My Lazy Spot - Google Workspace - SIMPLE Project Tracker/Project Management Tool using Sheets/Docs

[Music] all right happy New Year and I know it's the new year not only because this is the time of year where we only have like 45 minutes of daylight each day um but looking at the email inbox man there's something out there right now everybody is looking for just a fresh start or how to simplify and I've gotten several requests specifically on how to use some of the new features in Google Sheets to do project management and I've done a number of videos on kind of isolated pieces of this but what I thought I would do this time is actually just share with you how I do project tracking in Google Sheets and uh give you some ideas and making a copy and a template of these in a folder I'm going to link down below where if you just want something to get some ideas um or to even copy and use feel free so I hope it's useful so we'll just dive right into it so very lightweight No Frills Google sheet here and I've set it up very specifically so on the left hand side I've used the at symbol to use the drop downs and I've listed out just 10 different projects and the reason that I use the drop down for that is oftentimes as we get into stuff we end up having phases or different elements of projects that we want to maybe track separately and so I just use this as a way of getting everything in a sheet select the project and then kind of treating those independently so we can filter but more importantly so we can pull into the new sheets timeline so there's the project the drop down there action officer same thing at whoever name is the owner of this project whether it's me somebody else urgency I use a mix uh kind of a modified version of the Eisenhower Matrix if you're familiar with that where highest priority is both urgent and important then we have um urgent not important then we have not urgent but important and then not urgent not important it's just a really good way for me to be able to prioritize obviously you can change that to however you want to do a urgency status so so yeah well status so status same thing drop down here and I've got staging which is stuff you know not yet started ready to ready to start working on we've got stuff that's in progress in Flight we've got waiting on hold if we're waiting for uh information um or something big to start moving forward completed and then abandoned I have a category for that just to be able to attract stuff that we start and doesn't always finish and then in resources again start with the at symbol start typing the document title in this case I did include uh just the project template so we use the Google sheet as kind of a landing or a hub for all of project tracking and then as we want to go deeper we use Google Docs so if I click on this it links over to a Google doc template we loaded this template into our domains templates so you can use that that to be be able to just get your arms around something that you're working on and it's very simple breaks down into issue team meetings resources current state future State the actual plan uh and then actions so actions here same thing with the new smart chips being able to assign us tasks so I keep each of the project documents separate instead of like in one big one mainly because there's so many different teams that we work with and I want to be able to share this document as a touch point for each of those different project teams and then we use the actions and the checklist here to be able to assign tasks to team members and the really cool thing about that is if you're using the checklist and you make the assignment as a task and I'll just do a uh Brennan there we are um and we'll make this tomorrow um as we do that it actually loads up into Google Tasks so that we actually have uh tracking both in our calendar as well as in gmail on the sidebar when you're in drive on the sidebar with Google Tasks but anyway that just keeps it all in one big neat um kind of package uh so next over we've got a drop down I think we've got like 20 plus different departments and in our government sure yours is the same so we have a drop down here that just lists all the Departments and if I didn't click on that then moving over we've got start date due date those are really key for the next thing I'm going to show you notes notes we just use is kind of a quick one sentence summary of where it is what that allows us to do is be able to go into any meeting with any Department leadership whatever and we can filter right down to answer specific questions about projects we have going on with those departments the last column you'll see there is value value here it means something a little unique uh for us we we are looking always to get the most out of Google workspace and not spend any more money so here we actually track cost savings or cost avoidance the the in-kind cost of what we would have purchased if we weren't able to do something within Google workspace um there if you're curious about that and you want some really good guidelines you can actually go and look at the National Association of State procurement officers naspo and they actually have some really great guidelines uh that they've published around around what constitutes cost saving and cost avoidance but largely we just look for in-kind services that we what we would have paid if we weren't able to solve it with stuff inside so we do track that um in these sheets and then since we've set it all up with these project urgency status resources stuff like that makes it really easy to flip over to the new timeline feature so in the timeline featured I'm going to move myself over here um in the timeline feature you'll see it's like a Gantt chart right so we've got it broken out by department and then we've got two projects assigned to each department and this is spread across uh just a date range obviously you can change your date range Years multi-year days weeks uh whatever you want to actually view it as and then if you go into the settings because we were intentional about the way in which we set up those columns um we determine what the start date is what to use for due date what to use for the project title and then the optional Fields so we actually do the color status by the status column so we can look really closely and find out these are closed that one's abandoned these are in progress these are waiting for information card detail what shows up right here just as a summary we use that from the notes column and then we group the cards by the organization so we actually have it grouped by department and then we identify the action officer uh when that's in there so you've got a really you know simple way I will also say that uh we do freeze the project column mainly so that when you're scrolling across the project title I mean that the project uh stays over there but part of the reason we also freeze that column is it makes it much easier on a mobile device I don't know how often you've tried to use spreadsheets on a mobile device but man that that can be that can be a challenge um especially when it's snowy outside and you're wearing mittens or gloves um but anyway we use that because if we freeze that project column you can actually fly through it pretty quick on the mobile and if you use those drop downs it makes it really simple even on a mobile device uh where sheets can kind of be awkward it makes it really easy to kind of scroll down and actually change status or add an update or something like that um so I will put a link to a folder that has the copy of the spreadsheet the copy of the project template and again feel free to copy you can laugh at it use it get ideas from it I just hope that you are able to tackle your projects this year in a more simplified manner so good luck all right

Channel: Brandon Williams

Views: 30,124

Keywords: Google Workspace, Project Management, Google Sheets, Project Tracking, Eisenhower Matrix, Google Docs Template, Task Prioritization, Google Tasks Integration, Cost Tracking, Google Workspace Tips, VideoInsights.io, Upgrade Plugin, Project Template, Task Organization, Google Calendar, Gmail Sidebar, Cost Savings, Project Management Tools, Simple Project Tracker, New Year Productivity

Id: Tqe1Ljzdt28

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023