{"id":7441,"date":"2018-10-22T13:51:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/?p=7441"},"modified":"2019-08-05T11:21:16","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T16:21:16","slug":"how-one-global-pmo-team-member-solved-the-spreadsheet-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/how-one-global-pmo-team-member-solved-the-spreadsheet-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"How One Global PMO Team Member Solved the Spreadsheet Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/p>\n

Working out of spreadsheets can make life stressful\u2014unnecessarily so. This is only compounded when teams are also spread out across departments and geographic locations. Take Allen for instance. As a global PMO team member for the aviation organization, his workdays are often extremely stressful. Not only must he help monitor work across three continents and 12-time zones, but he must ultimately manage a portfolio of about 45 projects per year, all while operating out of spreadsheets. Now, this problem isn\u2019t uncommon\u2014quite the opposite. Large and small organizations across the globe struggle with collaborating across teams, whether or not they\u2019re geographically dispersed. For this reason, Allen\u2019s team has always settled with spreadsheets, unsure of how to change and allowing familiarity to win out over improving productivity.<\/p>\n

However, keeping those spreadsheets up-to-date and relevant is not a simple undertaking. At the end of each week, mountainous status updates are given to the Head of IT Project Delivery, to be sorted out and then updated within numerous different spreadsheets and compiled into useable reports. Not only can this take hours to complete, but can be extremely tedious and, quite frankly, nerve-wracking. Having finally had enough of the spreadsheet chaos within his PMO and the larger organization, Allen decided to make a change.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/a><\/p>\n

Pain points don\u2019t have to be permanent. <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s the dilemma\u2014spreadsheets are common, familiar, but they come with numerous pain points. Organizations are inclined to stick with spreadsheets\u2014people know how to use them, they make sense\u2014but are they the most effective collaboration method? No. Not by a long shot. And there\u2019s no reason why teams should settle or accept their pain points as permanent. There\u2019s a better solution out there, something Allen understood. He begins his path to improvement by analyzing the numerous pain points his PMO is currently experiencing due to their reliance on spreadsheets:<\/p>\n