Team Playbook - IT Project Poster: The Play that will Replace your Old Project Charter

[#1]

When the Team Playbook came out, I was super excited to share it with my project team because of the potential it has in leveraging techniques that will help get us aligned in a fun and engaging way.  We started our exploration of playbooks with the IT Project Poster because we were used to the typical charter that initiated our work which is great at the start of a project.  

Ah... the ole project charter.  We all know what happens when time elapses from when that keystone document was approved...it typically falls out of focus and, before you know it, the scope creep begins.  Then, one day, when everyone is completely lost, someone builds up enough courage to ask the team "what are we trying to do again?". After knocking the digital dust off of this traditional document, which was so coveted, we'd come to find out we were completely off track and actually missing someone who was initially on the team!! 

All humor aside, we chose this play because it gave us a chance to get our collective purpose, approach, and high-level thinking in a living page that became the heartbeat of our project space.  Plus everyone could refer to the latest information without wasting time sifting through email attachments only to find an older version.  

With the IT Project Poster, our entire team was more comfortable in welcoming changes to our project because, as the direction changed, we were able to refer back to the poster and adjust it accordingly.  As an added bonus, any changes to the poster were automatically shared with stakeholders who just needed to be informed via notifications - no need to send a separate update.

When the project transitioned from "analysis" to "in flight" the poster also evolved. We attached smart links to reference related materials, knowledge, decisions, etc. and embedded JQL so the Jira epics became our milestones!  The "Team" section of the playbook became an excerpt that was then pulled into other Confluence pages so we didn't need to manually update this information in multiple places.

As a result, we always knew what we were doing, why we were doing it, and who was doing it.  If you're looking to a fresh approach on aligning your team's goals from the start, give the IT Project Poster a shot - I think you'll be pleased with the outcome!

[Dave Liao]

@Andrew Kendris - thanks for highlighting the IT project charter play! It's one of the most valuable - how many projects start without bothering to make a charter? How many projects run without bothering to update the charter when needed?

As a recovering project manager, I get a nervous tic when I join a project without a clear direction. Not that that happens a lot...

[Madeleine Glover]

IT poster is a great idea. I will have to look into it more...
I faced a problem with a poster design a few months ago when my boss asked me to design a poster. It was out of the blue because that is not even my job, but I agreed to do it.
I shouldn't have agreed so quickly because it turns out that making a good poster is not easy. It takes some skill to do it...
I had to be smart about it, so I looked up poster templates, and I found great ones one Crello.
It made my job much easier, and everyone was praising me for my poster-making skills. I liked it, so I won't tell anyone what I actually did.

[Andrew Kendris]

Hello @Dave Liao and @Madeleine Glover apologies for the delayed response 🙂

I agree @Dave Liao with all the optimism of a new project and idea of rolling out something exciting for our teams, there were times where a traditional charter was overlooked and work just started - this rarely happens now that the project poster in our processes.

Because the poster has become a living page that grows with the project, in a way, it gets updated on its own (by way of Jira Macros and Excerpt Macros that pull information from other pages).  Basically when members of the team work on their own individual work in Jira and Confluence, it rolls up to the poster and we can assess if we are still tracking with our initial goal.

Hope this helps give a bit more context on our processes and encourage you and others to give the project poster a shot within your Confluence Spaces! 

[Sedera Randria]

Interesting feedback.  Thank you @Andrew Kendris