Are your project admin tools all washed up?

In this bite-sized blog, our Customer Success Lead Neil Greenhorn talks old-school project management tools, and how Sharktower’s features replace them in a way that saves time, reduces error and increases team engagement. 

Neil, it’s over to you…

In this day and age there is a plethora of tools out there to help with day-to-day management of projects. Yet most project managers still revert to the old ways of spreadsheets, notepad and email.

Before I joined Sharktower, I did the same, but now I’ve seen the error of my ways! Let’s look at how Sharktower can bring your project admin up to date.

Are you capturing risks on a spreadsheet?

It is not uncommon to capture risks and issues on a spreadsheet, but that doesn’t mean it is the best place for them. Using a spreadsheet means your risk log is disconnected from the overall project, probably updated weekly or monthly and only accessible to the project manager.

Sharktower allows you to capture risks, link to the specific area in the plan and track mitigating actions. This helps keep people accountable and ensures stakeholders are aware of the overall risk profile for the project.

See how to manage risks in Sharktower in 3-minute video.

Are you sending actions (and chasing updates) by email?

I don’t think this will ever go away, but it isn’t the most effective way to chase and track what your team are doing. With the Sharktower meetings feature you can assign actions to your team during the meeting and they be instantly notified. If you need to chase them you can use ‘Request an update’ or tag them in a comment. This ensures everyone is on the same page and it is not a single email between you and the resource.

Capturing meeting minutes on notepad?

Using notepad (digital or paper!) to capture notes, actions, decisions, and risks from a meeting is time consuming and you’ll probably miss an item, then you have to write it up, PDF it and email to all the attendees (if you can remember who came to the meeting).

With Sharktower you can create a meeting and capture everything in real-time, if it is a reoccurring meeting you can go back in time and see what was discussed and raised. Attendees will get an email (kind of like meeting minutes, but better) ensuring everyone is on the same page (even if they don’t attend they still get the update).

See how Sharktower makes meetings (and actions) simple in this 3.5-minute video.

Creating a plan on a page with PowerPoint?

We’ve all been there at one time – spending hours crafting a beautiful slide that shows the whole project plan on one page. Making sure everything is aligned, colour coded and in the right place. Only for it be looked at once or twice then never seen again.

With Sharktower we can generate automated, interactive plans spanning months, quarters or years on one page – like this:

Let’s talk

If you’d like to see more of Sharktower’s time-saving features in action, get in touch today.