Project Management & Facilitation

We have been utilizing the A3 problem solving tool for a few years with our opioid task force. It has been going so well that we have also extended it to other health department workgroups. It requires the group to think through a problem using prescribed steps to eliminate getting ahead of themselves and jumping to solutions before thinking through it logically, similar to the scientific method. It can be used to solve short-term/acute issues (e.g., improvement of a website), or long-term/chronic issues (e.g., decrease opioid overdose mortality). I have attached an example of a blank A3, and would love to hear if anyone else has used this tool!

Blank KCOTF A3.docx 42.8 KB • Download

Thanks for sharing this, Rachel!  I haven't used an A3 tool before, but I'm very intrigued.  I see there are several online resources for additional learning about how to use it.  I really like how this gets updated over time - a sort of situation report.

Recently, my division has been establishing a governance strategy where ad hoc project teams are formed in response to an identified public health need.  I work in environmental health, where we are frequently finding a new site of contamination and need to assemble a multidisciplinary team to address it - toxicology, epidemiology, geology, health education, and community engagement.  A tool that we have found particularly helpful is developing a functional organizational chart.  Since members of a project team come from many units and sections within the division, we needed a way to give structure to the team apart from what would typically appear in a 'chain of command' organizational chart.  

Thanks so much for sharing this resource. It was new to me and led me to do a bit of googling on it. I really like the appearance of the tool, too.

Thanks, Rachel for sharing this tool.

I am also intrigued by that tool, thank you! I have used various methods. I have made gantt charts (tried and true!),  tried OneNote but it just hasn't stuck or worked great for me. Maybe it is just finding a new routine or habit of it, or that I am still a new 'user' of it. If anyone has tips, I would love for some suggestions to use it. I do rely on my calendar a lot, put in hold times, and also put in 'deadlines'.  

As part of this conversation, I wanted to ask how you manage your time when you are in meetings most of the day? It often feels like my real job starts at 4. Often back to back meetings, with no break times unless meetings end early. I don't think it is sustainable to have to work late or weekends all the time and would really like to find some more hours in the day I can work on my own projects/tasks. