what's in "the box"?

pm box is a cloud solution for Microsoft© SharePoint Online (Office 365) that enables you to standardise your project methodology, centrally manage project documentation templates, improve team collaboration through standardised SharePoint sites and help you develop a usable project management knowledge base.

methodology

is easy to follow

templates

are centrally managed

PMBOK©

is built in and customisable

dashboard

views of project registers

SharePoint©

project sites are standardised

knowledge base

that grows organically

adoption

is easy and intuitive

IT assistance

is rarely needed

do these challenges seem familiar?

when it comes to project management methodologies, we all face different challenges. there are however, some common ones most of us are familiar with. if you struggle with any of these issues, pm box can help:

Methodology: design, implement and follow

  • Your project management methodology seems practical and logical. It looks good in theory, but hardly anyone follows it properly (or at all)
  • Changes in process are done by sending emails stating "From now on, all project managers must..."
  • Project managers are too busy fighting fires or simply cannot adhere to the rules. There are too many to remember, or they seem convoluted and difficult to follow.
  • You are trying to fix the process by producing better documentation and making it more accessible, but issues keep happening.

Documentation - Creation, management and ongoing access

  • Your project document templates are scattered across multiple locations in multiple versions.
  • People are constantly struggling to find and use the right document template or the correct version.
  • Project documents (and other project artifacts) are stored at locations that are not easily accessible nor searchable to be of any further use.
  • Instead of being a valuable source of prior knowledge, project documentation gets forgotten along with other valuable project information as soon as the project is over.
  • You are trying use metadata or standard file naming conventions for easier document classification, but it all gets too difficult too quickly.
  • You are never sure if the security and access to different types of project documentation is correctly set.

Team - Collaboration and information sharing

  • Team collaboration is a constant challenge and teams seem disconnected.
  • You use SharePoint, it was good to start with, but it quickly got out of control because keeping everything in check became a maintenance nightmare.
  • You are waiting on your IT support personnel to provision sites for your projects. Default sites don’t seem fit for purpose and end up looking differently for each project.
  • You struggle to maintain adequate security of site contents during and after the project and need constant IT support. Sometimes it all gets too hard and security is gets too relaxed just to be able to use the system.

    Project monitoring and internal communication

    • Communication from project managers is infrequent because it is too formal and time consuming.
    • You cannot keep your hand on the pulse of your programmes or portfolios as you cannot see a comprehensive summary of all project issues, changes and risks of underlying projects.
    • You keep trying to build your project management knowledge base without success.

    Rubber stamp of compliance for everyones' peace of mind

    • Your competitors can demonstrate compliance with a project management standard (such as PMBOK©), but you struggle to get even the basics right

    A lot to cover! Lets take a quick look:

    Design your methodology

    A well designed, built and executed methodology lets you stick to a predefined process, even in different scenarios. The whole idea behind pm box is that you can develop your own methodology by customising processes (including activities within a process) and defining their correlations. Even the PMBOK© Guide states that it is a set of best practices that should be adjusted to suit your needs. With pm box, you can define the steps of your own methodology, use the built-in PMBOK© process rules that come with the application or further tailor them to suit your needs.

    Implement your methodology

    The design is largely a theoretical exercise that delivers the specifications. However, the building and execution parts have always been that real world challenge because following a methodology and adhering to a process discipline can be a pain, especially for a project manager. This is where pm box shines, allowing project managers to follow the prescribed steps of the methodology naturally and effortlessly.

    Project documentation templates

    Centrally manage and control your project documentation templates and have them automatically populated with essential project meta data for easier search and filtering in SharePoint©. No more confusion (or even questions) from project managers around which template to use for which project document. When you change a document template, changes are automatically propagated and the new template is in use by everyone straight away.

    SharePoint online team collaboration

    Create standardised SharePoint© Online project sites equipped with adequately secured document libraries and project registers at a push of a button. Add and remove project participants with different access levels without requiring any IT assistance or support and never lose your project documentation and artefacts again.

    Dashboard views

    Keep your finger on the pulse of your projects, programmes and portfolios with a dashboard view of project Issue, Risk and Change registers summaries. Check the latest "tweet-like" short updates from the project managers and see the status of your projects at a glance. Internal project communication is too important to be neglected.

    Build (and use) your project knowledge base

    Knowledge bases are crucial to constant improvement of your project practice but also for risk assessment in day-to-day project work. By using SharePoint as a repository for your project artefacts, you have them automatically indexed for searching. Now, it is surprisingly easy and intuitive to locate and use historical project information.

    What is a working project methodology worth?

    pm box is a subscription product for SharePoint Online available through the Microsoft© AppSource marketplace.

    Subscriptions are needed for Project Managers and PMO Administrators only. All other users that collaborate on SharePoint project sites provisioned by pm box do not need a pm box subscription. For example, If your organisation has 5 project managers and 100 people collaborating on SharePoint project sites, you only need 5 pm box subscriptions.

    PRICING

    download, evaluate and purchase directly through Microsoft© AppSource

    US$ 79
    per seat / month
    download FREE and evaluate for 30 days with 5 users
    comes pre-configured with three variants of PMBOK© 6th edition
    common project document templates included and yours to keep
    user friendly installer (no technical knowledge necessary)
    no limit to the number of SharePoint© sites you can create
    application support included through a helpdesk system
    you have full control over seat allocation to your users
    go to Microsoft AppSource

    About DECODE IT

    pm box is a result of many years of hands-on expertise in the areas DECODE IT specialises in. Realising that most companies share the same underlying issues when it comes to project management and collaboration, we decided to offer a product that could finally address these issues and improve businesses organisational and project management maturity. Unlike other products, pm box does not promise to deliver your projects on time and budget. Instead, it provides all the key elements for overall project success by empowering people, offering easy adherence to standards and providing an effective project collaboration environment using SharePoint Online.

    team DECODE IT