Every so often a new product comes to market that disrupts the way we used to do things. Say hello to “Microsoft Teams”. It’s the new kid on the block that will make you rethink how you collaborate and communicate with your team. Whether you're a project manager, team member, or external stakeholder, Microsoft Teams offers many benefits that will make you wonder how you ever effectively managed projects without it! In this presentation, I share some real world examples and best practices for how Microsoft Teams can be leveraged to streamline project collaboration and communication.

1. Increasing Project Efficiency using
Microsoft Teams
How to successfully adopt Microsoft Teams within your Project
Management Practices
Haniel Croitoru
March 28, 2018
#spfestdc

2. HANIEL
CROITORU
I’m passionate about process automation, and I work at .
LEAD CONSULTANT | OFFICE 365 MVP | SPEAKER

3. PROJECT MANAEMENT OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT TEAMS
SCENARIOS:
PROJECT COMMUNICATION
PROJECT COLLABORATION
PROJECT NOTIFICATIONS
LET’S TALK – OPEN Q&A

4. MAIN PILLARS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT
What do project leaders really care about

5. TYPES OF COMMUNICATION
80% of Project Manager’s time is typically spent communicating
Communication
Project Plan
Status
Reports
Risk & Issue
Log
Meeting
Minutes
Action Items
Decision Log
Change
Request Log

6. IMPACT OF COMMUNICATION ON PROJECTS
Does communication really matter on project success?
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Project Goals Met Project Delivered Within Budget Project Delivered On Time
Effective Ineffective
Source: PMI’s Pulse of the Profession™ In-Depth Report: The Essential Role of Communications

7. COMMUNICATE AT ALL LEVELS
Communication needs to be effective at all levels of the project team and organization
Internal project members
Internal Stakeholders
External stakeholders
Senior Leadership Team
Project Sponsors & Key Stakeholders
Project Team
Silent Stakeholders

8. WORK TOGETHER IN A SMART WAY
Working together requires a common base for content
Provide the right information
in the right format
to the right person
at the right time

9. COLLABORATION: REALITY CHECK
In many organizations, information is poorly managed today
•Document duplication
•Poor access control and audit trails
•Finding information is tedious
•Lack of consistency between
project sites

10. STAYING INFORMED
A Project Manager should always know what is happening
•Stay informed on tasks and deliverables
•Progress on development and testing
•Feedback from external people

11. PROJECT MANAEMENT OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT TEAMS
SCENARIOS:
PROJECT COMMUNICATION
PROJECT COLLABORATION
PROJECT NOTIFICATIONS
LET’S TALK – OPEN Q&A

12. MICROSOFT TEAMS
Chat-based collaboration tool
• Centered around
conversations
• TBD
• Mobile ready (Android, iOS)

13. Connectors
MICROSOFT TEAMS
What makes up a Team

14. Enable users to respond when they can
ASYNCCOMMUNICATIONS
Enable users to respond when they can

15. PEER-TO-PEER
Leverage Skype for Business-like instant messaging

16. TEAM CHANNELS
Each Team can have multiple channels to keep conversations focused

17. RICH CONTENT
Keep conversations fun and informative through images, links, and memes

18. MEETING SCHEDULING
Meetings automatically synchronize with Skype for Business

19. EMAIL CHANNELS
Email conversations can be brought into Team by emailing a channel

20. REAL-TIME COMMUNICATIONS
Leverage Skype for Business-like instant messaging

21. AUDIO/VIDEO CHATS
Conduct real-time online conversations with your team members

22. USER ACCESS
Provide access only to those who should have access to the Team

23. TEAM PRIVACY
Teams can be public to the entire organization or private to specific users

24. ADDING USERS
Users can be added from another team

25. INTEGRATIONS
Enrich your team’s by incorporating external information

26. ADDING TABS TO CHANNELS
Integrate content form other SaaS services into Teams

27. ADDING CONNECTORS TO TEAMS
Integration with other applications using connectors to automatically feed information
into Conversations

