Building a Multi-Tier Project Management System in Smartsheet Control Center
Overview
The client, a leading provider in the logistics and supply chain industry, needed a multi-tier Control Center-driven project management solution that enabled their team to manage their responsibilities at scale with appropriate visibility across the company’s divisions and org chart.
Project
First and foremost, our team worked closely with the client to understand their current state and desired future state in detail.
Their Current State:
- An existing Smartsheet customer with existing sheets, reports, dashboards in addition to excel sheets.
- Various teams working with siloed data using manual processes.
- Limited visibility into the company-wide data and approach.
Ultimately, they wanted the team to use only Smartsheet for all of their various documents: project plans, contact sheets, invoice schedules, etc. They also wanted processes like approvals, notifications, and reviews to be facilitated by Smartsheet.
During the discovery phase in discussions with the client, our CloudWave Smartsheet experts investigated what other Smartsheet functionality could be leveraged to streamline the project or reduce manual effort where possible.
Some of the features we decided to add included:
- Automation to trigger alerts and notifications.
- Automatically populating information (using DataMesh mappings to pull in managerial teams, automation to change cell value).
- Control Center + Resource Management integration to automatically create new projects in RM for each job and link it to the corresponding project plan sheet.
- A new format for the way projects and responsibilities should roll up to divisions (by program level), taking into consideration visibility.
- A current user functionality leveraged for a set of manager reports, so they have a view that facilitates only seeing the jobs they are associated with as manager.
- A master sheet to maintain manager and division heads, which used with Datamesh ensures that any changes in managerial staff can be easily reflected across all projects by updating one sheet
The CloudWave team designed a future state architecture diagram to be agreed upon by the customer that would leverage Smartsheet’s premium Control Center application for automation with 2 Blueprints and multi-tier functionality. Automation here includes the following:
- When triggered, a new division would be created by Smartsheet. This division toolkit is a separate set of reports and dashboards that look at ALL the projects in the workspace and populate.
- When triggered, a new project would be created by Smartsheet. This means that all of the sheets, reports, and dashboards would be created for the users and eliminate manual setup and copy/pasting.
- Smartsheet then adds the project to the appropriate Division workspace. This means the project-level information would already be shared to those that need access to it, based on who can see the Division, upon creation.
- The project is also rolled up to the executive level where dashboards, reporting, etc. are updated by this process. This means any needed project-level information is isolated and pushed to a top-most level, or executive level, for easy review and sharing.
Our CloudWave team problem solved for these goals by configuring multiple different Smartsheet apps.
The forms, validation, automations, and premium apps allow for simpler project submission and streamlined processes. This solution allows the team to capture detailed project information then create a set of sheets and reports, also known as a toolkit, to manage the job through its lifecycle, automatically populating the toolkit with appropriate project information like number, name, team and more.
Best practices and future-proofing were considered. The team, through Control Center, now leverages the Resource Management (RM) integration to connect their project plan to RM as a project. The client’s intake sheet is also capable of integrating via Smartsheet Connector to platforms like Salesforce in a future state of the solution if desired. The final solution ensures that the projects are efficiently managed across their lifespan at the project level as well as the Division and Executive levels the projects automatically roll up to.
Results
- A form that allows anyone in the organization’s Smartsheet account with the link to submit a new job.
- DataMesh configurations for bringing in corresponding leadership (Managers, Division Heads) when staff is assigned to the project (e.g. Project Manager).
- A streamlined process for the core team to review, update, and approve projects
- Automated toolkits for each new division and project via Smartsheet Control Center blueprints and multi-tier functionality.
- Automated Resource Management projects via the Resource Management Integration.
- Various dashboards, some leveraging current user functionality, providing increased visibility based on the needs of different audiences - divisions, managers, leadership.
