For the next installment in my “5 Reasons Why…” I want to take a look at why you should try BrightWork, a SharePoint solution for project and portfolio management.
BrightWork enables any organization to instantly deploy an affordable amount of project, portfolio and everyday work management, delivering immediate visibility and control. I found that their “Start | Evolve” approach allows organizations to start quickly where are they are ready with project management, with the flexibility to evolve as project needs dictate. Flexibilty is something I always look for in tools like this as our company infrastructures and project management process and organizations are often changing and evolving as needs change.
My 5 reasons why BrightWork is definitely worth your time to check out as your new project management and portfolio management solution are:
Best practice templates to consistently initiate, plan, track and control all projects
BrightWork realizes that when deploying project management, there are two things you need to consider:
BrightWork templates are classified according to the workload they serve and the amount of project management available in the template. You can see that the matrix diagram below contains different project workloads and a spectrum with varying amounts of process, with corresponding templates for each location on the spectrum.
This kind of template approach enables organizations to get started quickly with the right amount of process for the situation at hand. The templates are also designed to help you to evolve your project management maturity to where you want it to be.
Portfolio management dashboards for visibility across many project sites
BrightWork allows for any number project sites to roll up to summary dashboards in a Project Office or Portfolio Office template, providing powerful cross-site roll-up reporting for Senior Executives and other stakeholders. We all know that providing dashboards that mean something to our executive staff can be a painful process, but BrightWork has thought that through for us.
BrightWork includes Project Office dashboards that provide a summary view into all the projects in the organization. Charts and other graphical indicators give an immediate indication of projects that are on schedule, late, in danger, etc. Finally, there are links to other dashboards that give Senior Executives the ability to easily drill down into individual project sites for more information.
Status reporting, project metrics and KPIs for quick views into project health
Status reports in BrightWork allow you to formally capture a snapshot of what is happening at a given point in time in the project and maintain the history of these snapshots. Since most of the data is already captured in the project site in the form of KPIs and metrics, all which is necessary is for the Project Manager to add some comments as to what is happening.
Template design sync to easily configure and replicate best practices
With BrightWork, it is simple to configure your project management templates, and they have built in facilities to make it incredibly easy to do so. BrightWork configuration is a “point and click” operation, with no coding or programming necessary, and is carried in the same place in your site as the standard SharePoint settings, so it is all very familiar to users.
Not only is it easy to evolve project management processes inside the BrightWork templates, BrightWork includes a feature to capture those enhancements and roll them out to existing projects. Going back to the “Start |Evolve” approach encouraged by BrightWork, this Template Design Sync feature enables the consistent evolution of project management best practices within your organization.
Enhanced sync with Microsoft Project
SharePoint out-of-the-box includes a robust two-way sync with Microsoft Project. All BrightWork templates have the ability to leverage the sync as is out of the box, and the BrightWork Project Structured template extends the sync with options to sync, store, report and graph on extra data such as costs, work, duration and variances.
Try it for Yourself!
If you would like to try BrightWork for yourself, I highly encourage you to start a Free 30-Day Trial where you and 4 of your colleagues can experience the entire BrightWork product for free in an online hosted environment.
You should also check out these free online resources from BrightWork:
For more information about BrightWork, visit their website www.BrightWork.com or contact them directly at info@brightwork.com.
BrightWork enables any organization to instantly deploy an affordable amount of project, portfolio and everyday work management, delivering immediate visibility and control. I found that their “Start | Evolve” approach allows organizations to start quickly where are they are ready with project management, with the flexibility to evolve as project needs dictate. Flexibilty is something I always look for in tools like this as our company infrastructures and project management process and organizations are often changing and evolving as needs change.
My 5 reasons why BrightWork is definitely worth your time to check out as your new project management and portfolio management solution are:
Best practice templates to consistently initiate, plan, track and control all projects
BrightWork realizes that when deploying project management, there are two things you need to consider:
- The amount of project management that the project needs to be successful
- The amount of project management that the team is capable of absorbing.
BrightWork templates are classified according to the workload they serve and the amount of project management available in the template. You can see that the matrix diagram below contains different project workloads and a spectrum with varying amounts of process, with corresponding templates for each location on the spectrum.
This kind of template approach enables organizations to get started quickly with the right amount of process for the situation at hand. The templates are also designed to help you to evolve your project management maturity to where you want it to be.
Portfolio management dashboards for visibility across many project sites
BrightWork allows for any number project sites to roll up to summary dashboards in a Project Office or Portfolio Office template, providing powerful cross-site roll-up reporting for Senior Executives and other stakeholders. We all know that providing dashboards that mean something to our executive staff can be a painful process, but BrightWork has thought that through for us.
BrightWork includes Project Office dashboards that provide a summary view into all the projects in the organization. Charts and other graphical indicators give an immediate indication of projects that are on schedule, late, in danger, etc. Finally, there are links to other dashboards that give Senior Executives the ability to easily drill down into individual project sites for more information.
Status reporting, project metrics and KPIs for quick views into project health
Status reports in BrightWork allow you to formally capture a snapshot of what is happening at a given point in time in the project and maintain the history of these snapshots. Since most of the data is already captured in the project site in the form of KPIs and metrics, all which is necessary is for the Project Manager to add some comments as to what is happening.
Template design sync to easily configure and replicate best practices
With BrightWork, it is simple to configure your project management templates, and they have built in facilities to make it incredibly easy to do so. BrightWork configuration is a “point and click” operation, with no coding or programming necessary, and is carried in the same place in your site as the standard SharePoint settings, so it is all very familiar to users.
Not only is it easy to evolve project management processes inside the BrightWork templates, BrightWork includes a feature to capture those enhancements and roll them out to existing projects. Going back to the “Start |Evolve” approach encouraged by BrightWork, this Template Design Sync feature enables the consistent evolution of project management best practices within your organization.
Enhanced sync with Microsoft Project
SharePoint out-of-the-box includes a robust two-way sync with Microsoft Project. All BrightWork templates have the ability to leverage the sync as is out of the box, and the BrightWork Project Structured template extends the sync with options to sync, store, report and graph on extra data such as costs, work, duration and variances.
Try it for Yourself!
If you would like to try BrightWork for yourself, I highly encourage you to start a Free 30-Day Trial where you and 4 of your colleagues can experience the entire BrightWork product for free in an online hosted environment.
You should also check out these free online resources from BrightWork:
- Two Free SharePoint Project Management Templates that extend out-of-the-box SharePoint to manage a project.
- Collaborative Project Management eBook that walks through a simple approach to initiate, plan, track, manage and close a project to success.
For more information about BrightWork, visit their website www.BrightWork.com or contact them directly at info@brightwork.com.
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