Program Project Management Tips

Are there any tips or best practices for using Wrike for program project management? We're launching a major initiative that will require several projects to be completed over a period of a few years. This will be the first time we use Wrike for something this complex, and so I'm looking for ideas of how to set things up in the system.

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Thank you for reaching out L. Denise Turner! I've featured your post on the main Community page now, hope that other members will be able to share some tips 👍

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

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Hi L. Denise Turner,

As a product development company, we run multiple development projects of varying complexity using a single Blueprint (aka Project Template).  For us, the first key was understanding the project roadmap and steps necessary to complete each task.  The project roadmap represents the high-level tasks that need to be completed.  For example: Design, Artwork, Packaging, Tooling, etc.  The steps for each of these tasks are represented by Custom Workflows.  This allows us to report the Status (or state) that each phase of the project is in as an easy to read report.  All projects are formatted the same to improve ease of viewing and understanding during reporting meetings.

Below is our primary project template that we currently use.  We initially had over 90 tasks for each project template 😲, but found that those tasks were really just key steps in a given phase that became workflow steps instead.

Here is just an example workflow for the Design phase of our project.

My recommendation is to map out what the projects look like by phase, then steps required to complete each phase.  This will give you a good foundation for which to build out your Blueprints and Workflows.

I hope you find this helpful, and feel free to ask any specific questions you may have!

Cheers!

Trevor

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Hi Trevor. Thank you for providing information on your process, and for the screen shots! I think we can use a similar approach for part of the program we're launching. It includes opening several new facilities, and so each facility renovation/launch project could use the same project template and follow specific phases. I would love to hear other suggestions from the community on how Wrike could be used to organize programs when there is more variability in the types of projects. Aside from the new facilities, our program will also include at least five other types of projects that will all be pretty different from one another.

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We use blueprints for several long-term, complex projects. We've tried to break down our complex projects into smaller modules (/sub-projects in the blueprints). This can be helpful if there are certain stages that are the same even in projects that are pretty different from one another. 

Having a good folder/space/project structure would be helpful as well. We organize our workspace with department-based spaces, and then cross-tag the parts of projects that belong to those departments in their department's spaces.

Creating a calendar view could be helpful for communicating long-term timelines and goals with the team, and helping them keep the bigger picture in mind. Gantt charts are great for showing schedules, too, but they can be more overwhelming for people on the team who aren't used to using them. 

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