What Administrative Professionals Need to Know About Project Management Solutions

You should! The first thing to change is your thinking from being task-oriented to project-oriented. That means that each time you are given something to do, you ask the important questions:

• When does it have to be done?
• Exactly what are the requirements?
• Who will be involved?
• What is its priority among the other items you have assigned me?

Many people feel that asking such questions would be rude or disclose some type of deficiency in understanding. The opposite is more likely true. You will seem astute, insightful, and committed to getting things done on time and meeting objectives.

Now what do you have in the way of tools to manage your projects? If you don’t have Microsoft Project, the industry accepted tool, you can also use Excel, Outlook, or SharePoint. The following skills are needed for each tool.

• Excel – Date Math (dates are just numbers so if you know a task takes 10 days is the date + 10)
• Outlook – Categories, folders, and using “in view” editing to create task lists
• SharePoint – Task lists and synching to Outlook