PMO | How to Manage Projects with Wrike

Wrike is a project management tool used in our PMO to drive process governance, display progress, manage the team's workload, and guide workflow operations. Let's discuss the best practices for using it.

Before creating the project, we need some preparation as follows: 
1. Create a project folder in Quip using the PMO template.
2. Create the project summary page by collecting the following information:

• Gather requirements from stakeholders. If the project is related to an initiative or product, translate the requirements to OKR and product features.
• Define the scope of the project.
• Define the success criteria.

3. Create the Project Onboarding document and review the project execution plan with the PMO leader.
4. Create the project plan in Wrike:

• Create a new workspace and a new project.
• Add the Work Breakdown Structure.
• Define Project Activities - What activities must be performed to create the project deliverables?
• Estimate the timelines or plan backward to deliver at a given timeline.
• Assign resources to the Project activities.
• Add Tasks: Per project standardization, placeholders should be created for all the significant tasks in the D2P process (refer to the D2P blueprint). Please don't add new tasks only for risks or special occasions because we use the task turndown rate to track project delivery progress.

5. Review your plan before publishing and consult significant changes with the PMO Leader for review.
6. If you plan to run the project in Agile (or using the Agile tool where the ticket system is well integrated) 

• Create a Sprint folder with Active, Completed, and Backlog folders.
• Split tasks into logical and doable Sprints.

7. Task Update:

• Before closing each task (marking it as completed), add the project details and attach the related documents.
• For meetings, refer to where the meeting minutes/recordings and presentation are.
• For document creation, add the links to the documents.
• For communication with decisions, record the email record.
• For dev issues, add radar tickets and necessary tech information.
• Follow up with all overdue tasks in your daily standup meeting, and clean up weekly to ensure there are no overdue tasks and everything runs smoothly within the week.
• Create a report listing overdue projects.
• If the task change impacts the project or sprint plan, seek feedback from the PMO Leader before closing tasks/sprints and, if needed, make changes to the subsequent Sprint and tasks to include the required changes. The goal should be to deliver success defined and agreed upon with the stakeholders.

8. Status Meeting:

• Avoid directly jumping into each task during the status meeting and requesting updates. Instead:
• Show the project plan first so the team knows where they are from the overall project plan perspective and emphasize the project objectives/goals.
• Review what has been done and what is coming soon (all tasks will be started and due next week).
• Keep annotating the task as you get updates to track the conversation.
• Update the task status as soon as the team gets started.
• Avoid changing due dates to shift the project schedule. Instead, add notes to the project to show the delay. If there is a date change, add notes to explain the reason for future reference.
• Copy the meeting minute email to the status meeting task before closing.

In summary, Wrike is a tool to keep project plans structured with easy updates. However, it lacks collaborative reporting and content sharing offered by document systems like Quip. Using it along with other tools is necessary. ​