01-03-2022
To continue the 3-part System Administrator series on people, process and technology, this week’s blog will focus on understanding your processes, from the perspective of administering Workfront. Summarized below are four key areas outlining the work management understanding that you need to have based on feedback from others just like you, who’ve not only taken on this role but have created a successful career out of it.
Often the role of System Administrator will include helping to define, manage, monitor and maintain your organization’s way of working. This means that you are part of creating the overall workflow process — maintaining both knowledge and facilitation of how work gets done. To get you started on defining the baseline for your work processes, ask yourself the following questions:
Creating efficiency and organization in your work intake process is step one. A request queue should be used to capture and centralize work requests. Before building, take the time to define, diagram, and document each team’s or department’s intake workflow — from initial request to completion. Then, one running, ensure a regular weekly time is set aside to review incoming requests for prioritization and action. Best practice: quarterly, review all queues and custom forms - are there improvements or process changes that need to be made?
A successful request queue has the following features:
For best practices around request queue setup, performance and evaluation, review this blog. Learn by example by reading through customer success stories here and find additional best practices for effective queue management here.
PRO TIP 1: Create a new status called “Queue” that equates with an Active or Current status as this status will activate the queue as well as help to quickly identify which projects are queue only projects in a list.
PRO TIP 2: Create a System Administrator request queue for users to request onboarding, training, new user setup, user deactivation, new report creation, edits to an existing report or dashboard, and to submit their Workfront questions or feedback.
Next, understand how your work is being fulfilled, what organizational goals it supports, what outcomes it’s trying to achieve, and how success will be measured.
Projects can be created from scratch or by converting a request, and are most often created by using a template. Because templates are the most effective way to speed up the creation of repetitive work and help drive adoption amongst project managers, begin by using the basic stages of the project management lifecycle as your parent tasks or milestones, identifying the most efficient path from beginning to end. These stages might include:
Ensuring that all projects are completed and closed out helps to keep your work environment current and clean. This allows your users to focus on active priorities and allows them to know what has already been fulfilled, versus what may have been canceled or re-worked. You may want to create a report to trigger projects that have been sitting for 10 days or more with no updates or communication, as this work may no longer be required.
PRO TIP: Audit your projects on a quarterly basis. Look for projects without a template attached (Template ID > Is Blank) or those without tasks (see filter below) to keep your Workfront environment organized and efficient. Add the following text mode filter to a project report to look for projects without tasks:
EXISTS:A:$$EXISTSMOD=NOTEXISTS
EXISTS:A:$$OBJCODE=TASK
EXISTS:A:projectID=FIELD:ID
For many organizations, there is typically a process — formal or informal — for getting sign-offs from stakeholders on every deliverable that goes out the door. This process might include a manager’s approval followed by approval from legal and compliance. Keep the approval process as simple as possible to avoid any unintentional delays.
There are two different types of approvals in Workfront for projects, tasks and issues — single-use and global approval processes. Approval processes help organize and provide consistency in the way users work together on projects, tasks, and issues, so consider setting these up at the system, or group level for everyone to take advantage of. Below is a list of best practices around creating and managing approval processes:
NOTE: Single-use and global approval processes in Workfront are different than using workflows with the Proofing tool. For more information on how to use review and approval workflows within Proof, click here.
Managing intake and entering projects and completing tasks is just the beginning of your journey with Workfront. In order to review the value of the work being done and to gain insight into performance metrics, start by creating simple yet functional reports and dashboards. Common metrics around intake, project and task management and approvals are listed below.
Additional key performance metrics can be found in the on-demand Ask the Expert webinar, Measuring Performance in Workfront Using KPIs or by reaching out to your peers on the Community site for more industry-specific ideas.
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