River East Transcona School Division
School Division Learns to Better Manage Tasks with SharePoint and Microsoft Project
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Company Overview
River East Transcona School Division (RETSD), based in Winnipeg, is the second-largest school division in Manitoba, supporting 42 schools and 18,000 students. It aims to provide relevant, progressive educational programming in a stimulating learning environment.
After a recent amalgamation the division grew from 28 to 42 schools and the technology staff was faced with a subsequent 40 per cent increase in the number of software and hardware-related projects they had to oversee. Faced with tight budgets and a workforce that is dispersed over a wide area, managing projects at RETSD is often challenging.
Business Challenge
“A lot of communication and coordination is needed when it comes to putting technology into schools. For safety reasons, a principal needs to know to the hour when the truck full of computers is going to show up, or when technicians are going to be walking through the school hallways,” says Edwin Janz, manager, information technology services, River East Transcona School Division. “With more schools, and therefore more projects to manage, it became even more difficult to provide all our key stakeholders with updated timeline or status information.”
The division needed a tool that would provide it with the insight it needed to help gauge return on investment – namely, the ability to measure which projects were helping it realize its strategic goals, and do so in real time. “Our senior administration thought we needed a tool that would help us to keep track of various projects and to facilitate better communication amongst the project leaders and the system as a whole.”
After reviewing its options, RETSD decided to enlist the aid of Microsoft and modernize its project tracking system using Microsoft® Project Server 2003, Microsoft Active Directory® directory service and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.
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Solution
RETSD had three objectives in mind: to standardize project tracking across the organization, provide key executives with a quick and easy view into the status of implementations, and help them gauge how well they were aligning with the school division’s overall strategy. By doing so, the division could reduce the time and effort spent on tracking projects and focus more resources on education. After looking at several options, RETSD opted for a Microsoft-based solution to help it realize these goals. “We decided to go with Microsoft because Active Directory helps to easily integrate various needed applications. For me, that was a big part,” says Janz.
With a Microsoft standard platform already in place, adding Microsoft Project and SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to the mix enabled the division to take advantage of near-seamless integration. RETSD also used the tools to help create a new administrative portal that would enable staff and various subgroups and committees to quickly access project status updates in a real-time environment.
Using Active Directory allows the division to restrict access to the portal according to a user’s role to help ensure data security and help the division leverage Exchange across the organization, by allowing staff to receive automatic project updates via email.
“The best part of this is having the ability for your technicians and other staff to update information for you automatically. Through Project, they get their tasks emailed to them along with links to a Web page where they can fill in to what extent the task has been completed. Thus the tracking of projects no longer requires tedious phone calls and multiple emails,” says Janz.
Business Benefits
Taking advantage of Project Server and SharePoint, RETSD created a sophisticated, real-time project tracking portal that enables administration to receive real-time updates and monitor their overall strategic initiatives. Staff can also access the portal from home or on the road and help them collaborate with each other regardless of where they are working. In this way, the division has consolidated and simplified its communications process and helped it to incorporate the new schools more effectively.
Improved communications
Before implementing Project Server and SharePoint, RETSD projects were managed through a flurry of emails, phone calls and documents, none of which were centralized or easily trackable. This resulted in communication challenges, as staff lacked a consistent, updated view into strategic initiatives. Today, staff can access a custom-built portal and see in real-time how well projects are helping to further strategic initiatives. As a result, the division has standardized information across the organization.
“We all know the status of projects. Staff can review and receive updated information in regards to roll-outs, and various other strategic initiatives. It has been a big improvement,” says Janz.
More efficient use of time and resources
The new portal has helped speed software and hardware implementation times, reducing the cost of projects along the way. RETSD senior administration also spend less time engaged in long searches for project-related information. By reducing the need to administer communications RETSD can devote more to its primary focus – educating students.
“The return on investment is that we’re becoming more efficient. I'm saving resource time, and the benefit to the division is that we are now able to manage more concurrent projects giving students and staff shorter waiting times for the implementation of projects,” says Janz.
Meets budget targets
Like most school boards, RETSD has a limited technology budget and thus needed a solution that would be quickly and easily implemented and integrated, and which was easily scalable over time. By investing in Microsoft-based technology the division offers its staff the ease-of-use of the Windows-based environment and is able to achieve near-seamless integration with other Microsoft software with minimal effort.
“We have limited resources and so we needed a system that would be both simple to configure, and easy to use,” says Janz.
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For more information about River East Transcona School Division, call (204) 667-7130 or visit the Web site at: www.retsd.mb.ca
