01-03-2022
Work management in Workfront is summarized in 4 simple stages — initiate, evaluate, execute and measure. To continue the Workfront is Simple series, this week will focus on additional setup functions, actionable best next steps and recommendations for enterprise work management — including gathering and intake of work requests, tips and tricks for better project management and sample reports to allow for better visibility into all of the above.
Workfront request queues are designed to help you create a single space to gather and manage all work requests, allowing for better planning and fulfillment as well as collaboration across teams and departments. Leveraging request queues to manage demand is a core Workfront Best Practice.
To get started, you must first understand how work is coming in. List out the various intake channels — email, Slack, meeting takeaways and desk drive-bys — and then outline, diagram and document your workflows. This allows team members to understand how each team not only functions individually, but how they can work better together. Once workflows are reviewed with the team, managers and champions to determine process improvements, begin the initial setup.
Below is a list of best practices regarding request queue setup, performance and evaluation.
Additional request queue tips and tricks can be found in the Workfront Wednesday: Did You Know blog, A Toolkit to Drive Efficiency and Visibility on Workfront One.
PRO TIP: Assess the following categories of incoming work when diagramming and defining your workflows to help with prioritizing and executing new requests or converted projects/tasks.
In order to turn plans into action, project managers or individuals with similar responsibilities are charged with building out timelines, assigning resources and communicating all efforts to ensure a successful execution. The blog, Turn Plans Into Action with a Project Manager Toolkit, provides several features and solutions Workfront offers to make that job easier.
Successfully executing a strategic goal is not a process, but rather a holistic, continuous cycle that starts with planning and ends with celebrations and lessons learned. Below are best practices regarding planning, executing and managing work:
PRO TIP: Workfront created several simple, foundational templates for you that can be added to your system through the MS Project import utility. The templates in the article, Building Templates from Example Templates, were created with a specific purpose in mind, however, they can be used for other types of projects.
Additional advice and actionable steps to help system administrators drive productivity and streamline for maximum efficiency can be found in the blog, A Series of Administrator Essentials, on Workfront One.
Being able to provide custom, real-time reports with users, managers, leaders and executives is what ultimately drives business decisions forward. Workfront’s reporting capabilities allow you to create detailed lists, charts, matrices and graphs of your organization’s most valuable data. For many, three different categories of reports are most commonly used — visibility, status summaries and data pulls.
VISIBILITY
Instant and ongoing visibility into work processes, procedures and progress through custom reports, dashboards and calendars provide a telling story of the business success. True transparency reveals derailed projects, keeps employees engaged through a balanced workload and highlights big wins.
Below are recommended reports for system administrators and executives to see the ins and outs of the work being done.
STATUS SUMMARIES
As discussed in the blog, A Series of Administrator Essentials, a Workfront dashboard customized with a series of reports and metrics can replace a meeting agenda and provide a new way to organize and conduct meetings.
Example dashboards and associated reports for users, teams and requestors are listed below:
NOTE: To see a list report of all projects that you’re assigned to, follow the steps in the blog, Common Reporting Challenges, to learn how.
NOTE: A simplified team dashboard with step-by-step instructions can be found in the blog, Manage Your Team’s Work Using Dashboards.
To get help or to ask questions on these reports, contact Workfront Support, schedule a 1-hour remote consulting session or reach out to the Workfront Customer Success at Scale team.
PRO TIP: Define the information most valuable to share with executives and stakeholders and create dashboards to show individual users and teams how their input and updates of data contributes to the overall organizational strategy.
DATA PULLS
As a system administrator, you are typically responsible for all audits and assessments of the system to understand usage and analyze opportunities for improvement. The Done Right at Workfront team created two dashboards to track this information and help with cleanup efforts that can be directly imported into your system via a kick-start file.
To learn more about each of these dashboards, watch the on-demand Ask the Expert webinar, Get to Know Your Instance, hosted by Workfront Senior Consultant, Scott Thompson.
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