Hello, and welcome to our Impactful Projects

and Planning Microtraining Series.

I'm Jami Yazdani.

In today's session, we're going to be talking

about how to support success across a portfolio

of projects using consistent processes or

workflows.

So, 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.

The goal of creating and using a project workflow

is to save your project managers and teams

time so they aren't reinventing the wheel

with each project and to ensure best practices

are consistently being used across projects.

So, by creating a consistent approach to managing

projects across our organization, we can also

ensure that all of our projects align well

with our organizational values and best practices.

So what might a consistent project workflow

look like for a mission-driven organization?

An organization might create a workflow that

intersects with each of their projects at

a couple of key points, like when the project

is being approved, to support more effective

project planning, to ensure some best practices

are followed in the ways our project team

members interact with each other and with

our community, to streamline how we monitor

and report on our projects, and when our projects

are ending or closing.

So let's dive into this example workflow a

bit and talk about what types of standards,

templates, and activities we might want to

implement at these intersection points to

better illustrate what a project workflow

can be.

Okay, so at the Project Approval stage, an

organization might 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.

Another organization might require a more

comprehensive project feasibility assessment

to allow key leaders to consider the impact

of a project.

And another organization might use some combination

of these two, with approval forms as a first

step and a feasibility assessment as a requirement

for only the largest, longest, or most resource-intensive

projects.

To ensure more effective planning, an organization

might provide their project managers with

a series of templates they can use in their

project planning.

They may even provide meeting agendas or meeting

tools to support facilitating planning activities

with teams and stakeholders.

Perhaps an organization might provide a template

or agenda for defining a clear project scope,

or list of common project roles to support

identifying stakeholders and how they will

participate in the project, or an agenda for

team meetings to support determining concrete

outcomes and deliverables, or a schedule template

to support project managers in creating project

timelines that have milestones and clear due

dates.

Again, these types of templates or agendas

can save your project managers time, and ensure

that project management best practices are

being followed across projects.

An organization might also want its workflow

to provide project managers with best practices

or guidelines for project interactions.

For example, they may set standards for the

diversity of team members or offer guidance

on setting project team ground rules.

They may provide tools for managing disagreements

or reaching a consensus within our project

teams or with stakeholders.

They might also set policies for purchasing

or using preferred vendors, or share industry

standards for environmental sustainability

or organizational ethics.

They may even request that project communications

to an external group conform to a communication

style guide or that project managers on certain

projects partner with the organization's communication

team.

Again, our goal here is to provide project

managers and teams with the tools or support

they need to adhere to standards and best

practices.

A project workflow could also intersect with

project monitoring by providing project managers

with sample templates, slide decks, or dashboard

access to create project reports, to ensure

consistency of the types of information shared

about the status or progress of each project,

and agendas for project team meetings or project

check-in meetings to support managers in facilitating

efficient and collaborative discussions about

project tasks.

Or an organization might offer support or

standards for conducting quality assessments

of project deliverables or outcomes.

Similarly, a project closing workflow might

provide project managers with a project closing

checklist or a project retrospective worksheet.

Or they may ask that a sustainability assessment

or planning session for how outcomes will

be integrated into operations be conducted,

or that project files be archived on a shared

drive.

Again, our goal here is to support consistency

in ways that align with best practices and

our organization's values and to save project

managers time and their team's time so that

they can focus their efforts on outcomes rather

than developing common processes again and

again.

And so, how and when a project workflow intersects

with an organization's projects will really

vary by organization and the level of consistency

that you desire or need.

So some organizations may implement a pretty

detailed workflow that can guide almost every

aspect of a project, while others might offer

a looser framework with just a few required,

or even suggested, activities, standards,

or templates.

So a few tips for developing and implementing

project workflows.

First, I'd recommend assessing your project

environment and the feasibility of implementing

a project workflow or workflows in your organization.

So consider what's working well with your

organization's projects and what isn't working

well.

