Rather than reinventing the wheel each time you start a new project, a project workflow allows you to establish processes, standards, and templates that can be used across your organization's projects and teams. By creating a consistent approach to managing projects across our organization, we can save our project managers and teams time and support consistency in ways that align with best practices and our organization's values.

Some organizations may implement a comprehensive workflow that can guide almost every aspect of a project, while others might offer a looser framework with just a few required or suggested activities, standards, or templates.

What might a consistent project workflow look like for a mission-driven organization? An organization might create a workflow that intersects with each of its projects at a couple of key points, such as during:

1. Project Approval - Organizations could implement a simple project approval form to capture consistent information about prospective projects, allowing leadership to make more informed decisions about which projects to approve.

2. Project Planning - Project managers might be offered a series of templates they can use in their project planning, such as a list of common project roles. They may even be provided meeting agendas or meeting tools to support facilitating planning activities with teams and stakeholders.

3. Project Interactions - Organizations could provide project managers with best practices and standards for project interactions, such as guidance on setting project team ground rules or reaching a consensus, communication style guides, or a list of preferred vendors.

4. Project Monitoring - To ensure consistency of the types of information shared about the status or progress of each project, project managers might be offered templates, slide decks, or dashboard access to create project reports.

5. Project Closing - Organizations could provide project managers with a Project Closing Checklist or a Project Retrospective Worksheet or require that project files be archived on a shared drive.

Project workflows save the time of project managers and their teams, allowing them to focus their efforts on successful project outcomes, rather than (re)developing common processes!

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