Project management isn't just about looking after the project itself. It's also about managing your team, making sure that everyone knows what they need to do and has confidence both in their ability to make their own contribution, and in the ability of the team as a whole to finish the job. Communication is essential, and you have to be sure that whatever decisions you make filter through immediately and clearly to everyone concerned; it's important to have the best tools for this vital job, and Microsoft Project can give you just that.

After all, you're not going to be able to complete the project on your own. You need your team to be working together efficiently, and that's not going to happen if the only cooperation involves you handing down tasks as and when they need to be done. Everything will run much more smoothly if everyone is involved, if everyone is aware of the wider picture and their role in it - that's the difference between merely managing a project and managing your team. You're keeping everyone involved, you're making the most of what each individual team member can bring to the project and ensuring they can see the connection between what they bring, and how the project is moving forward.

The key tool in Project for enhancing teamwork is the Team Planner (just as the name suggests). You'll need to have already put together a project schedule within the program, and it's with the planner that you can allocate tasks to individual team members, or to groups - each member of your team has a line on the planner, so you just need to drag a scheduled task onto the relevant line at the time you need it to be done. Project will automatically set the task to take up as much time on that individual's schedule as it needs, so you always know where each member of your team is and what they're doing (or, at least, where they should be and what they should be doing). And if you have a large number of tasks to complete, Project will also highlight those that haven't yet been allocated or scheduled, ensuring that you stay on top of everything, with no problems growing out of hand.

Knowing how the project is to progress isn't just limited to the manager - the whole team can know too. With Project, it's easy to share amongst your team whatever information you need them to know. You can simply send the schedule as an email attachment, or just print it off. Alternatively, and to get more out of the cooperation you have with your team, you can publish the schedule in Microsoft SharePoint. This has a big advantage: individual team members can update task status themselves, so you (and the rest of your team) can see at a glance what stage the overall project is at. Of course, they can also use the SharePoint connection to report issues and concerns that might delay the project, and if you need to transfer an extra pair of hands to help complete a troubled task, Project allows you to do so instantly, and for all concerned to know about it instantly.

There's really nothing to gain from limiting communication and collaboration with your team; as the project manager, you shouldn't be restricting knowledge about the project and about what needs to be done by just handing out information and tasks to individuals whilst keeping the wider team in the dark. It's far more efficient, and encourages far more effective cooperation, to keep everyone informed, and to allow the whole team to contribute on an equal footing. Microsoft Project makes it easy to do just that, giving you the tools to enhance the synergy that your project needs. It's worth considering a short training course to ensure that you're fully up to speed with all that Project can do for you, for your project, for your team and for the wider organisation - and with Project, you can be confident that future projects will be a success built on the finest teamwork.