At Regroove, Microsoft Teams is the central platform for all project management. Not a project management tool that integrates with Teams. Teams itself. Here is exactly how we use it, from project creation through closure, and the principles that make it work.
Creating the Team
When a new client engagement begins, a project manager creates two separate Teams:
- Internal Team (prefaced with "C -"): Includes account managers, project managers, delivery team members, and account administrators only
- External Team (prefaced with "EXT -"): Contains internal staff plus key client stakeholders including business analysts, technical team members, and decision makers
The separation allows frank internal technical discussion while maintaining a professional, organized space for client collaboration.
Tips for effective Team setup: automate or govern Team creation with clear approval requirements, use naming conventions that indicate both purpose and audience, and create internal and external Teams consistently for every client engagement.
Setting Up Channels
Both Teams contain matching channel structures for consistency:
- General: Kept free of conversation to serve as a quick-reference activity log for member and channel history
- Business Development: For non-project discussions like billing questions and future work conversations
- Project channels: One channel per project, named after the client's project, containing all project-related discussion in threaded conversations
Communication Standards
At project kickoff, project managers establish how the team will use Teams. They post a description in each channel explaining its purpose and provide clients with a brief guide covering how to start new conversations, reply within threads, use message reactions, tag team members with @ mentions, and edit messages.
All project meetings happen in Teams, with dates set through discussion or the Find Time tool. Meetings are recorded for team members who cannot attend.
Task Management With Planner
The project scope of work is attached as a channel tab. A Microsoft Planner board is created for each project and linked as a tab in the project channel. Tasks are organized into categories that mirror the scope of work, assigned to specific team members, and given due dates and detailed descriptions.
Team members access their assigned tasks through Microsoft To Do, which aggregates tasks across all Planner boards. Completing a task in To Do automatically updates the Planner board, keeping the project manager's view current without requiring additional status reports.
Monitoring
Project managers monitor budget, scope, and outstanding tasks throughout the engagement. Automations route relevant communications back to Teams channels so discussions happen openly rather than in isolated email threads. Support request forms and system updates feed into the appropriate project channel automatically.
Project Closure
When a project concludes, clients receive a summary document covering the project team, work delivered, and care instructions for the future. Rather than archiving the Teams workspace, we keep it open as an ongoing communication channel for future support and projects. The history of the entire engagement remains accessible.
Why This Works
Teams functions as the central hub for everything: communication, documentation, task management, and resource access. Nothing lives in email. Nothing requires switching to a separate project management system. The transparency of channel-based communication means everyone on the project can see what is happening without being copied on every message.