How would (have) you coordinate separate projects with a view that shows their connections?

[JonathanMi]

Hi there: Here is the issue we are facing... and I am open to any suggestions you might have... A new campaign scheduling standard was tested and it is causing issues with how our users find and manage their work. After the Leap conference, we found that many WF users create one large schedule with one project owner managing it in WF; however, it seems that this is a challenge with our current campaign scheduling process. Currently, we have multiple project managers managing their own pieces under a coordinated umbrella campaign (each PM owns a project in a program). With that process, our users are used to viewing the projects they own within the Projects Page versus checking a Dashboard that brings their tasks to them. We decided to test a new standard with one large schedule which then led to new pain points with our users. The users did not like having to go somewhere else to view their work - not even if it was a custome dashboard in their Project page. They just want to see the projects that they own. Change management challenges, right. While the users effectively engaged with the old scheduling process in Workfront, it creates other challenges like managers not being able to oversee the campaign’s connected parts (one of our main goals for Workfront). All that said, I think it may be wise to return to our old standard until user friendly dashboards are made and tested by the users. Now, the remaining problem is to solve how to have multiple projects coordinated in a clean way and then easily viewed by the managers needing view the work. Finally, how would (have) you coordinate separate projects with a view that shows their connections? Hoping to receive some helpful feedback from the WF community! Thanks, Jonathan

[EricLu2]

Hi: I must admit I am confused in reading your post, so please indulge me with some clarifications: 1) Do you have project owners who want to see what projects they own? (In WorkFront select the Projects menu then Projects I Own) 2) Do you have users who want to see what tasks they are assigned to and working on? (In WorkFront select MyWork then the Working On tab) I assume your project hierarchy is this: 1) Campaign is overall managed as a program; 2) Each major deliverable is overall managed by one person, in one project, associated with the campaign program; A consideration in managing multiple projects that have some kind of inter-relationship or coupling is the use of cross-project predecessors. These are great to connect tasks in different projects together. For example, once Talent is finalized in Project A, tasks in other projects that depend on finalizing the talent can be made dependent on finalization of Talent in project A. That is the interconnectedness I think you are referring to in your message. Am I close? Thanks for your clarifications! Eric

[GregBe1]

I'm with Eric. It's important to distinguish between your "User" if you're referring to a PM or a user who will work on tasks (I'll call Work members). PM's can see their project on "Projects" tab under "Projects I own" and Work members can use the "My Work" tab. Beyond that, I'm not clear on the exact issue you're trying to solve.

[JonathanMi]

Hi Eric, Thank you for the response! My apologies for not being very clear, here is a reponse to your questions: Questions on the users' environment: Yes, there are project owners that want to see the projects they own Yes, there are a few users that want to see tasks assigned to them and use MyWork to view tasks On the project hierarchy: Yes, a campaign is created as a program and the different projects represent camapign deliverables We really appreciate the feedback. While we have yet to implement interdepencies between projects, I thought that feature would be helpful for the upcoming projects. The problem I face is that while allowing PMs to make many projects is good for the workers viewing their own work, it doesnt let the Sen. PM see the connected deliverables between the projects. Which leads me to ask... Are there some best practices for viewing/reporting the work done by different projects that are connected ? Is it possible to view the critical path in a program with multiple projects? Or, to view the critical path, would one need to make a camapign project schedule consolidating the many projects? Thanks again for the input! Jonathan

[EricLu2]

Hi: Unlike Microsoft Project, WorkFront is not architected to have Subprojects. There is no way to look at the critical path between subprojects. There is no concept of a subproject at all. Connecting projects is nothing more than creating a predecessor link on one task to a task in another project. To view the status of deliverables within a program, you can create a custom task attribute called “Deliverable Name” and tag the task that represents the completion of that deliverable. That way, you can create a task report, filtered by the program name, and show the tasks where Deliverable Name is not blank. Order the task report by completion date. That would give you an overall list of deliverables and when they’ll be done. Aside from that, I can’t think of how you would find the critical path of a series of projects within a Program using WorkFront. Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t help on this one. Eric

[JonathanMi]

Hi Greg, The users are all PMs managing their own deliverables. Essentially, they manage their own proejcts within a greater campaign. Most all of them use the "Projects I Own" in the "Projects" page over the "My Work" page. A challenge then is how to provide an overarching view of the interconnected proejcts to the campaign lead. I know that I can build a custom report, but I just wanted to see what some best practices were... How do others manage interconnected proejcts under one program in WF? How do you report on interconnected projects? Thanks for asking for clarification, I hope this cleared things up. Jonathan

[JonathanMi]

That makes sense, Eric. Thanks for the feedback.

[GregBe1]

I don't use this, but wondering if it would be helpful for you. If you each campaign is its own Program, can you go to Projects>Portfolios, then click on the Program tab in the portfolio. Click on the Program (Campaign). From there maybe you can use the Gantt chart, or maybe the Milestones view would help.