28. BOTS
Bots simplify the FAQ and to do experience

29. BOT INTEGRATION
Microsoft Teams leverages Bots to educate your users

30. PROJECT MANAEMENT OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT TEAMS
SCENARIOS:
PROJECT COMMUNICATION
PROJECT COLLABORATION
PROJECT NOTIFICATIONS
LET’S TALK – OPEN Q&A

31. CONSOLIDATE CONVERSATIONS
Keep conversations in Teams. Email is so 2015!
•Leverage Teams and Channels for communication
•Depending on organization and project structure, channels may represent
different entities (departments, functional teams, etc.)
Considerations
• Content that may be relevant beyond a project
• Should it be in the project Team/Channel or functional one?
• Any conversations are easily searched by users from anywhere within Teams, while
respecting security

32. CIRCLE OF TRUST
Keeping conversations to a limited set of individuals
•Should users outside of your organization or project team be able to read
the conversations?
Considerations
• Today, once you grant access to a team, users can see the content on all the
channels

33. CIRCLE OF TRUST
Keeping conversations to a limited set of individuals
•Should users outside of your organization or project team be able to
contribute to the conversations?
Considerations
• You can choose who can email a channel
• You should create a less cryptic alias that
is easy to remember

34. BRING TEAMS CLOSER TOGETHER
Leverage video conferencing
•Migrate video conferencing meetings to Microsoft Teams meetings
Considerations
• Skype for Business meetings live inside Office 365
• Not associated with any specific group entity

35. BRING TEAMS CLOSER TOGETHER
Leverage video conferencing
•Review materials discussed during a video chat session
•Work with global teams without worrying about the language barriers
•Considerations
• Automatic transcription and time coding
• Caption reading and full conversation searches
• Automatic facial recognition to attribute
comments to user
• Real-time translation
• Blur Surrounding

36. CONVERSATIONS ON THE GO
Participate in conversations anytime from anywhere
•Mobile apps provide rich functionality to stay connected with project teams
•Considerations
• Majority of organizations today have a mobile workforce

37. FEED THE CONVERSATIONS
Bring in additional information that is relevant to your project
•Incorporate additional content directly to the conversations using
connectors
•Considerations
• Users get to remain in one app rather than checking multiple locations
• Notifications are real-time

38. PROJECT MANAEMENT OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT TEAMS
SCENARIOS:
PROJECT COMMUNICATION
PROJECT COLLABORATION
PROJECT NOTIFICATIONS
LET’S TALK – OPEN Q&A

39. TAKING NOTES
Each meeting should be followed by minutes
•A OneNote is associated with every Team/Channel
•Capture unstructured meeting minutes
•Considerations
• Leverage extensive functionality in OneNote for searching content
• Add Meeting details directly into OneNote

40. File Sharing
Manage all project artefacts from a single location
•Each Channel has its own folder in the Team’s Office 365 Group Shared
Document Library
•Considerations
• Ensure everyone is working on the latest version
• Open Integrate storage from other SharePoint, DropBox, Box, or Google Drive
sources
• Promote documents to their own tabs in a Channel (e.g. SOW)
• For different permissions, need to use different Teams or SharePoint sites
• directly from mobile device

41. PROJECT MANAEMENT OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT TEAMS
SCENARIOS:
PROJECT COMMUNICATION
PROJECT COLLABORATION
PROJECT NOTIFICATIONS
LET’S TALK – OPEN Q&A

42. GET NOTIFIED OF WHAT MATTERS MOST
Keeping up-to-date should be effortless
•Microsoft Teams includes a rich collection of Connectors, Bots, and Tabs to
surface information from other systems
•Considerations
• Surfacing content inside Teams saves
time and keeps the team informed
• Share content from a specific account
with the entire project team
• Automate manual tasks through bots
• Leverage Flow to further automate
notifications

43. SURVEY TIME!
How did I do?

44. LEAD CONSULTANT | OFFICE 365 MVP | SPEAKER
Thank You!
Organizers, SponsorsandYouformaking
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Let’s continue the conversation
linkedin.com/in/hanielcroitoru
@hcroitoru