3 Foolproof Steps to Ace Your Wrike Implementation
Back in February, Wrike's customer success team launched a "churn analysis" campaign. For two months, we collected feedback from customers who had decided to stop using Wrike and tried to identify their reasons for leaving. While there were many different reasons why people left Wrike, such as a lack of financial resources and specific missing features, "lack of usage" ranked at the very top, far surpassing all the other factors. To be honest, at first, I didn't think this campaign was very helpful. Deep in my mind, I kind of knew the top result would be "lack of usage," even before we started. What I didn't know was why people stopped using Wrike or the reasons behind their "lack of usage." Nor did many Wrike customers know why themselves. When we talked on the phone, they would say, "I don't know, I guess we just weren't ready for a tool like this," or "I don't know, it's a good tool, we just stopped using it." It was frustrating because I knew they came to Wrike for a good reason, whether it was to eliminate a pain point or to improve a process. Something must've gone wrong in their implementation and adoption of the platform, and it was my job to figure out what happened. Analyzing the churn campaign results At first, I assumed there simply wasn't enough authority coming down from management to make the use of Wrike absolutely mandatory — as if flexing muscle at the team members would help solve their adoption problem. But soon, I found that wasn't really the case. Most of the time, team members seemed to be in as much pain as the authority figures and power users (the person in your company who knows Wrike the best and will likely be responsible for training) — everyone was sick of the old way of managing projects, i.e., relying on emails and Excel spreadsheets. Then I started blaming our product. I would tell myself, "Maybe Wrike just isn't built for a certain industry or a certain type of customer." But the data told me that was also not true: for every customer that failed, I could always find another one in the same industry that was very successful with Wrike. So what was the problem? Why implementation and onboarding fails One pattern I've noticed during my onboarding of customers was that the people that are more organized in their approach to Wrike adoption (e.g., those with a clear plan for training their team members, emphasizing specific features during training, etc.) tend to be the most successful. On the other side of the coin, people who are less meticulous in their adoption (i.e., they ask the team members to attend a general webinar and then just wave them on to "start putting their projects in there") tend to be the customers who fail right from the start. It's a little ironic. If my assessment is true, it seems like the people who are already organized and proactive without a tool are the people who use Wrike the best and get the most out of Wrike. And the people who really need the most help managing their projects and workflows tend to be those least likely to successfully reap the benefits of Wrike. The great become greater, and the disorganized stay disorganized. The problem: Magic pill mentality Magic pills make fantastic stories, whether it's the fitness program that gives you a six-pack in three weeks or the collaboration software that will instantly solve all your team's communication and project management issues. But we all know (even if we don't want to admit it) that magic pills don't work on their own. They are the means to an end, not the end itself. Wrike will help you and your team get more organized -- once you've put in the effort to get there. The efforts also need to be channeled in the right direction. When working with customers, I've noticed one underlying theme: Customers who fail at implementing Wrike do not fail at learning Wrike's features; they fail to be goal-oriented and process-oriented during their implementation. One implication of this finding is that my job as the customer success manager should focus not on teaching customers Wrike's features but on helping them be more goal- and process-oriented. The solution: 3 clear steps Here are three things I try to get my customers to focus on: Step 1. Have a clear goal for using Wrike One question I always ask customers when I talk to them is, "What's your goal in using Wrike?" Answers vary:"Project management.""Uhh, to keep track of our projects.""You know, just to have everything in one place." Yes, these are all good answers, but they are way too vague, and they lead to unmet goals. What exactly do you mean when you say you want to "manage your projects"? Is it to cut down on the amount of overdue work? If so, by how much? How will you know whether you've succeeded? Is your goal to provide more visibility into your project's progress? If so, how? Does it mean you can get a quick snapshot of how many tasks are completed by project? By person? By department? Sometimes it's hard to ask yourself these questions because you don't really know what you want. Or maybe sometimes, you just want to achieve too much at once. Too often, I've seen customers panic because they have not taken advantage of every feature in Wrike, whether it's time tracking, the Gantt chart, the Workload View, or email integration. And before they know it, they start to come up with many different additional "goals" they didn't necessarily have when they first purchased Wrike: track team members' workloads, generate reports for management, run time reports for hours worked, etc. It's understandable that these additional goals creep in. After all, you want to get your money's worth, and these are all good objectives to achieve. But you also need to be reminded what your initial goal was because it's only after knowing your goal that you can ensure you feel accomplished. And then, we on the Customer Success team can help. Step 2. Create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Let's suppose your goal is to identify overdue projects and tasks and reschedule them when they are overdue. Once this goal is identified, you now need to create an entire workflow around it so that you can catch your tasks before they fall through the cracks. Here are some questions to ask yourself: Should you use Dashboard widgets to monitor overdue tasks you've assigned to others? Or should you use email notifications? Once you pick your antidote (or even if you pick both), you still need to standardize the process to make sure it's consistent among your team members: If you use Dashboard widgets: Which "overdue" Dashboard widgets do you set up? How are the tasks within being sorted? If you use email notifications: Which projects or tasks do you follow to make sure you get the right notifications? How should you customize your email notification settings? Once