Milestones PM+ Helps the Healthier Kids Foundation Manage Projects and Focus on Their Mission

As their organization grew, the Healthier Kids Foundation saw a need for a more structured approach for project management.

Healthier Kids Foundation’s mission is to remove barriers impacting the health, learning, and life success of Silicon Valley youth. “We’re a nonprofit organization that’s dedicated to providing health care screenings, as well as dental, hearing and wellness screenings to children primarily ages two through 18,” explains the organization’s Chief of Staff, VP Information Systems and Quality, Bob Hansen.

They also provide education for mothers and children, and during the pandemic Healthier Kids provided emergency distribution of supplies to families. The organization has grown from 28 people when Bob first started to 50 employees, and last year they provided screenings for 83,000 children.

They Needed a System for Tracking Projects, Workloads, and Requests

As the organization grew, the Healthier Kids Foundation saw a need for a more structured approach for project management. The team was using emails, Word documents, spreadsheets, and Outlook Calendars to manage projects, but they weren’t able to track how much work was coming in or who was doing the work.

Implementing a Formal Project Management Process With Milestones PM+ 

Healthier Kids chose Milestones PM+ as a solution to help them organize projects and learn project management. Bob explains, “We needed a solution that was integrated with Salesforce®, and we’ve been able to do some pretty cool stuff with that integration.”

Once they started using Milestones, it was an organizational effort. Initially Healthier Kids used Milestones PM+ to track individual requests and for tracking estimated hours, due dates, and team requests.

Bob created a template for the team that shows project requirements, and they have notifications setup. “We recently started Assigning Resources, so we’re rolling into the fullness of project management,” he said.

For example, a project they have been working on has six milestones, which includes evaluation, design, piloting, deploy, update/ongoing, continuous monitoring, and final closeout. “There’s not a ton of tasks, and each milestone is pretty straightforward,” he said.

“Milestones PM+ is pushing the company out of an ‘everything has to be done all at once mindset’ to a more organized way of doing things,” Bob added.

Results: Tracking Projects in Milestones PM+ Adds Efficiency 

Bob says they are seeing added efficiency and time savings from using Milestones PM+. 

“When I first started, if someone had done a report, there was no record of it. There was no way to track when it was created or what the parameters were. The organization was swamped constantly with new programs. So this eliminated that chaos and brought us a source of communication on who is requesting the work and what they’re requesting. And it shows everyone how long it takes for us to build something,” he said.

Bob adds, “Before this, there were hundreds of tickets, which was on top of our daily work that doesn’t require tickets to do. Now we have a formal process, so it’s night and day.”

Healthier Kids is Expanding Their Use of Milestones PM+ 

“We’re moving now into a bit more mature usage of Milestones PM+.” Bob says they will also use their project information in Milestones for planning. He said, “It will be used to justify funding for departments, IT being one of them. When we calculate these tasks and how much time they take at the end of the year, we can also tell what programs need the most resources and funding.”

Bob concludes, “I love it! Cost. Integration. Ease of use. You got me!”

Learn more about Milestones PM+