Also, what existing processes and practices

are already in place.

Who are your project management stakeholders?

And how are you currently supporting them?

And also, consider what impacts you're hoping

these workflows will create.

Designing workflows is also a great time to

consider alignment.

And so, my second tip is to make sure that

you consider how your project workflows and

your projects align with your organization's

strategic priorities and values.

So we can build points of alignment into each

step of a project workflow or phase of a project,

but especially in those project initiation

or approval processes and in any closing or

reporting steps.

My third tip, don't forget about buy-in.

So make sure your assessment and planning

for project workflows includes the folks who

will actually be involved in your projects.

Will they really use the templates and guidance

that your workflow is providing?

Or will they find it just to be another kind

of bureaucratic box to check in trying to

complete successful projects?

And so, gathering feedback from your project

managers and teams about their needs is really

important.

So what type of support do they want and need

to help them manage projects?

What templates, agendas, and processes have

they already created that can be incorporated

into your workflows?

Don't reinvent the wheel here either, right?

So without feedback, transparency, and buy-in,

your workflows probably won't be very successful.

So that's a super quick introduction to project

workflows.

For more help developing workflows, check

out our Project Templates List.

This free download of our list of essential

templates to create in developing your project

workflows is available at yazdaniconsulting.com/resources.

At that same address, there are also many

other templates available, from planning checklists

and role guides to meeting agendas and a project

retrospective worksheet.

And, of course, if you need more hands-on

support leading projects and teams or creating

workflows for your organization, you can visit

our Project Solutions Page at yazdaniconsulting.com/projects

to learn more about the ways we can help.

Great, so I'm happy to take questions that

you have about project workflows.

So please add them in the comments.

Due to the streaming delay, I'm going to give

folks a few moments to add their questions.

And if I'm not able to answer your question

live, I'm happy to respond later in the comments.

You can also find all of the ways to contact

me at yazdaniconsulting.com/contact.

So do reach out to me if you'd like to talk

about project workflows.

Okay, so a question about workflows is, you

know, this seems like something you only see

in very large organizations, is this something

that I could actually do in my smaller nonprofit?

And I would say absolutely.

So while larger organizations often kind of

have an incentive to create these kinds of

workflows because of the volume of projects

they may be undertaking across a variety of

different teams, I think building efficiencies

into the ways we are working and how we manage

projects, is actually really very important

for smaller organizations.

Smaller organizations are more likely to have

folks wearing a lot of different hats who

already have a lot on their plate.

And so offering those people and our team

some support, some guidance, some timesavers,

in the way that they can lead their projects,

I think, is something that is really useful

and is needed.

So another question is, we have some templates

and a loose framework for how we approach

our projects.

Is that a project workflow?

And I would say yes, although one of the goals

of implementing a project workflow or multiple

workflows across an organization is consistency.

And so, while many organizations or project

managers and project teams have approaches

they use again and again across projects,

it's often not formalized.

And they may not be sharing it broadly, right?

And the folks in particular who manage a lot

of projects may have some processes they're

using, but somebody who's only managing an

occasional project doesn't know anything about

that.

Also, if it's not sort of shared broadly,

and really formalized in some way, there may

not be those considerations for alignment

or with how these processes and templates

kind of sit within a larger strategic framework.

It may not be something that folks in a different

department can use or can be used in a variety

of situations.

And so project workflows, and when I work

with organizations, on talking about these

kinds of processes and developing workflows,

it really goes beyond just designing a template

or series of templates, to really helping

them think more strategically about their

processes and consider ways to incorporate

them into their organization's culture and

ways of working.

So wonderful.

Feel free to comment, reach out, message me

with any additional questions.

And thank you so much for participating in

our Impactful Projects and Planning Microtraining

Series.

I'll be back with more microtrainings in January

of 2023.

So visit us at yazdaniconsulting.com/ipp to

view all of the sessions in this series and

learn about upcoming microtrainings.

Thank you!