you've caught your overdue tasks, decide how you will make sure the assignees are aware that their tasks are overdue and that they will reschedule accordingly. Should you use the "Request status update" feature built into tasks? If so, you have to standardize the process to make sure team members check these request emails instead of just assuming that they will. Should you use @mentioning? If so, you need to standardize the usage of the notification center for @mentions. Make it clear that "when your task is overdue, you will be @mentioned and responsible for rescheduling the task," so your team members have clear expectations right from the start. This might seem like a lot to consider — and we haven't even touched on how projects should be created, how they are to be archived (for reporting), and the approval process behind the rescheduling of overdue tasks. But if you take the time in the beginning, it will pay off in the end, and you will achieve your Wrike goals. Standardization and consistency are key. In order to set up the right process, the power user not only needs to know about Wrike's features, they also need to walk in the shoes of their team members. In a collaborative project management solution like Wrike, what each person sees is always going to be different. If you have multiple teams using Wrike, you may need to create multiple SOPs. One other thing you've probably discovered is Wrike's flexibility. There are usually multiple ways to do one thing, whether it's receiving updates, denoting important tasks, or assigning work. But whichever way you choose, make sure everyone sticks by the same process. While Wrike's flexibility is a good thing for your team, it also means it does not come with a specific process carved out. You have to carefully build out your own process and communicate it clearly to meet your goals. And if you don't standardize your process of using Wrike? Many of our customers who leave Wrike struggle with people who just start to "do their own thing." John creates a custom status folder for tasks that are pending approval, while Amy uses the default "deferred" status for the same type of tasks. Michael schedules his task due dates as milestones, while most of Ashley's tasks are backlogged. It's easy to see how things can spiral out of control this way if you let your team members run away with Wrike. Hopefully, at this point, I've convinced you of the importance of creating a standard operating procedure for how your team needs to use Wrike. Once the SOP is in place, there's only one thing left to do. Step 3. Conduct your team training based on the SOP The heavy lifting was all completed in the SOP creation! Now it's just a matter of demonstrating the steps laid out in the SOP to your team, whether via a conference call and a screenshare or gathering everyone in the same room for a live demo. During your training, resist the temptation of going through unnecessary features that the team won't be using; keep it simple and straight-forward. The easier it is for your team to learn the platform, the more likely they will be receptive to using it. How to create your own SOP Now, let's focus our energy on the actual creation of the SOP. There are so many questions you could potentially ask yourself when creating your SOP, how do you know what to focus on? How do you keep yourself from being overwhelmed in the process? It's important for you to remember our first point: A good SOP helps make sure your initial goal is achieved. In other words, the only questions worth considering when constructing your SOP are the ones that truly affect your goals. For example, if your goal of using Wrike is to make sure overdue tasks don't fall through the cracks, then you don't need to come up with rules on how the time tracking feature needs to be used. Again, keep it simple and pragmatic. It will make managing your process easier. Questions to ask when making your Wrike SOP No two teams will have the same SOPs for their Wrike usage. Depending on your workflow, you'll likely need to address some of the questions listed here. I've divided them into four different categories: 1. Starting a new project • Who is in charge of creating a new project/the tasks inside a new project? • Are new projects created from a template? • Once the new project gets created, in which folder does it reside? How are the projects categorized?• For every project created, what type of tasks need to be created? Are there any milestones that must be included for every project?• Are there any specific naming conventions for your projects?• How are the tasks in the project scheduled? Are there any rules or approval processes for task rescheduling? 2. Task assignments• Does every task within a project need to be assigned? (This is tied to how tasks are being updated.)• Who is in charge of assigning the tasks within a project?• With tasks assigned to multiple team members, should subtasks be used? If no, how do individuals know it is their turn to take action? 3. Updating tasks• What kind of updates need to be made within Wrike (vs. kept out of Wrike)? • How are team members expected to communicate their task updates? Should @mentioning be used? • How are team members expected to find out about these updates?• How are team members expected to find out about tasks that are coming up or going overdue? • Should a standardizedDashboard be created and shared amongst the team?• How should overdue tasks be dealt with? Is there an approvals process for rescheduling these tasks? 4. Completing a project• How do we determine whether a project has been considered "complete"? • Where do completed projects reside? • How should these completed projects be categorized for easy reference in the future? To make these questions more relatable, I'm including a sample SOP I created for a marketing agency some time ago. Download the sample Standard Operating Procedure. Their goal for using Wrike was to have visibility into the progress of their projects and ultimately prevent tasks from falling through the cracks. They also had a simple workflow where projects were created from a template, assigned to project managers, and updated when tasks were completed. Depending on your team's workflow, your SOP will look marginally to vastly different from the sample I've provided. A new tool will not magically solve all your problems. To make Wrike successful for your team, you must put in the work to set it up the right way. However, once you put a clear goal in place, thoroughly map out your team's process, and create a great SOP, your team will be much more successful in its adoption of Wrike. One month from your successful tool rollout, you'll look back and wonder how you ever managed all your work with spreadsheets and email alone! What's next? Check out our help center to get your team onboard with Wrike.
