Erin (Erin)
5/5
The Smart PM and Melissa McDonald are bar none the most valuable relationship you will ever make for your PMO, business and PMs. Melissa is a rare breed as the foundation of her business is built on the relationships she makes with each client and being as committed to your successful management of your projects as you are. Melissa has a deep background in Project Management and as a PMO director. She understands the complexities that come with managing a project and how important the tools are for a PM. I thought I was pretty well versed in Smartsheet and after meeting with Melissa for the first time about almost a year ago I quickly learned I have not scratched the surface into what Smartsheet is capable of. When you work on a SOW with Melissa and The Smart PM you are getting a master class in project management and how to make Smartsheet elevate your project. Her commitment to excellence and building her clients up for success The Smart PM takes a very different approach than other firms that provide a service, every option that is outlined on the SOWs you will receive include Knowledge Transfer and dedicated time reviewing the complete Workspace/dashboard/sheet whatever it is that you created in Smartsheet. Melissa does not close out the SOW until her clients are fully comfortable with maintaining the artifacts, that they know how to roll out to the other resources that will be accessing the sheets and future growth. I have been a consulting PM for over a decade I have built a lot of great relationships along the way, the relationship I have built with Melissa and The Smart PM is absolutely the most valuable relationship I have. Over the past year Melissa has helped roll out Smartsheet as the primary tool for Project Management for the Infrastructure Team I support. She has helped me build intake processes, resource utilization sheets, workspaces for the various projects, portfolio project tracking and C-Level leadership status reporting dashboards. I could type a novel outlining the non-existent PMO practices my client had in place. With Melissa’s incredible knowledge of running a PMO coupled with the details I shared with her on the lack of knowledge or structure that was in place currently. She was able to help utilize Smartsheet to build processes that were not so complex adapting them would be near impossible. Using Smartsheet she helped me build a foundation that would provide the desperately needed structure for tracking and reporting on process. Six months after our first workspace creation, we know have an intake process, a standard dashboard that provides RAID log, project plan, resource management and status breakdown that is setup for each new project. Melissa has also helped me build a portfolio level project tracker and intake amongst countless other things. Her commitment to dedicating time on each SOW focusing on how to utilize, maintain and roll out the Smartsheet artifacts has also built my confidence to “train” my engineers on how to use Smartsheet. They are now all comfortable making updates on their deliverables and have become heavily dependent on Smartsheet. Over the based week she has even helped me integrate Smartsheet with Teams which has become a GAMECHANGER! I say it again partnering with The Smart PM is best decision you will ever make for your PMO. You will see by the end of the first meeting that Melissa’s a unicorn that she truly above all else cares about your success above all else and her knowledge in Smartsheet is the absolute best in the industry, I challenge to find someone that know more than her. You will not find this person even if you went to Smartsheet directly.
Melissa McDonald you are amazing thank you for making me a better Program Manager, thank you for training in Smartsheet that I am now working Smarter (?) not harder when it comes building my required project documentation.
