Planner is great as a stand-alone but I also like to use it integrated into Microsoft Teams.

Here is an example of a huddle board where I utilized Planner for intake, general team updates, and to share innovations (new things you are trying out).

Each team would also use a backlog board in Planner for their task lists.

Tagging each task by person allowed individuals to also add a Planner icon to Teams so they could see all of their tasks across multiple channels and Teams.

This made it easy for me to check projects at the macro level across teams but also at the micro level when meeting with individual team members.

One of the tools that our project management office introduced me to using for Agile was Version One. At first, I thought it was a lot of extra work to fill out the stories, tasks, hours, etc. Where the payoff happened was when there were more tasks than resources and it was easy to demonstrate the discrepancy. One of the big mantras for Agile is “It makes the work visible” and this is a tool that makes that happen! Being able to use data to prioritize work or showcase the need for resources makes it easier to have those planning conversations.

Learn more about Version One

Example of a Version One task list

Example of a Version One report showing expected versus actual

What I love most about Microsoft Teams is the ability to repurpose it from development to training to mentoring to ongoing coaching to meetings.

To protect the propriety of the work examples, I blurred out individually identifiable information. In the example above, there are multiple teams.

• Overall Learning & Development team
  • Channels for each audience centered team within the Learning & Development team (this allows for teams to share and copy materials and tasks from group to group)
  • The entire team can view items on all channels
  • It is easy to reallocate person from channel to channel as needed
  • Many people were on multiple audience teams
• Teams per class
  • Materials reused per class
  • Changed out students as needed
• Teams per office location
  • Easy to transition from accessing items in class (especially for new hires) to accessing them in their office location after training
  • Special channels could be created for seniors, mentors, or special project groups
• Mentor channels and Supervisory coaching channels within the office teams
  • Supervisors could join mentor meetings to observe live client calls and view screens
  • Mentors utilize the same system as they do for training and coaching meetings

Scenario 1: Twenty people from the Learning & Development team attend a Monday intake huddle. The items to triage are posted on the huddle planner board. Item are then copied to the backlog planner board as needed, prioritized, and allocated by the audience teams.

Scenario 2: A new hire employee is a student in a class where they access materials and meet in Teams. They then see a new team once they go into mentoring but the process is the same. The location where they meet with their Supervisor is in a private channel. All of the skills transfer.

Scenario 3: A newly hired employee has several sessions with a peer mentor throughout training where they share their screens to show the processes they are following. A Supervisor or other leader can see a camera icon when the mentoring sessions are occurring and can join the meeting to be able to observe or assist. This same process can be utilized for live coaching or for guest observers.

Scenario 4: If a Supervisor goes on vacation, they can access their own private channels to allow a colleague to cover for them. There is no need to contact IT to set up the custom permissions. It is also easy for a Manager to add new employees on to a team as people transition to other positions. It is all web-based and accessible through a mobile device as well.

No one does Gantt charts like Microsoft Project!

No matter how good you plan, there is always something that changes that will cascade to other things. I have done all sorts of gymnastics to try to recreate this relationship with Power Automate, Excel, Planner, and other tools but I have not found anything that works as smoothely.

I originally used Slack when teaching my Human Computer Interface and Human Factors classes as a tool for students to more easily collaborate on team projects.

I also encountered Slack as a great tool to collaborate with vendors.

I really like using Trello for side gigs where I wanted to collaborate with some colleagues on a short-term project. It was super easy to set up and remove when finished. I found that clients found it to be approachable and easy to use as well.