4 Steps Before We Begin
There are a few items of business to take care of before you dive in. Complete the following exercises to prepare you for the lessons ahead.
Step 1: Speak the same language
Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the Workfront terms used throughout this course, such as project, task, issue, and so on. What are the equivalent terms used at your organization? Most organizations have jargon, acronyms, or certain terms they use to mean certain things.
Establishing what those terms are and what they mean across your business workflows and Workfront is an important first step in setting up Adobe Workfront in a way that works best for your users.
Step 2: Watch the video
Seems pretty simple, right? Know your workflows and know Workfront. But what does that mean?
Know your workflow
Some basic questions to ask yourself:
- How does your business receive work requests?
- How are projects designed, planned, and executed?
- Who collaborates on the work and how is it documented for others?
Know Workfront
What is your experience level with Workfront on a scale of 1-10?
Experience League has all the learning you need to help you feel confident in your role as the system administrator.
Step 3: Understanding the challenge
Asking the right questions is an important part of configuring Workfront correctly for your business.
No such thing as a dumb question!
Think of this phase of your training as the discovery phase. Try your best not to assume you know what your stakeholders want out of Workfront. Not all users of Workfront are the same, so you'll want to make sure you understand everyone's needs.
Take a look at the tabs below to help prompt some questions to ask as you embark on this discovery. Each tab is organized by some primary job roles of the majority of Workfront users. Take a moment to jot down your responses. These responses will help you design a workflow in Workfront that works best for these common job functions.
- What problems are you trying to solve that prompted using Workfront?
- What are the strategic questions you hope to answer?
- What metrics have been established to determine the success of implementation?
- How are projects managed today? Include any documentation or illustrations for clarification.
- With regard to project management, what does the ideal future state entail?
- What constitutes a successful project management implementation for your company?
- Identify current projects you will be migrating to Workfront. What application or tool are they currently stored in?
- Do you have a diagram or documented workflow for each project defining the process, tasks, resources, and flows?
- How are resources managed today? Include any documentation or illustrations for clarification.
- What constitutes a successful resource management implementation?
- Will you be tracking issues against projects in the system? Describe the desired process of how project issues should be handled in the system.
- Will you be using Workfront as a help desk or issue management system outside of projects? Describe the requirements of how you would like this process handled in the system.
- Describe in detail all the reports you plan to generate in Workfront by group/department. What information do you need to report on? Who needs access to these reports?
- What dashboards are required to improve visibility and management capabilities?
- Which departments/divisions will be involved in the initial rollout?
- Which additional departments will be involved in the final rollout?
- How many unique processes will be involved in the initial rollout? The final rollout?
- When are you expecting to roll out your first process to the implementation team? Each additional process?
- How many people will need to be trained in the initial rollout? The final rollout?
- Can you provide an organizational chart that defines the user community with locations?
Step 4: Diagram the workflows
Feeling a little overwhelmed? Don’t worry, you don’t need all the answers now. Go ahead and take what you do know and start diagramming. You can use these diagrams to design your configuration and settings in Workfront.
In the next step, learn more about Karen, a new Adobe Workfront system administrator.