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Scopic is presently one of the largest distributed teams in the world, with over 280 employees around the globe in 40+ countries.
So, it’s only logical that we needed a tool to integrate all the platforms we rely on to help our highly-distributed team stay organized and communicate seamlessly. After wrestling with countless management systems, we chose the Teamwork app as the project management system to be our one-stop-shop for internal and external projects. With this choice, came yet another challenge: making sure Teamwork was integrated with all our different platforms and systems.
Focusing on the main problems many project managers face during their careers, such as time allocation, deadlines, resource management, and collaboration, we decided to integrate our custom, in-house solutions through Teamwork’s powerful API. Now, we manage our entirely-remote workforce by leveraging Teamwork application integrations to tackle the most common project management issues while making our team work more efficiently and collaboratively.
Common PM Issue: Dealing with unrealistic deadlines and time allocation
Many project managers struggle when setting deadlines, which can be unattainable for the team and extremely frustrating for the clients when they are not met. Being unable to meet project timelines is something that can occur when project managers can only see time estimates but have no idea of their team’s availability for that specific task or project.
Even if the project manager knows which tasks their team is working on, they may lack specific information about how many hours each team member has available for that project. And this problem is even more prevalent in companies dealing with a multitude of projects and clients. How can a project manager precisely know the team’s availability is without asking each team member directly every morning – which can be overwhelming and counterproductive. How can a PM manage the time allocation for each project and organize the deadlines?
Scopic manages time allocation for projects using Teamwork integrations
Working on a setting that has time and budget tightly knit together, Scopic requires careful time management for its projects. Thus, our team developed an integration through Teamwork’s API to connect with one of our custom-built tools used to track employee hours. Scopic Time System (STS) is a human resource tool that allows employees to log their hours and progress on tasks, which can be reviewed and approved by project managers. In addition to that, managers can preview comprehensive reports for any given time frame for any project or employee. STS also allows employees to log their potential idleness so that the resource management team can allocate them properly to projects where project managers need people. This tool helps project managers significantly with understanding the team’s availability.
This system is fully integrated with Teamwork as any tasks or projects created on the powerful project management tool are automatically added and synced to STS. This way, managers can track the tasks’ progress and time allocation for each project and team member. Being able to have full visibility of the team’s availability and how each member is using their time, managers have more control to set attainable deadlines and manage time allocation for projects.
Common PM issue: Dealing with insufficient team skills
If the people assigned to a project have inadequate or insufficient technical skills, no matter how hard a project manager works on setting expectations and deadlines, the project results may suffer. Usually, companies assign members for a project based on their availability, but not always the available people are the experts in that particular field. Lacking the technical skills needed for that specific project, team members may not only underperform but also feel overwhelmed and cause the project to be at risk.
How can a manager know which employees have the technical skills that best fit the project? The larger and more distributed the company is, the harder it gets. Of course, a PM can map out all the needed skills and look for the available team members, but imagine doing this for 10 or 20 simultaneous projects?
Scopic manages people resources and availability using Teamwork integrations
How do you know someone’s technical skills and availability if you can’t just walk to their desk and ask? To address this question, Scopic’s tool to manage resources of over 280 remote employees is the Resource Management Tool (RMT), which also has a full integration with Teamwork. Scopic’s operations and resources teams use RMT and Teamwork to kick off new projects and coordinate assignments based on employees’ current skills, qualifications, and availability.
Additionally, RMT can manage personnel training assignments, as well as consolidate communication and records on employee skills or training. By looking at the RMT, any project manager can know who fits their project requirements and their availability. And if the available team member needs to acquire a new skill, this tool can manage the necessary training, or help them request a colleague with the skills they need for the project.
Do you want to find out ways to work better by integrating Teamwork into your company’s systems?
Our expertise with Teamwork and other systems has helped us simplify and optimize workflows, reduce costs and risks, as well as enhance the visibility of internal communication and processes. As a certified Teamwork partner, Scopic is highly focused on implementing Teamwork application integration services. We can empower your company to streamline processes and minimize inefficiencies, allowing you to gain a competitive advantage on the market.
Our large project management team can help with the best practices of the workflow, customized for your company – both inside Teamwork and around it. The services we offer include, but are not limited to, Teamwork implementation, custom-built apps for Teamwork, business optimization for Teamwork, and Teamwork support for best use.