Work Smarter, Not Harder: 25 Must-Know Productivity Tips (eBook)
Do you feel your productivity wane as the week goes on? Or do you start a number of tasks and struggle to finish them, jumping from one to another all day? The COVID-19 pandemic forced most knowledge workers to work from home, and many have found the benefits of remote working worthy of continuing even as offices open up. But remote working comes with its own set of struggles: how to be productive at work when you have more distractions? Do you find yourself jumping up from a task to let the dog outside, or remembering to switch the laundry to the dryer while you’re in the middle of writing an email? Those little interruptions can have a negative impact on your productivity, leaving you feeling drained and unaccomplished at the end of the day. Of course, working in an office can take a toll on your productivity as well, as meetings interrupt deep work and coworkers’ chatting keeps you from finishing a proposal. So what can you do when you’re wondering how to be more productive at work? Start with our new productivity eBook — a thorough compilation of 25 must-know productivity tips that will have you tackling tasks with more gusto in no time. This eBook is divided into three sections of productivity hacks that will help you structure your work better, automate admin and repetitive tasks, and engage work management software that will supercharge your productivity. Give your work more structure Many workers start their days without a plan in place for how they’re going to tackle everything they need to get done. Putting structure in place to guide the flow of your time is an excellent place to start when you’re wondering how to be more productive at work. Here are a few examples of the powerful productivity tips included in our latest eBook. Embrace smarter planning: The New York Times reports that it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to a task following an interruption. Planning your day to include batches of tasks you can do together can improve productivity. Group similar tasks together to cut down on context switching and minimize stress. Minimize meetings: Meetings can really cut down on productivity at work. According to Hector Aguilar, President of Technology at Okta: “When meetings interrupt your day, you're switching between the two sides of your prefrontal cortex to multitask and it can take up to 40% longer to complete the same tasks.” In order to regain productivity at work, Aguilar has instituted no-meeting days, which allow for completely uninterrupted time one day each week. Become an inbox hero: While most of us are aware that letting our inboxes dictate the workday doesn’t provide maximum productivity, the Harvard Business Review reports we still dedicate almost a third of our day to it. Creating blocks in your calendar each day to stay disciplined about the time you spend on email can help cut out up to 2.5 hours of wasted inbox time each day. Automate admin and repetitive tasks Daily tasks that require repeating every day can be a good place to start when you’re trying to improve productivity. With automation, those tasks can be streamlined and time working on them can be dedicated to more impactful work. Our eBook includes 12 productivity tips for automating processes using a work management platform like Wrike, including the following: Streamlining your intake system Automating your admin tasks Sharing updates automatically Connecting your apps Automating approvals and proofing By automating these types of tasks, you’ll cut down on time you’re currently using to complete simple administrative tasks. You can then devote that time and focused attention to more fruitful work that moves your projects forward and gives a bigger sense of accomplishment at the end of the workday. Engage work management software to power your productivity Of course, the key to being able to do many of these productivity tips is versatile and intuitive work management software. Work management software like Wrike can be the difference between a day spent digging through your inbox to find a much-needed piece of information or quickly locating that info in one easily located task. Now that you’re ready to supercharge your productivity, download our free eBook to learn more productivity tips that will help you tackle your workload today.
Become Wrike Certified With Our New Customer Certification Program
Whether you're a long-time user or taking your first steps towards Wrike mastery, let your team and organization know you're the expert when it comes to all things Wrike with our new Wrike Customer Certification program and badges.
