Looking for success stories on Boards

[Femke_Crijns]

Hi everybody,

I'm looking for success stories about using Workfront Boards. I see that Workfront is putting a lot of effort into the further development and use of Boards, but I don't really understand the added value compared to the existing design of Projects and the Agile View. I am curious about how this functionality is being used successfully in other companies.

I am also curious how you ensure that projects are still created with a template, that tasks are assigned to people and teams, and that creating a Board does not secretly replace this because this would mean that the overview of projects would no longer be complete.

Hopefully, you will take the time to share your stories about this.

[ChloeWY · Accepted solution]

Hi @Femke_Crijns ,

My company is in manufacturing.  I just implemented a Boards solution with our Manufacturing Engineering Manager.  He was delighted when I showed it to him.  His team works on a bunch of things that are too big to just be a task but too small to be their own project.  We have projects for each of our production lines to track work like this, but I have had trouble getting their team to actually track things in Workfront due to the cumbersome nature of the work being across projects.  His team developed an Excel spreadsheet to track the work.  

I created a Board for him that copied his spreadsheet.  There are high level status columns and checklists within each card that contain the information from the spreadsheet.  They use the notes column for adding dates.  They add the cards to the appropriate project so they're visible to the rest of us, but they never have to actually go to the project.  Boards is a one stop shop with everything they need.  This is the key to the department adopting Workfront.  

I did evaluate the existing agile options, and I chose Boards because I assume the legacy agile functionalities will be removed in some number of years after Boards is fully flushed out, and I needed the ability to have custom columns.  The existing Agile options would require me to create custom statuses for this, which is a headache easily avoided with Boards.  This way, my Manufacturing Engineering Manager can edit the column names whenever he wants.  Boards just seemed easier to create and maintain.  

Cards don't create projects, so there's no need to worry about templates.  They can just be added to existing projects.  As to ensuring people are assigned, I think that is the same level of risk throughout Workfront.  And making sure cards are linked to a project isn't a concern to me either, as the alternative is the work not being in Workfront at all.  

I have been using the feedback button a lot, as there are many features we'd like to have that don't exist yet, but in my opinion, this is a good start for a new feature.  

[Femke_Crijns]

Thanks for taking the time to describe how you integrated Boards. That is very clarifying for me, and also very interesting to read how your organization deals with work too big for a task and too small for a project. 

This gives me new insights that I can take with me within our organization.