The Head of Corporate Portfolio Office at the NHS Health Research Authority (HRA) is Catherine McCarthy, who handles the implementation and maintenance of project management standards. The role includes overseeing that all programmes and projects are produced and monitored accurately. Catherine explained that a challenge that HRA faced was “finding a collaboration platform that could support HRA’s project managers to work together to help streamline and document project management processes in order to achieve continuity across the organisation.”
To achieve their goals, HRA needed a project management solution that was:
- Intuitive, user-friendly, and accessible.
- Secure, reliable, and cost-effective.
- Approved for both departmental and multi-agency collaboration.
- Efficient in providing transparency and consistency.
- Adaptive and flexible with the capacity to grow and evolve.
Improving Programme and Project Management Processes
Initially using Kahootz without any formal training, Catherine revealed that she had found it straightforward to build a central online library, share information about HRA’s programmes and projects and store all essential collateral in one area so that it could be easily accessible to all staff.
“Kahootz is an easy to use, versatile and intuitive platform with a friendly user interface and I’m now confident that everything is where it should be and that project managers will be able to find the right documentation, quickly and easily.” – Catherine McCarthy
Referred to as ‘HRA Hub’, this central online resource now hosts detailed programme and project performance reporting and HRA’s procedures and templates for project managers to follow, ensuring best practice and consistency. Effectively used as an intranet knowledgebase, the HRA Hub now makes it easier to onboard new people and introduce staff to aspects of project management that they may not be familiar with and have access to key documents for each stage of their projects.
Additionally, the platform’s document management and version control functionality ensures staff always have access to the latest version of a template.
Additionally, the platform’s document management and version control functionality ensures staff always have access to the latest version of a template.
Catherine summarised her success: “The Kahootz platform has meant that we can now centralise our project management processes, share knowledge and communicate key events.”
Using Kahootz for multi-agency collaboration
Another feature of Kahootz that is much liked by the HRA, is the ability to quickly create and control access to separate online workspaces. With projects often involving team members from external organisations, Kahootz allows the HRA to quickly bring together groups of experts – such as medical experts, lawyers, lay volunteers, researchers, auditors, procurement specialists – and facilitate their involvement in HRA’s activities.
One such example includes the ability to support HRA’s core task of reviewing and authorising research applications including the fast-track of research applications related to COVID-19. HRA’s use of Kahootz has given applicants the ability to submit large video files as part of their research application. HRA were then able to use Kahootz to invite the Research Ethics Committee members to review the files as part of the approvals process. Previously, this process was inefficient given the constraints of access to internal IT systems, limitations of email for effective team communications, and for receiving and managing the sharing of large files.
In relation to another use during the pandemic, Catherine stated:
“As a cloud-based service, we were able to use our Kahootz collaboration platform to provide successful business continuity planning during COVID19 by providing transparency on staff availability as many were required to work from home.”
If you wish to use Kahootz to improve your project management or team collaboration, start a free, no-obligation 30-day trial today.
