MORE INFORMATION
Who Should Use Microsoft Team Manager
Microsoft Team Manager is designed for white-collar team managers who:
- Manage between 4 and 25 direct reports
- Have a need to manage their teams more effectively
- Use Microsoft Office and/or Microsoft Schedule+ or Microsoft Outlook
Team managers manage the people on their team as well as the work for the
team, and are responsible for the overall productivity and well being of
the team. They set goals for their team and ensure that these goals are met
through effective management. They manage day-to-day tasks, set performance
objectives, and conduct performance reviews for the individual team
members.
Typical responsibilities of team managers and team members are listed
below, although in practice, many activities and responsibilities are
shared jointly.
The responsibilities of a team manager typically include:
- Identifying tasks that need to be performed.
- Coordinating team activities, resolving scheduling conflicts, and
effectively using team members.
- Tracking the overall progress of the team and creating reports.
- Establishing goals and performance objectives, and conducting
performance reviews.
- Communicating relevant issues to the team.
The responsibilities of a team member typically include:
- Performing assigned work effectively.
- Identifying additional tasks to perform.
- Reporting progress on tasks to the team manager.
- Working with the team manager to set goals.
- Participating in performance reviews.
- Communicating relevant issues to the team manager.
Benefits of Team Manager
Consolidation and Communication:
The Team file contains all information about the team in one place, making
it easier to manage the team and its activities, and to create reports. It
includes task-level information about the team, such as dates, work, cost,
and people assigned, as well as member-level information, such as pay
rates, working times, goals, progress, notes, performance reviews, and
status reports.
By using the messaging tools of Microsoft Team Manager, information in the
form of task updates, status reports, and notes can be sent from team
members and be incorporated easily into the Team file. If the team manager
wishes to delegate some of the planning responsibility, team members can
create tasks themselves in the Individual Task List, Microsoft Schedule+,
or Microsoft Outlook, and send a task update to the team manager, so that
their tasks can be incorporated into the Team file.
In addition to the messaging tools, the Team Status application increases
communication by allowing team members to view the Team file. This allows
team members to assist the team manager in spotting potential scheduling
problems and to assist in planning.
Consistency:
The team manager can control the fields that appear in the member's
Individual Task List and in the Task Update messages, as well as the topics
in the status reports and the frequency with which they should be sent.
This encourages consistent performance and reporting procedures across the
team.
Scheduling:
Microsoft Team Manager has a unique scheduling engine that attempts to
optimize the scheduling of work based on deadlines, priorities, and
constraints, while minimizing work overloads. It also helps the team
manager identify and solve scheduling conflicts by visibly marking tasks
with potential scheduling problems and providing suggestions on how to
solve those problems.
In addition, by viewing the Team file with the Team Status application,
team members can better understand how their tasks fit into the big
picture, and have the information they need to provide useful feedback on
the schedule. Team members also can affect the schedule by creating or
updating tasks in their Individual Task List and sending a Task Update to
the team manager.
Tracking:
Microsoft Team Manager makes it easy to track the progress of team members.
Actual work done by members on specific tasks can be entered accurately in
a Timesheet view, leaving the scheduling engine to reschedule remaining
work. The team manager can enter actual work, or team members can update
their actual work for a given time period in their Individual Task List (as
well as Microsoft Schedule+ or Microsoft Outlook), and send a task update
to the team manager. In addition to tracking work, costs, and dates, the
team manager can create a status report template for members to fill out
and send in at specified intervals. This provides an organized way to
determine progress in a descriptive text format. Also, the Notes field in
Task Updates can be used to keep a history of communications between the
team manager and team members regarding specific tasks. Such notes are
preserved as dated threads.
Goals and Performance Reviews:
Microsoft Team Manager has tools that the team manager can use to create
goals for specific team members, with the option to associate one or more
tasks with each goal. The team manager can rate a team member's performance
on his/her goals using a customizable rating system. Goal Review reports
can be created from the goals for individual members. The Goal Review
reports can provide useful information during company performance reviews,
and can assist the team manager in coaching team members.
Reporting:
The wealth of information in a team file can be viewed and printed from a
variety of informative, customizable views. Many views can be filtered,
grouped, or sorted. There are Sheet views to display information in table
format. There are Timescaled views to display task bars, and to graphically
or numerically display task-level and assignment-level actual, remaining,
overloaded, regular and overtime work. Task notes, people notes, assignment
notes, goal notes, and general team notes can be printed from various
views, including Goal Reviews and Team Status Reports.
What Microsoft Team Manager is NOT
Microsoft Team Manager should not be confused with classical project
management software. The list below points out some of the potential
misunderstandings:
Not Project Management software:
Project management software is used to manage a project that has a definite
start and (eventually) a definite end, and the schedule itself is the
primary focus. Microsoft Team Manager's emphasis on people, goals, reviews,
and communication distinguishes it from project management software, and
although it has a scheduling engine, it is not a classical Critical Path
Method (CPM) engine. A Microsoft Team Manager team file may consist of many
unrelated past, present, and future activities and projects that involve
the team. It is an on-going record of the team and team activities without
any event that determines when the team file is finished. There is a latest
finishing activity at any given point in the evolution of a team file, but
that finish changes as future activities are added, and the team file is
never officially finished. (However, as time goes on, old tasks can be
removed from the team file and archived ).
Not a Shift Scheduler:
Microsoft Team Manager is not a shift scheduler; however, Microsoft Team
Manager does contain information on the working times for team members and
the activities on which they work.
Not a Personal Information Manager (PIM):
Microsoft Team Manager is focused on team activities rather than on
individual activities and is used by a team manager to manage a team,
rather than by an individual to manage personal information.
Not a Microsoft Schedule+ or Outlook add-on:
Microsoft Team Manager is not a Microsoft Schedule+ or Outlook add-on. It
does have some integration with Microsoft Schedule+ and Microsoft Outlook,
but does not require these applications.
Not a Time Card replacement:
Microsoft Team Manager is not a time card replacement; however, a team file
contains a timesheet for tracking actual work.
Not a Resource Management add-on for Microsoft Project:
Microsoft Team Manager does have some integration with Microsoft Project
but does not require Microsoft Project. A project manager using Microsoft
Project can assign a team manager to a task and send a Team Assign. Then
the team manager can assign team members to the task and send high level
updates back to the project manager. The project manager does not receive
details about individual team members.
The difference between Microsoft Team Manager and project management
software is clarified further in the table below by comparing the roles
played by a team manager and a project manager.
Team Managers
- Manage their team and the work they do.
- Team managers and their teams work together on a variety of activities
without any predefined "final" activity that signals the end of their
working relationship and the disbanding of the team.
- Team members are the direct reports of the team manager. Team managers
have direct responsibility for assigning work to their team members.
Teams tend to be functional groups.
- Team managers are responsible for managing all work for their group,
including non-project related work, such as support or administrative
tasks. They also manage non-task related work, such as setting
performance objectives.
- Team managers are primarily resource-constrained. "How can I get the most
work done given the number of fixed resources I have?"
Project Managers
- Coordinate projects and related tasks.
- Project managers work on projects that have a well-defined end as
indicated by some final event. The resources involved in one project may
not be the same resources involved in another project.
- Project managers coordinate and oversee projects, but do not usually have
direct management responsibilities for team members assigned to their
project.
- Project managers focus only on work that is specific to their project.
- Project managers are primarily task and time-constrained. "How do I
ensure my project gets done in the shortest amount of time ?"