How to Prioritize Wrike Tasks With an Eisenhower Decision Matrix
If you're the typical worker, you'll start with the most immediate fire being shoved in your face the minute you get to your desk. But that isn't ideal. There's a smarter way to determine priority, and it involves a tool invented more than 50 years ago by the 34th president of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Cross-Tagging in Wrike Opens Up Your Team’s Project Visibility (Infographic)
What does the Wrike CWM platform offer that the others don't? Cross-tagging. Cross-tagging in Wrike is a one-of-a-kind feature that gives you, your teams, and your organization better visibility and end-to-end transparency into every activity, all the way down to the tasks level. This is valuable because, without it, you'd have duplicate tasks, folders — everything — for different teams needing access and the flexibility to roll-up tasks, folders, etc. into larger projects or campaigns so that other teams can track the work. Here’s a more visual look at cross-tagging in Wrike.
Cross-Tagging in Wrike: Why This Collaboration Software Feature is Essential to Team Success
Introducing Inside Wrike, a new blog series that introduces you to some of the industry’s thought leaders and foremost experts on topics ranging from collaborative work and project management to new Wrike use cases. Each post is dedicated to bringing you the latest insights and deep dives into the Wrike platform designed to get you more value from Wrike. For the premier post in the series, Sr. Content Marketing Manager Brandon Weaver sat down with John Notman, Wrike’s Head of Competitive Intelligence and former professional photographer. During the discussion, Weaver quizzes Notman on Wrike’s cross-tagging superpowers and where he sees the future of the collaboration software landscape. Also, having recently relocated from Silicon Valley to Denver, Notman shares his experiences about moving during the pandemic along with his recommendation for the best international travel destination, and camera of choice. BW: The collaborative work management (CWM) competitive landscape is as fierce as ever as more organizations prepare for the reality that the hybrid workforce is their future. And there’s been some big moves in the industry that demonstrate the rise in necessity of collaboration software solutions among the global workforce. What do you make of some of the latest shifts in the CWM landscape? JN: Yeah it’s been interesting to watch as Workfront got acquired by Adobe in December 2020 and Monday.com filed for IPO in May! Both events are huge accomplishments considering Workfront is known for being the least collaborative CWM with a difficult UI, whereas Monday.com struggles with everyday basics like glitchy workload charts and subpar visual asset proofing. Imperfections like these offer a glimpse into how hard it is to codify anything related to our work lives. Should technologists over-engineer a technology and become a cumbersome Workfront? Or should technologists over-index on user delight at the cost of basic features like Monday.com? BW: What has Wrike been up to in the meantime? JN: On the Wrike side, we continue to innovate and lead the collaboration software market by being the most intuitive, versatile, and robust solution. We held our annual Collaborate conference in October 2020, completely virtual, where we announced product features like Work Intelligence with project risk prediction, our AI and machine-learning powered Automation Engine, and introduced the New Wrike Experience to enhance users’ experience with the Wrike app. To kick off 2021, we were acquired by Citrix to advance the future of work and the modern digital workspace. Not too shabby of a way to start off the new year. Currently, our teams are busy working to announce a slew of new functionality that we plan to announce at Collaborate 2021 in October. BW: What’s it like relocating to a new state during a global pandemic? JN: We moved from San Jose, California, to Denver, Colorado in April 2021. Flying out to Denver in February for our inspection process was a different kind of wake up moment. The day we arrived it was 70℉ and reminded us of the Bay Area but with snow-capped peaks whereas the day we left we got hit with a blizzard! Throughout the process, all the people that helped us did an excellent job and we went into the process with an added dose of patience. We’re all human and after living through a pandemic, the fact that we could entertain a relocation to another state felt like a fortunate privilege. BW: Stake your claim: Canon or Nikon, and why? JN: During my time as a wedding photographer, I used Nikon and loved my rig! In the mid-2010s, Nikon had a substantial advantage in sensor technology, particularly in color rendition and low light capabilities and only in 2020 did Canon finally catch up. Canon makes some impressive glass but I’ve always felt like their camera housings were a bit cheap and plasticky, even down to details like shutter noise. There aren’t many differences between these camera makers anymore and, fun fact, Nikon and Canon helped each other considerably back in the 1930s. I don’t shoot weddings anymore but I still have my Nikon gear and also added a Leica Q2 to my bag, which is my current daily camera. BW: Shifting gears into Wrike and its superpower: What makes Wrike a cut above the competition? JN: The biggest challenge is differentiating Wrike from the sheer number of lookalike technologies that are available in the project management and CWM industries. The selection challenge is real. Every day, I hear examples of companies starting with a list of 20-30 vendors, then down-selecting to the final four, then top two, and then the final winner. One industry analyst recently claimed there are roughly 1,200 technologies in the market. Fortunately for Wrike, when buyers roll up their sleeves and really understand the important variables, Wrike stands out among the crowd quickly. Several terms always surface