Best way to manage your projects with Whiteboard
When it comes to utilizing Whiteboard, one of the most common questions is how to get the most value out when it comes to managing their projects and individual to-dos. There isn’t a right or wrong way, but we wanted to share with you what we’ve found to be the best method when it comes to managing your tasks and projects.
Below are simple steps on how to setup and best manage your projects with Whiteboard.
Setting up Whiteboard
Let’s first walk through setting up Whiteboard so you can conquer any project with ease.
1. Create a workspace and title it based upon the project you are working on. The workspace can serve a multitude of purposes outside of being equivalent to a specific project. For example, it can be the name of your team, department or other grouping to house your tasks.
2. Invite others that are working on the project with you. If you are unfamiliar on how to add invite individuals to a workspace, you can learn more here.
Now that you have your workspace created and everyone is invited, you will want to create the following lists. This is the structure for how you are going to manage your project.
1. All Items: In this list you will input all the tasks that are needing to be accomplished in the project. You will want to label this list “0 — All Items’
2. This Week: Every week we will organize all the tasks that we are wanting to focus on and have completed by end of the week. More on this in the steps below. Oh, and be sure to label this list ‘1 — Current Week’.
3. Review: The third list is going to be items that you have completed and are needing to be reviewed for quality. You know, making sure you are dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s. I am sure you are catching on in terms of labeling as well. Just as a reminder though, you want to label this list ‘2 — Review’
4. Done: As the list name refers, this is where we will move all the tasks that have been reviewed and completed for the week and of course, label this list as ‘3 — Done’ with the last day of the weeks date. For example ‘ 3 — Done 12/25/15’.
With your to-do list created in the workspace, from the To-do section of the workspace, your lists should look like this:
Weekly Process
Now that your workspace in Whiteboard is all setup and ready to go, it is time to start putting in all the tasks that need to be completed. Let’s get started!
In the ‘All Items’ list, you will want to start creating all the tasks that need to be completed for the project. You can add due dates, list them by priority by dragging and dropping them, and add any additional details if you’d like.
You can make it quick and easy by adding tasks via the Quick Entry feature. This will let you quickly create all the tasks with just a title without having to worry about the details at that moment.
Note: When adding additional tasks to a project, be sure to always add them to the ‘All Items’ list. It will keep your project management strategy listed below streamlined and efficient.
With all outstanding tasks in the ‘All Items’ list, below are 7 weekly steps you will want to follow to complete all the tasks associated with a given project.
1. Plan your week
At the start of every week, you will want to review your ‘All Items’ list and move tasks that you are wanting to accomplish that week to the ‘This Week’ list. This allows you to break your workload it into smaller chunks and not be overwhelmed by the big picture. Remember you can always add more tasks to this list later in the week, so be sure to make it realistic in terms of what you can accomplish and not overload it.
2. Delegate tasks
With your week planned out, now is when you can go through and delegate the tasks to others, add start and due dates as well as add any remaining details to the tasks. This is also a great time to get others you are collaborating with involved by having them come into the list and grab the tasks they are wanting to accomplish.
3. Focus and conquer
Let’s stop and give yourself a pat on the back because you are now more organized than most others around you! Now that we have the week’s tasks delegated and ready to go, it is time to start knocking them out! Focus on what you are needing to accomplish today by assig setting start and due dates to a task. Then from within the My To-dos section, tasks will automatically populate in your list for Today! Awesome isn’t it? Now you can focus on today and conquer your list one day at a time!
Tip for managers: From the To-dos section of the workspace, you can quickly identify who is working on what today via the blue dot indicator on their photo. This indicates that the the task is in their list for Today and that they are knocking it out! Project and product managers rejoice!
4. Review completed tasks
Once you have completed a task, if you are working with others on a project, you will want to assign the to-do to the project or product manager and move it into the ‘Review’ list so they know you have completed the task and it is ready for them to review.
For personal projects that you are working on by yourself, reviewing your tasks is a good practice, double check and make sure everything is good!
5. Move to Done
Once the task has been reviewed and cleared as done, move the tasks into the Done list!
What if the task didn’t pass the review? Then what? If the task still needs a little work, move the it back into the ‘This Week’ list assigned to the person responsible and leave them a note! This will let them know that there are some items needing to be addressed before it can be considered done.
6. Close out the week
By the end of the week, you and your team will have all the tasks from your weekly list completed and moved into the Done list. Now is the time where you celebrate by conquering your week and marking the Done items as complete! You can do this by either swiping the to-do list name to the right in one of our mobile apps and selecting Complete.
From the web app, you will want to hover over the list name and select the pencil icon. Next you will want to click ‘Complete to-do list’ found in the lower right.
7. Rinse and repeat next week : )
When the new week comes around you will simply repeat the steps above until all the tasks in the ‘All Items’ list have been completed! Don’t forget to recreate the ‘3 — Done’ list for next week.
If you ever need to reference when an item was completed or what was completed a particular week, you can always go to the Done section of workspace and review completed tasks!
