Muckleshoot Casino Resort wins big with improved visibility and collaboration from Microsoft Project for the web

The business of 24/7 fun

The Muckleshoot Casino Resort prides itself on offering something for everyone. It boasts a variety of restaurants to suit any appetite or budget, hosts all kinds of live entertainment, and offers an endless array of casino and table games for customers looking to win big. But running a casino isn’t as simple as rolling the dice. It’s a complex operation requiring several layers of coordination, logistics, planning, and customer service.

Behind the scenes, there’s also a large amount of IT infrastructure, security, and regulatory work happening to keep the business, well, in business. “There’s basically no ‘typical’ day in our industry,” says Drew Ludwick, Director of IT Operations at Muckleshoot Casino Resort. “It’s an incredibly unique environment. We have a very large gaming floor and need to ensure all our machines are up and running. We also need to maintain our other systems, stay on top of compliance, and deal with the occasional cybersecurity event. It’s a lot of projects, and IT is basically in the middle of it all.”

And that’s just what’s happening inside the casino. The company recently expanded its footprint with the construction of a luxury resort. To support all these new ventures, the casino’s IT teams spent years wrangling all the moving parts of its project management process, from reviewing proposals and planning, to tracking regulatory approval, to execution. 

Working with a limited deck

Despite its ongoing project cycle, the casino didn’t have a dedicated project management team or set of tools. Employees used whatever they felt comfortable with, which ran the gamut from Excel spreadsheets to email to PowerPoint documents and, occasionally, vendor-provided project management services. “All our projects were basically managed by somebody’s inbox,” says Nick Vannice, Director of IT Infrastructure at Muckleshoot Casino Resort. 

This patchwork approach limited the IT team’s ability to accurately prioritize and allocate resources to projects. According to Vannice, “We’d sometimes spend hours going through documents and reports just to understand where a project was in terms of milestones and cost. If leadership asked me to justify why I’m dedicating a team to one project over another, I often didn’t have the clear visibility or data to make my case.”

In 2020, Muckleshoot Casino Resort formed an official project management office (PMO) with the goal of improving the efficiency, visibility, and productivity of its project management capabilities. The PMO initially adopted the Microsoft Project Online desktop client to consolidate tools and drive efficiency, but needed an easier-to-use, cloud-based solution and turned to Project for the web.  

A simple, scalable cloud-based solution 

Project for the web is a cloud-based work and project management offering from Microsoft. It delivers a simplified user experience, while providing the visibility, integration, and reporting capabilities that Muckleshoot Casino Resort PMO needs. 

To help guide implementation and deployment, Muckleshoot Casino Resort worked with Sensei Project Solutions, a Microsoft Partner, whose project management tool, Sensei IQ, is built on Project for the web, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Power Platform. Sensei deployed Sensei IQ directly within the casino’s Microsoft 365 tenant, giving teams a single interface to track milestones, update statuses, run reports, and collaborate. “With Project for the web, we have the simplicity, task and milestone management, and visibility we need, while Sensei IQ ties everything together. People can now focus more on the actual project work quickly, beyond building out the project plan,” says Jack Quan, IT Process and Governance Manager.

For Vannice, gone are the days of spending hours sifting through documents to compile accurate project overviews. Project for the web integrates with Power BI, giving him and his team access to detailed, real-time reporting. “We’re actually moving through our work much faster because of Project for the web,” he says. 

Vannice has also found himself better prepared to achieve executive buy-in on projects. “I can literally print reports to show leadership where each project is in terms of milestones, costs, performance, what’s next, etc. It’s really powerful and helps us justify what we need,” he says. Muckleshoot Casino Resort executives particularly appreciate Project for the web capabilities that enable tasks and projects to be categorized using defined criteria, like project value or priority, so executives can review and approve high-value initiatives first. 

A collaborative cultural shift

Using Project for the web, Muckleshoot Casino Resort has not only improved project visibility and efficiency, but boosted employee collaboration. Project for the web is also natively integrated with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint so teams can easily communicate and share files. Prior to the implementation, any time an employee wanted to access files, they’d need to log into a VPN. SharePoint has since eliminated the back end need for a VPN, which according to Vannice is “much more efficient.” 

The PMO looks to continue making efficiency gains by experimenting with Power Platform features like Power Automate. Though early in its adoption, the team has already automated key workflow functions to further simplify complicated processes. “We’re in a highly collaborative environment with small teams, and the work we do is high volume and high impact. Microsoft Project for the web and its integrations are really complementary to how we work,” says Quan.

Thinking back on the teams’ progress and evolution, Vannice is proud of how far they’re come. “If we kept operating the same way we did five years ago or so, I honestly don’t think we could’ve done some of things we’ve done—like building a resort. We now have the right people and the right tools and the insight to set our teams up for success. We’ve really changed our mindset.”

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