Jack Wallen wondered if a project could be managed with a free Google Workspaces account and was surprised by what he learned.
Project management is an extremely important piece of the business puzzle. Without a means to manage different types of projects, from simple to complex, your workflow will stutter and start until things go off the rails. Trust me: you don’t want that.
SEE: Hiring Kit: Project Manager (TechRepublic Premium)
Given how many project management services are available, you have no excuse not to add such a tool to your workflow.
But what if you are already embedded in the Google Workspace platform? Why would you want to add another website to the mix? Of course, some services are perfectly suited to the task of managing your projects, but if Google is your traffic jam, you might want to keep everything in that bubble.
how? If you look at the free Google Workspaces account, there are no obvious tools for this particular task. What can you do? Google Workspaces has quite a number of tools that can easily be bent slightly enough to serve the needs of your project. I’ll break them down in a very easy to follow way so you can see what I’m talking about.
All the tools you need and nothing more
First, I want to talk about the built-in tools you’ll find in Google Workspaces that you can use for your project management needs.
Google Calendar
That’s the obvious. The Google Calendar tool is a great way to plan your project, but don’t use your personal calendar for this. Instead, create a project-specific calendar so it can live separately from everything else.
By creating a project-specific calendar, you can share the calendar with everyone on your project team, and because you can quickly switch between month, week, and day views, it’s very easy to see what’s happening every step of the way.
Google Drive
This is another obvious one. Create a project-specific folder in Drive and share it with your team. You can share this folder in such a way that some team members have read-only access, while others have edit access. Be judicious with these access rights so you don’t end up giving the wrong permissions to the wrong person.
Google Chat and Meet
You’ll need to be able to communicate quickly with your team members, so consider creating separate Google Chat spaces for the different teams involved in your project. You can create spaces for developers, designers, editors, and managers. There will also be times when you need to hold video meetings, and Google has you covered with Meet.
Google Collections
Now we dive down the rabbit hole of less obvious options. The first is Collections. Think of collections as a board where you can keep any thoughts about your project. Add almost anything as the idea comes to you so you don’t forget that brilliant next project idea. Be sure to share the collection related to the project with your team so they can see the inspiration as it unfolds.
Google Forms
When you need to collect data from your teams, clients, customers, or stakeholders, you’ll want to use Google Forms. You can create forms for users to complete feature wish lists for your project, access progress details, and more.
Even more options
These are the obvious parts you can use to make Google Workspaces a viable project management platform. If you need more, you can always turn to the Google Workspace Marketplace where you can install some actual project management tools. Here is a short list of those options:
As you can see, it shouldn’t take much to add to your Google Workspaces account to build a robust project management platform. It may not be perfect, but if you’re already deeply rooted in the Google ecosystem, it’s a very easy way to manage your projects with familiar tools already at your fingertips.
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