from our customers when asked how they get the most out of Wrike. They say things like flexibility, visibility, configurability, ease of use, scale, power, etc. Each one is accurate but they need more context and connection back to the product before they really mean anything. One of my favorite features in Wrike is a “super feature” because it provides a tangible way for Wrike to be so strong for our customers: cross-tagging. Only two other vendors have cross-tagging-like abilities, and their functionality is inferior to what can be accomplished in cross-tagging in Wrike. This isn’t the only feature that helps Wrike stand out against others, but it’s the feature we’re focusing on today. BW: What’s cross-tagging? JN: Cross-tagging in Wrike is not to be confused with the @mention. The @mention calls attention to a teammate or group of stakeholders to work in progress, project updates, and requests for approval. Cross-tagging opens up the visibility of your work to more teams so that everyone can track progress. Cross-tagging in Wrike allows team members to view work in context of their unique workflows, work organization, and reports. As an example, this means that a marketing team can keep a task in their "weekly sprint" folder at the same time the PMO keeps it in their "upcoming milestones" report. Exact same task, easily accessible from both locations, but tracked for different, equally valuable purposes. It’s important to note that although a task, folder, or project can live in multiple places, that doesn’t mean it’s duplicated. It’s just visible in the context of these other work streams. BW: How does cross-tagging in Wrike work? JN: Cross-tagging isn’t limited to tasks. Subtasks, folders, milestones, phases, and even entire projects can be cross-categorized into multiple work streams and organizational structures to support enterprise scalability and tailored views of work. For this example, we’ll cross-tag a folder. [caption id="attachment_467540" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Best team collaboration software features: Cross tagging a folder in Wrike[/caption] To cross-tag this folder, navigate to the Space that has the folder and then follow these steps: In List view, use the folder icon in the top right to open the info panel. The folder's tags are listed under the title. Click + to add a tag and search for your desired folder in the dropdown list. To remove a tag, click the “x” next to the tag you’d like to remove. In this example, if you cross-tagged this “Marketing campaign” folder to your Space titled “Acme Company” in the drop-down, this folder and all supporting content would be visible there as well — like the background image attached to the task. In the example below, the “Build Slide Decks” task is cross-tagged into “Creative Backlog” and “Market Intel.” If you click either of those tags, you’d see the entire list of work that’s tagged with that label. BW: Do other CWM software offer cross-tagging? JN: No other CWM platform offers cross-tagging to the level of Wrike’s capabilities. A few collaboration software vendors have a paired-down version, but it’s extremely limited because it’s only available at the task level. BW: What are some more examples of cross-tagging at work? JN: Cross-tagging is beneficial to anyone working in Wrike, across all departments. For example, the marketing team wants to know what's in their weekly sprint, and the PMO team wants to track it as part of their upcoming milestones they need to hit to complete a project. Here, it’s the same task but each team can run it in their own reports for different purposes and objectives. Common use cases for cross-tagging Another common scenario is managing the content calendar using a CWM or project management software and giving access to a blog article to the product marketing team for their go-to-market plan. As the Head of Content, you’d need to create tasks for the content writer that included subtasks for editing, reviewing the piece, etc. Meanwhile, the product marketing team needs to monitor the same article’s progress as they execute their go-to-market plan. The issue here is the product marketing team has a different workflow and permissions than the content marketing team. Without a solution that has the versatility of cross-tagging across any type of work or organized structure, you’d have to work within two tasks for the same content piece. Cross-tagging in Wrike opens up visibility to the necessary teams by breaking down those walls without duplicating work. BW: Which Wrike users benefit most from cross-tagging? JN: It doesn’t matter what your job role is or how large your team is. Anyone working in Wrike — whether they’re in-house or external stakeholders — can benefit from cross-tagging. Here are three common use cases. 1. Marketing team Marketing teams benefit from cross-tagging in Wrike because they often have multiple campaigns and assets at various stages. By showing their work in different views, other team members or departments can access the approved assets. Plus, some campaign deliverables are dependent on finalized assets from another team, and they need a quick way to locate the complete materials, like motion graphics to include in a video. When it’s time for the VP of Marketing or CMO to see all completed work from every campaign, they need to find assets quickly. The same goes for individual team members who want to repeat good work they’ve done in the past. In both scenarios, cross-tagging simplifies the process by opening up visibility to all team members so they can continue working the way their teams work best. 2. Project managers in a PMO Project managers act as air traffic control for cross-functional teams working on a campaign. Expanding on the product launch example from above, these individuals often work with product marketing managers, the product team, and design. The product marketing manager has a standard phased project plan of GTM activities categorized as a list of tasks, typically in Table