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Project Management, Small team, lots of projects!
Hi Everyone,
I'm new to SmartSheets, and project management in general. I have a 3 year old company that designs, manufacturers, and sells kids toys and books. In the past few months we've been having serious issues with staying on top of the volume of projects that we take on for ourselves. We are missing deadlines, and as a result getting products to market late, which has a huge negtaive impact on revenue. It's our belief that the total workload is not too much, but that staying on top of all the projects simultaniously is too complicated. Things get dropped and forgotten in the whirlwind. We need a system. I think that SmartSheets could be the answer, if only I could set up a set-up that works.
What we need is a way to dump all new to-dos, and a way for those to-dos to be easily viewable. I have tried putting each project on its own sheet, but then I have to click on each sheet to see what my to-dos are. In the whirlwind of other daily tasks, to-dos start to feel burried within each project sheet. So on top of having a place to PUT the to-dos, we need to be able to see upcoming to-dos and dealines easily. So we need to easily CAPTURE to-dos, easily view the to-dos, and know when we need to finish that to-do by.
Has anyone delt with managing 10+ projects simultaniously? Do you have any advice?
Thanks for any assistance or insight!
Comments
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Reports, Reports, Reports... (:
Smartsheet Tutorials - Creating & sharing project progress reports
I suggest you have 2 workspaces. "Active Projects" & "Archived Projects."
Put all of your active projects in in the "Active Projects" Workspace.
Point the report to the "Active Projects" Workspace and add filters.
Any new projects sheets go in the "Active Projects" workspace.
This way the report will always be up to date.
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I second reports! Each project can have their own sheet, then you can build a report that shows (for example) all active projects due in the next month. Or all projects due in the next two weeks that have a red status. Reports have live data, are editable, and can be emailed as a PDF on a recurring basis.
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Here's a 3rd vote for reports.
Kris' suggestion of the two workspaces is also great.
As much as I love Smartsheet though (and I don't say that lightly), the tool is not the whole solution. You need to understand your process, get that documented (in whatever form will work for you), and THEN apply the tool.
If you are missing deadlines, don't get caught in the trap of "I don't have time to fix things, I have broken things to deal with!"
(or I don't have time to sharpen my axe, I need to cut trees!)
Stop. Think. Plan. Implement.
Smartsheet is very likely a major component of the solution, but is not a solution in and of itself.
...
Wow, It is pretty high up on this soapbox. I'm going to step down carefully now.
Craig
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hey Scott, how have you been getting on?
