
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Trish MeyerExecutive Program Manager Transformation TeamPlymouth, Mi, United States
I've been using SharePoint for over 5 years and the advantage to having all of your projects on Project Server to lay over top of the farm (SharePoint) gives some advantages for content management, security, reporting, structure/governance, etc.
The cons are the real time roll-up reporting, but I believe MS has invested in this with Excel services. Standing up the environment is typically done by the SP Administrator.
We currently use a cloud solution to run and manage all of our projects - It's been a great implementation. The only con on that is we are a slave to someone else updating the code in our instance and we have performance issues once in a while. Whereas we never had any with MS Project server.
It's a balancing act. Look at your group skills, see their tolerance for a system that may have things break once in a while and how you need to report activities/adoption, performance, project spend, etc. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
I find navigating in SharePoint can be difficult without the crumbs: you can't easily navigate back to higher levels, short of using your browser back button. (You're out of luck if you used a link to get to a deep folder.)
I find tools like Confluence have overtaken SharePoint in making it easy to access your material. Confluence, like a good wiki, also make it much easier to collaborate on content creation.
I create Confluence spaces for my projects. It gives me a lot more control on content and format of information. Saving Changes...
I agree with Stephane, SharePoint is not easy to navigate.
In my experience, it was not user-friendly. It was a very large project, could have to do with the way it was configure. I had problem finding documents, search would bring way to much document. Alert where hard to set at the right level. Saving Changes...
Philippe SchulerSenior Instructor/Lecturer in Project/Program/Account PMO Management| Independant ConsultantLes Choux, France
I fully agree with Trish's first paragraph. In my organization the PMO always starts with the configuration of a new Program/Project environment using SharePoint, MS Project and more recently using PPMC (Portfolio and Project Management Center). The great advantage is to provide a secured teamwork project environment where all individual projects documentation can be recorded and shared with the appropriate audience using the appropriate access rights. Also the common projects logs can be configured with standard templates and workflows matching the company project management processes and rules (for example configuring Risks, Actions, Issues and Request for Decision logs that centralize all the items logged by the different projects in a program). Let's also consider SharePoint can manage time stamps for worldwide global programs. For me SharePoint has always brought a lot of advantages to the management of our programs and projects as a powerful centralized teamwork environment. Of course we have been complaining for not always been able to work off-line with SharePoint and also with many too long response time when using other tools like MS Project but SharePoint has been adopted as a standard for a long time with good team feedbacks from all our IT Outsourcing programs. Saving Changes...
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