When a small team within an organization is working on a project it is important to have a document storage solution which allow for effective collaboration. The document storage option that you choose should allow all of the project participants to access the documents and allow for the project manager to oversee the entire project.
Steps to Planning Successful Project Management
For any project to succeed it is important to have solid planning in place to ensure that deadlines are met, budgets are adhered to and goals are achieved. That is the role of the project manager who must go through a number of steps in order to put a proper plan in place.
The first step is to create a project management plan document which can be used as an index to link together all of the relevant documents relating to the project. This should be followed up with a high-level project schedule detailing the key phases and major milestones within the project and a team planning document detailing who is responsible for each of these parts of the project. This can be expanded into a detailed work plan with individual tasks and schedules listed. Finally, the project manager must think about quality assurance and risk assessment.
Storing Your Project Management Document
When these steps are carried out there will already be a substantial number of project documents even before work gets under way. That means that an adequate document storage solution must be put into place. With so many options available to you it is important that you choose the most appropriate solution for your needs, so let’s take a closer look at some popular options.
Using Social Tools And Cloud Services For Document Management
One of the best ways to share documents easily is through social tools such as Dropbox and Basecamp which allow project managers to share documents with their team and access them from anywhere. Perhaps the most popular of these tools is Dropbox which is experiencing some impressive growth right now. One of the big advantages of using Dropbox for document storage is that it automatically syncs the online storage folder with the documents on your hard drive so that you will always have the must recent document even if another member of the team has been working on it. Google Drive also offers a great online collaborative cloud based document storage facility, the difference being that documents can only be viewed and modified online, so if offline access is required something like Dropbox is a far better choice.
Managing Hard Copies of Your Documents
Even if you do choose one of these online or cloud based options, somewhere in the risk assessment plan that the project manager sets up at the start of the project there should be a back up plan. What would you do if something unexpected happened to your online storage? It is a good idea to have a hard copy of your documents on file as additional back up, but this can present storage and security issues which is why many companies choose to engage the services of an off site document storage service. Sometimes it is also useful to scan and digitize files and documents to be stored online in a separate, secure location.
Choosing the most appropriate document storage options and addressing potential risks when it comes to storing data is all part of the planning that a good project manager should be looking at as part of the initial planning phase of any new project. These days it is easier than ever before with increased access to many useful tools and services including Cloud storage and collaboration apps.
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This is a guest post by Leilah Osher, a business consultant for several firms including www.ironmountain.co.uk who also enjoys writing about confidential waste and document storage solutions for a variety of blogs and publications.