6 Microsoft Office Live Workspace Services for Better Project Management

Every project - regardless of its complexity and budget, requires lots of planning, organization, co-ordination and communication between members. In early days we used MS-Excel for scheduling and tracking tasks and member activities, after few years - it moved to MS-Project standalone and MS-project server editions. Now days, there are many small and medium size organizations, working into Web 2.0 and Mobile Development projects and their investment is less – practically the implementation of project management server is becoming a costly thing. But they have requirements to plan, organize and share contents with stakeholders. Microsoft Office Live workspace helps here with lots of useful services – all for FREE.

1. Visit here [http://workspace.officelive.com/en-GB/ ] and use your Office Live ID or MSN ID to log-in. Don’t have an ID – No problem. Create a new ID for FREE.

2. Free Web Space to Store and Share Documents – It is good to store and share your SRS Documents, Bug Reports, Log Files, Specification documents in one place. Microsoft Office Live Workspace helps you with 5 GB space. You can Store your documents, Sheets, scripts and Presentations and share them with access limitations – if required. You can also use this space to deploy your content to clients – Just like an FTP.

3. There are many free Pre-built template Web-spaces available for quick start. You can choose from one of them and start working on documents. For every new project I suggest to have separate Workspaces.

4. You can create Small Notes, Lists, Tasks Lists, Contact Lists, Event Lists
a. Small Notes – helps you for quick information storage – I suggest this for instructions management – for example: Release notes, Updates in current build etc.
b. Lists – General list – it can be books list for reference, web links, or sample data for testing etc.
c. Tasks List – Create a simple Work Breakdown Structure of Tasks and set priority with due dates. You can share this with your tea m and stakeholders. It helps to give better visibility of planned works to everyone.
d. Contact List – Store Phone numbers, Email IDs and share them for quick reference.
e. Event List – Schedules of your releases, builds, holidays, milestones etc.

5. You can also store, edit and share familiar MS word, MS Excel and MS Power-point files.

6. For Quick communications – use comments pane. Add comments and it is visible to everyone. Use this for instructions, quick requests etc.

7. You can use “Add Documents” for uploading files from your Desktop. It can be shared via a centralized workspace.

I hope this will help many project leaders to handle their projects and deliver things efficiently.