view. For the PMM, one task they might have is “Build GTM Primer” that explains everything included in the release. The product team operates using the Agile methodology to plan and execute sprints to develop products. Their work looks completely different, and they often complete their work using a Kanban board. One of their tasks, as an example, could be “Final QA of new release.” Design teams are also agile working from a Kanban board as they execute their work in weekly sprints, but they kick off a lot of their work by taking in requests, like a one-pager for the new release. The project manager doesn’t complete any tasks for the release, but they’re responsible for making sure all these different tasks are completed on time. They’ll be operating off of a cross-functional GTM template. In this plan, they have different functional areas of work that need to get done for the release, like marketing, sales enablement, product, etc. With access to the project plan, everyone can cross-tag their respective tasks and get visibility into the work in progress. BW: How can Wrike users use cross-tagging with reporting efforts? JN: For reporting, there’s an added benefit to cross-tagging. In this example, the project manager could cross-tag the entire GTM Project into the PMO's GTM Program, which could then be cross-tagged into the PMO's Portfolio of programs for the entire organization. That’s great for reporting because it allows the PMO to roll up all the tasks for the product release from all team members into one organized view. As a result, they can roll up this data to see if the project is on track, if the program the project sits in is on track, and if the portfolio that the program sits in is performing well. [caption id="attachment_467569" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Team collaboration software: Using Wrike's cross-tagging feature as a project manager[/caption] 3. Cross-functional teams using daily standups Daily standups are a common practice for many teams and often include participants from different departments. So when marketing announces a software pricing change with support from sales, product marketing, and customer success, everyone needs to be buttoned up and working from the same information. When cross-functional teams don’t operate the same way with status update meetings, a familiar process is necessary, like a standup to discuss any bottlenecks. To avoid missing any updates, team members add their agenda items to a shared, visible list. Whatever work that’s cross-tagged gets discussed in the standup. Therefore, if anybody misses the meeting, they can see the full context because all attendees included their updates without having to create a separate list. BW: OK, last question. What’s your favorite international travel destination? JN: Cape Town, South Africa, which I’ve visited nine times. My grandparents emigrated to South Africa from the Netherlands after World War II ended and my mom grew up between Johannesburg, Windhoek, and Cape Town; my siblings and I would visit our grandparents in our youth. Those transatlantic adventures taught us how beautiful this world can be and those experiences instilled a sense of discovery in us that carried into adulthood. Cape Town is an especially magical city and the people, their mix of cultural backgrounds, the vibrant food scene, and the exquisite natural beauty of a city tucked into the base of Table Mountain make it a place I’ll always wish to visit again. Try out cross-tagging in Wrike It may not have a sleek name like Work Intelligence or Automation Engine, but don’t mistake the power of cross-tagging. Best of all is that it’s available for all Wrike users. Start a Wrike free trial today and increase your team’s work visibility.
Customer's Best Practice: Consider Task Duration As the No. 1 Factor in Planning
24 hours a day is always not enough to do everything you want and spend the time with the ones you love. Today, Susan Serra, who runs a family design business, shares a great tip on efficient time planning, so that not even 5 minutes will be wasted! Customer’s background Susan Serra runs three brands and a blog at the same time, full of charming decoration ideas, dedicated to kitchen design and Scandinavian accessories for the home. This is a family business that she runs with her daughter. Susan Serra’s best practice Work and family responsibilities are always tricky to combine, but Susan uses a great approach to enhance her and her daughter’s productivity. Whenever Susan logs a new task in Wrike project management software, she instantly tags it with the approximate duration. This greatly helps to efficiently organize the time and make most of each minute throughout the day. This approach is especially helpful when you have to juggle multiple activities during the day. This is exactly the case of Susan’s daughter, who has recently given birth to a son and is struggling to nurse the baby and keep working at the same time. For instance, whenever she has a short break between baby feeding and an important call, she opens the “15 minute” folder and picks one of the tasks she can accomplish right away. When you know exactly how long each task takes, it’s also easier to plan your work day each morning. For instance, when there are several large tasks due tomorrow, Susan starts with them to make sure she has enough time to finish them, before switching to smaller ones. This practice ensures that you have time to concentrate on one task without distractions and thus makes you much more productive. Do you want to learn more about the challenges of running a family business? Watch our podcast with Susan Serra: More great tips from our customers coming soon! "With four brands to manage, endless details and always being short on time, I need speed, ease, precision and flexibility in my chosen system. I definitely have that with Wrike.” Susan Serra, President at Susan Serra Associates, Inc.
Managing Tasks, Projects, Issues, and Documents... How About Books?
