


01-03-2022
The holidays are right around the corner and 2021 is closer than you think. If you haven’t had a chance to do some cleanup or system maintenance, block time on your calendar and take action based on the recommendations in the blog, Tips to Tidy up Workfront. There is no better feeling than kicking off a new year with a clean slate, so send out those calendar reminders for your monthly governance meetings and wrap up the year on a high note.
As you start, or continue, planning for months ahead, make sure you have a proper communication plan in place, along with easy-to-use project templates and dynamic reports to maintain consistency and share key information. This week’s blog focuses on key elements around communication, planning, and measurement to help you draft an accurate timeline and execute on deliverables, while keeping everyone in the know.
Nothing is more important to the success of a project than effective and constant communication—communication with both stakeholders and the project team. When crafting a communications management plan, make sure to keep it organized, document your processes, define the types of communications, and set expectations on timing.
Workfront can easily help with communication types and delivery, so look to take advantage of the following features to make these efforts as seamless as possible:
Additional features to help a project manager turn a plan into action can be found in this blog on Workfront One. If you have a new project manager joining your team, make sure they complete the Workfront for Planners learning path to learn how to create, plan, manage, and close projects.
Even the best project managers find themselves wrestling with project plans and timelines that refuse to sit still. Proactive planning helps you anticipate the needs of stakeholders and proactively communicate what the timeline will look like a week, a month or even half a year down the line. Planning also ensures you have your plan under control and have an answer to the frequently anticipated stakeholder question of "When can I expect something to happen?"
Save time by using project templates to capture repeatable processes, consistent information, and preconfigured settings associated with projects that are similar in scope. Here are a few configurations to keep in mind when creating templates:
Setting up and using project templates is a sure way to save you and your team time, but remember that continuous improvement is key to process improvement. Ask stakeholders to validate project plans, capture end-user feedback, and compare the planned template to actual project data to identify deviations and to understand why they occurred. Use that information to refine template configurations and—as a result—increase the accuracy and efficiency of future projects. Complete the Project Templates learning path to learn more!
Metrics help you understand how things are going and identify the areas where you and your team can get better. Not every project goes as smoothly as you imagined, so schedule a post-mortem and review the challenges your team faced to see if they can be opportunities to improve in the future. Custom reports and dashboards in Workfront provide visibility into your metrics and offer real-time data to share with team members and stakeholders.
Three of the most common project management metrics that can be easily captured in a Workfront report are:
PRO TIP: You can use conditional formatting to compare two different fields in a View and highlight them when certain criteria are met between the fields. To learn how, follow the instructions in the article, Compare fields in conditional formatting or watch this short video.
Metrics are not only important at the end—they should be easily accessible to all team members throughout the life of the project. Consider creating a team dashboard, similar to the one in the blog, Manage Your Team's Work Using Dashboards, so users hold each other accountable for their work and the recently completed work highlights the positive efforts each team member has accomplished. Dashboards can be shared with users, added to a layout template, or pinned to the global navigation bar for quick and easy access.
Projects occur over a span of time and more often than not, change is inevitable. By improving communication and accurately planning work in Workfront, you can maximize your team's success. And by measuring the impact of your team’s effort using real-time reports and dashboards, you are minimizing risk and driving efficiency.
If you would like assistance capturing metrics or building custom reports for your organization’s specific use cases, review the optimization packages offered by Workfront Professional Services or reach out to your Account Executive to learn more.
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