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How Do You Organize Users into Groups and Teams

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Community Advisor
My marketing organization has about 450 paid users divided into 5 main divisions but many of the projects span across at least 2 divisions. Because of that we are looking at how best to optimize and organize our Users into groups and teams to best share information and access to things. I have SEVERAL ideas as to how best divide up this pie but I'm very interested in how other enterprises tackled their own user base. Monique Evans Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.
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Level 10
It really depends on the details of what you mean by "share information". If you want people to simply be able to see projects in another Division, it's very easy. If you're looking at portfolios or something like that it's still pretty easy but a different answer. We have 10 divisions (Groups). So we set up a Group for each of those divisions. If any other Division or Team needs to see that project we just give them access in the Sharing selection of the Project Actions. You can also use the Teams for communications or assignments. You can set the Teams up however you wish, without any tie to Group (aka Division). Does that help or did you have something more complex in mind.

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Level 10
I just last week reorganized all my people because it finally hit home that Groups and Teams aren't the same and Sharing doesn't work the same way. I can't quite figure out why we need Groups, but Teams make a difference. When you share with a Team and give "manage" access it completely changes who has access to change what (if you try to share with Groups it doesn't work that way.) Therefore, I thought about it through the lens of access and which Teams should have similar rights, and then teamed them accordingly. Then I used Groups on a much broader basis, separating people by departments (ie Marketing Managers, Creative, Digital).

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Level 10
You would use Groups similarly for access. Typically Group=Division but it could be whatever you want (but it's at a higher level than Teams and you can't assign a Task or Issue to a Group). We use Group mainly for controlling access . For example, a custom form or Request used only by IT does not need to be exposed or viewed by someone in Finance. So we control that with Groups. There are other uses too (reporting, project access etc.). Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | Senior IT Project Manager Denver Water | t: 303-628-7262 | c: 303-319-6473 Http://www.denverwater.org Sent via mobile phone

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Level 9
My organization shares our Workfront instance among a number of agencies that operate independently, but under a single banner. We use Groups to separate users from each agency, using sub-groups to further sub-divide when Company X has offices in the US and England, which often operate independently. We then use teams for assignments that can be picked up by any individual on that team (like our Editors and PPT artists, for example). Anthony Pernice Healthcare Consultancy Group

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Level 2
Hi Monique, We too just recently reorganized our instance. We have used our Company Organization Org Chart to guide us in Workfront. We have 7 Divisions in our organization, (Admin, Finance, IT, Marketing, Health Services, Network Dev, Operations) those are now represented in WF as Groups. We then added the departments as SUB - GROUPS under each of those Groups-Division. So now our WF instance matches our organization chart. As an example: (group/division) = ADMINISTRATION - (Sub Group) = Compliance, HR, Legal, Government Affairs. We did this for all 7 Divisions. If you stick to your org chart this then has backbone to all the add on groups that others might request to add to your instance. So when we tell our team members we follow the company org chart no one challenges us with any new add on. We also have approximately 275 teams and we implemented a naming convention and place dept. name in front of team. See Example: Compliance - SPU Team Compliance - SPU Team Compliance - Medicare Team HR - Ergo Team HR - LOA Team HR - Benefits Team MK - Communications Team MK - Product Team MK - Digital Team IT - Help Desk Team IT - EPMO Team Now the teams truly represent project/dept. teams. We did this with all the Groups and Sub Groups. This is making reporting much more efficient as we pull from teams and Groups is used for what it is intended for as a division. We just completed this within the last few weeks. This is already looking better for our instance and with our company having WF for over 5 years we had a mess built into our instance but now its looking very healthy. Hope this helped. Dawn - Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) Dawn Cejudo Sr. Application Specialist/Workfront Admin Inland Empire Health Plan Rancho Cucamonga, CA 909.890.5108

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Community Advisor
Thanks Dawn this naming convention is very helpful, and definitely something I will adopt. Do you have instances when Government Affairs and Compliance need to be on the same projects or any other sub groups? If so did you make those instances a unique team or group? Monique Evans Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.

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Community Advisor
Thanks Anthony, Jill, and Vic. This gives me a lot to this about. I think the trouble I'm running into is looking at our org chart, the way that is separated isn't the same way as the actual work gets done. Unfortunately managers want to know what their individual teams / employees are accomplishing so for reporting reasons I lean more towards organizing that way. However from a work perspective people from various subdivisions / groups work together. I think the best option might be to organize the people by the org chart but then make another set of groups and teams for the work itself. However I don't know if this will get too complex for Workfront or Admins. Example without using the words group or teams to avoid confusion. All Users fall under a larger Company Division of Customer Experience. On the org chart there are 6 sectors off of this division. Brand Marketing Creative Studio Strategic Insights Industrial Design Digital Experience European Marketing Within each those sectors are about roughly 3-5 factions. Creative Studio Power Tools Hand Tools Storage Operations Digital And within each of those factions are about 3-5 units. So that's how the people are organized. From a work perspective, Brand Marketing is essentially a requestor of work from the other sectors. And specific people from brand marketing will work with specific people within the smaller factions of each sector. Also everyone under Operations works with everyone in the Customer Experience Division regardless of sector. I know this can be a little confusing to follow but I hope this is a little clearer for my specific situation. Monique Evans Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.