It’s always great to know how many different and interesting use cases of Wrike implementation are there in your organizations. But could you imagine that Wrike might serve not only as your irreplaceable assistant in task and project management, but also as a librarian? With a sizeable collection of books in the office, it may be rather difficult to keep them classified and track their availability. One of our customers, Tisso Naturprodukte, who has a large office library with the latest publications in biology and natural medicine, handled this challenge with Wrike’s help. Keeping the books’ statuses up-to-date has become way easier and more accurate. Here’s how exactly they made it happen: Creating an online catalogue The team at Tisso Naturprodukte logs all books from their office collection into the “Library” folder as completed tasks. This way, the library catalogue can be instantly accessed by everyone, but at the same time, these tasks don’t clutter the dashboard or the to-do lists as action items. Just like in online book stores, the team organizes dozens of items by tagging them with topics. There’s a special subfolder with different categories that can be dragged onto the appropriate tasks. So whether someone’s looking for a new read in chemistry or a popular book on biology, it’s really easy to spot the right one. Searching for a particular book In every book’s description, Tisso’s team members enter the most important details. So in addition to the thematic tags, it’s convenient to search books by a particular word in its title or description. Also, to make it easy to physically find the right book, they all are tagged with the number of the stand they’re on. Isn’t that smart? Tracking library items Tracking library items is basically as simple as tracking tasks. There’s a simple rule: Whenever someone on the team borrows a book, he or she should mark the task as active, assign it to himself or herself and set a due date when he or she expects to return the book. When the book is returned, the same team member marks the task as completed, and everyone can see the new status indicating that the book is available again. If someone on the team wants to recommend a book to a particular colleague, he or she leaves a comment in the task’s Activity Stream, using @username. With such a skilled “librarian” as Wrike, it has become really easy for Tisso’s team to keep their office library in perfect order. Do you use Wrike to keep track of something other than tasks and projects? Let us know in the comments! “We are using Wrike for almost every aspect of our day-to-day work. It helps us greatly in organizing seminars and webinars, managing our ticket system and recurrent daily tasks, doing inventory of IT hardware and electronic devices, and much more. I would like to particularly point out the great job of Wrike’s support team, which is always available in the chat or by e-mail, and eager to check things out and explain them to us. Thank you, guys!” —Nihad Perva, CIO at Tisso Naturprodukte
How Wrike's Live Editor Makes Collaborating Easier
The core of Wrike's purpose is to help teams work better together. Part of that means simplifying the collaboration process for teams when multiple people need to contribute written content for a project. In the past, teams had to pass documents around through email. Person A writes their version; then Person B adds their ideas; finally Person C makes their edits and leaves additional comments. The process was slow, and Person C could be waiting days or weeks to see any work cross their desk. That is no longer good enough in today's Agile environment. With Wrike's Live Editor, teams can work faster. It's more than just a description, it's a live workspace for collaboration! Keeping ideas and documents in Wrike tasks means a few things for your team: 1. Several people can edit work at once The task description in Wrike updates and saves changes automatically. That means you and your colleague(s) can all make edits simultaneously, allowing for real-time collaboration. You'll see what others are typing as they're typing it, so you can immediately modify your own work accordingly. 2. You always have the latest version of work As soon as an email is sent, it's outdated. Plans change. New ideas blossom late in the night. By relying on email, you run the risk of a colleague opening your email a few days late, only to start building their work on an obsolete version of your project. When you keep work in Wrike tasks, everything is updated in real time. There is always one true version of your project, with no chance for colleagues to build their work on an outdated communication. Your colleagues see revisions as soon as you make them, and if they open a task right when you're in the process of updating it, they'll be able to watch as you make changes. 3. All changes are automatically tracked Wrike's Live Editor means you can stop manually tracking changes. Every task includes a time slider, so you can review all previous versions of the work. This is especially helpful if someone removes information from the task description field that you still need. Use the time slider to go back in time, find the missing info, and then copy and paste it back into your task. In another situation: If someone edits your task, but you don't like the changes they've made or your team decides they preferred the original, you're able to completely revert to a previous version using the time slider. 4. Your team improves results To become a market-leading company — and stay there once you've made it — being a fast-paced Agile organization is a must. When work is happening in real time, your team can iterate quickly and improve campaigns in minutes instead of days. No more downtime as you wait for a document to get passed to you, and you can see the latest updates instantly. Using Wrike's Live Editor means your team can get work out the door faster. More Features of Wrike's Live Editor The Live Editor can be found in three places: task descriptions, project descriptions, and high-level folder descriptions. When looking at a task together, a colored cursor with your colleague's name will appear in the place where they are making changes. You can use rich text formatting like bold text, lists, checkboxes, hyperlinks, header fonts, simple tables, and more. You can paste images to the Live Editor in a minimized format to save space in the description, or expand it to a larger view. Read more in our Help Center. Improve the Way You Work with Wrike's Live Editor Wrike's Live Editor enables you and your team to work together and share project updates as if you're in the same room, even when you're in different offices or across the world. It's also a great place to keep meeting notes and brainstorming ideas. Read our post on How to Run Effective Weekly Meetings in Wrike. If you love Wrike's Live Editor, share your success story in the comments below. When was the last time the Live Editor helped you complete work faster?
