Effective project managers know a solid plan is key to staying on track. But the best-laid plan is only a starting point.

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Having the right project management solution at your fingertips helps you cross the finish line, no matter which critical path you’re on.

Below is a crash course in Project Online that uncovers how Project Online’s flexibility and range of capabilities can line you and your projects up for success in areas like:

  • Delivering projects on time and budget.
  • Identifying risks with built-in reports.
  • Collaborating and sharing information across teams.
  • Setting milestones and assessing the value of progress.

Project Online: Project Management

Project Online helps make project management easier. You can dive right in with built-in, customizable templates for functions such as manufacturing, healthcare, professional services, and IT. Once you kick off a project plan, you have recognizable tools on hand like Gantt charts and calendar views – plus, the familiar Office interface. So, getting up to speed isn’t an issue.

Project Online also provides out-of-the-box reports, which are useful in keeping everyone in your organization informed. Your team can view project tasks and milestones for multiple projects at a time. Team members can update these tasks from the web, the desktop app, or their favorite Windows, iOS, and Android devices.

Project Online provides other advantages, too. It lets you:

Choose Your Own Work Style

Project Online gives you the flexibility to choose the project management style that matches your critical path. With new templates, reports, and metadata, you can manage projects using Agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban. Alternatively, you can use a traditional Waterfall approach or employ a hybrid approach.

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Collaborate With Your Team

Project Online streamlines team collaboration. It allows you to create a dedicated project site, so you can share documents, schedules, and project status with other group members. Along with the familiar Office interface, you’re able to easily copy and paste content into other Office applications, saving you a step. If you don’t need a full project site, you can still share those documents through OneDrive for Business. Project Online also integrates with Skype for Business (Available with separate purchase), so your team can chat or have a voice/video call from within Project Online. Plus, your team members can use their favorite devices to access project, portfolio, and everyday work from virtually anywhere, anytime.

Make Smart Decisions

With built-in reports and analysis tools, Project Online enables you to provide actions and insights for everyone on your team. From Upcoming tasks to Cost overruns, Project Online has the reports that let you and your team members make great decisions about their projects.

Project Online: Resource Management

Effective and efficient management of resources – the money, people, equipment, and other assets needed to complete your project – is one of the most important tasks you perform as a project manager. It’s also one of the most difficult. Anyone can successfully deliver a project when the resources are unlimited, but that’s rarely available. You often need to be able to optimize the resources you already have.

Fortunately, Project Online offers powerful tools for managing project resources, helping to get the most out of your team.

Optimize Resources

With Project Online, you can make sure you have the proper staffing by using resource engagements. This enables you to request and lock in the resources you need. Project Online also allows line managers to view utilization of their team managers, without needing the full Project client.

You can also gain central control of resources across your organization using resource pools. You can manage availability, roles, utilization targets. And reports such as capacity heat maps help you make sure you’re fully utilizing your resources, without overworking them.

Project Online: Portfolio Management

As your organization grows, two of the greatest challenges it will face is choosing between potential projects and managing its portfolio of projects. Project Online gives you tools to model different project and portfolio scenarios. Through these tools, you’re able to determine which projects meet the strategic goals of your organization. You can also gather project proposals from across your organization and evaluate them using a standardized process.

Project Online also offers tools that can help you work with time-phased cost data and manage project and portfolio costs, benefits, and forecasts.

Align Strategy and Execution

Project Online has built-in reports for virtually everything from product backlogs to project financials. These reports can help you compare projects. And you can share these reports with everyone in your organization through virtually any device.

Project Online also integrates with Power BI Pro and Excel to provide even more in-depth business intelligence to help you manage your projects and decide which projects to prioritize.

Helpful Project Online Resources:

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