Effortless adherence to standards and due process

When project management software is mentioned, Project Managers immediately think of a scheduling, budget or resource management tool, managing particular project aspects and promising to deliver projects on time and budget. We know too well that it not the software alone, but your skills and expertise that deliver projects. This is where PM Box is different.

Project managers keep their focus mostly on communicating, evaluating situations and making decisions, which can lead to giving due processes lower priority. Similarly, working within a more structured project environment makes it very easy to overlook some of the principles. We all know how easy it is to get lost in the process and yet, recovering a project from seemingly small operational or management oversights consumes valuable time, increasing project risk and adding frustration.

Due process as a productivity tool:  Welcome to PM Box

PM Box software suite is designed to standardise the project management process and ensure adherence to prescribed PMBOK^® principles in an effortless and intuitive way.

PM Box is the only software product which integrates the PMBOK^® guide with the world’s leading collaboration platform Microsoft^® SharePoint^®.  Here are some of the PM Box features essential to a PM:

• The PM Workbench gives project managers a very simple and easy to use interface to carry out project activities in accordance with the PMBOK^® guide and automatically identifies any consequences behind the project tasks
• PM Box interacts with SharePoint in the in the background and takes care of project documentation logistics
• In addition to integrating with the Microsoft® Office© suite of products, all SharePoint project sites automatically generated by PM Box come with a core set of project collaboration tools

PM Workbench: The PMBOK^® rubberstamp

For each action you take on the project, the PM Workbench will automatically suggest subsequent actions and add them to your to-do list. For example, if you create a Scope Change Request, PM Box will suggest reviewing your budget, schedule and other co-dependencies. You can take an advantage of the PM Workbench Consequential Action Reminders to increase the robustness of your management approach.

The PM Workbench does not impose any constraints on the project manager. Just like PMBOK, the PM Workbench is your guide, not a strict set of unbreakable rules. PM Box is not rigid in its delivery because of the innate understanding that decisions made in project management are based on expert judgement, not because they have been generically prescribed by a process or a software tool.

If an action (or its consequence) is not applicable to your project, you can instruct PM Box to stop raising it. PM Box learns these adjustments on the go and your project actions start to flow logically, very quickly. PMO can convert adjusted projects into blueprints for cloning future working projects with similar project management requirements, so you won’t have to make the same adjustments in your next project.

Efficiently running multiple concurrent projects

PM Workbench allows quick and easy switching between concurrent projects by instantly presenting summarised and up-to-date information on the newly selected project. Overall, PM Box makes working on multiple projects much easier through clarity of information and easy-to-use interface.

Keeping everyone up to date

To keep the business abreast of project developments, you can post “Twitter-like” short project notes and status updates more frequently replacing lengthy, irregular emails. Your updates will be visible on the project dashboard in real time allowing reported information and status changes to be easily digested and actioned without delay.

Project documentation “logistics”

Project administration can be tedious, not to mention procedures for document storage, updating metadata or communicating the documentation update. With PM Box, one click on a project task in your PM Workbench creates or takes you to the relevant information instantly, saving you from navigating through the SharePoint project sites.

This means no more deliberation on which document template to use, where to find it or naming convention to use. It is all set up for you. When you need to create your next project document, simply click on the action and PM Box will automatically:

• Use the correct document template, as set by the PMO
• Fill in document metadata
• Use metadata to populate basic document information
• Name the document correctly (including incremental counters)
• Save the file to the correct location in the correct project library on SharePoint
• Set correct user access rights

Collaboration with your team in SharePoint^®

SharePoint sites created by PM Box are designed with project teams in mind. Each team member has a personal dashboard with their assigned tasks, issues and recent documentation clearly displayed and up-to-date. Users may also subscribe to automatic notifications for relevant project information updates.