12 OKR Tips from Google, LinkedIn, Twitter & Intel
Everybody sets goals. But success hinges on the ability to execute them. The OKR planning method is all about distilling your goals, focusing on the most important ones, and then following through. OKRs were first developed in the 1970s at Intel by then-president Andy Grove, who wanted to answer two questions: Where do we want to go, and how will we know we're actually getting there? His colleague John Doerr learned the method and later spread it to Google and other top Silicon Valley companies. If you've learned the details of OKRs but aren't sure how best to implement them at your own company, check out these 12 tips from top execs on adopting OKRs successfully. John Doerr, VC at Kleiner Perkins & former Intel salesperson Tip 1. Be patient. You probably won't perfectly nail the OKR process the first time you try it. There’s usually a trial-and-error period, so don't be surprised (or discouraged) if it takes your company a couple of quarters to really figure it out, or if the process doesn't pan out exactly the way you expected. Tip 2: Find an OKR champion. Identify someone (ideally someone in leadership) who’s 100% supportive of OKRs and fully understands them, and enlist them to help educate the rest of the team. They can assist with tracking and grading progress and help fine-tune the process. Tip 3: Go all in. OKRs need to become part of your company culture and DNA. New employees should be trained in the process, all OKRs should be public, and grade and progress reporting should be prioritized. That’s how the process becomes successful and sustainable. Tip 4: No dictators. There must be consensus on collective team and company OKRs, so that they're supported across the entire organization. Tip 5: Ideas should flow up as well as down. Although every team member should link their goals to corporate objectives, corporate goals should also be inclusive of ideas created at the individual level. This keeps senior leadership in tune with the organization, and it gives individuals ownership over what they'll be working on day in and day out. Rick Klau, Partner at Google Ventures Tip 6: Get everyone on board. Everyone. A half-hearted effort will fall flat and is a waste of time, so make OKRs a commitment company-wide. Leadership in particular needs to make it clear that OKRs matter. Check out this email from a Google product manager calling out his team members who hadn't yet posted OKR grades: Tip 7: Find tools that support visibility. Decide what you'll use to capture OKRs and how they’ll be shared — whether it's Google docs, internal Wikis, or another collaboration tool. If you're a Wrike user, take a look at this how-to guide for using OKRs in Wrike. Tip 8: Keep the process lightweight. Don’t weigh it down with heavy documentation or a tedious series of unnecessary meetings. You should be doing the work, not talking about doing the work. Tip 9: Always check the big picture. Draft your personal/team OKRs, then check them against company OKRs to make sure it’s all contributing to high-level objectives. Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO Tip 10: Use OKRs to make your mission actionable. Too often a company’s mission is vague, or just a banner taped to the wall. Use OKRs to make your mission real, feeding your company's culture and sense of purpose. Link your objectives directly to your company mission, where the means are clearly defined as key results. It will keep the entire company unified and moving in the right direction. Tip 11: Show individuals that they matter. Effective leaders show how each person in the company can make a real difference when it comes to achieving high-level goals — every day and every quarter. So when you meet to define individual OKRs, make sure they support important company objectives in a tangible way to keep every employee engaged and motivated. Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO Tip 12: Prioritize communication. Remember that OKRs aren't just a way to measure progress: more importantly, they're a communication vehicle that shows other teams what you’re working on and what you’re trying to accomplish. Make sure teams are looking at each other’s OKRs and talking about them in order to encourage collaboration. Want to learn more about OKRs? If you're curious about using OKRs in your company, take a look at this Slideshare for an outline of the entire process: Related Reads:If You're Not Using OKRs for Quarterly Planning, Stop and Read ThisHow to Use OKRs in Wrike: A 6-Step Guide + Templates5 Tips for Better Annual Planning Sources: http://blog.betterworks.com/keys-okr-success-qa-john-doerr/; http://pando.com/2013/12/06/what-twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-learned-at-google/; http://firstround.com/article/the-management-framework-that-propelled-LinkedIn-to-a-20-billion-company; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJB83EZtAjc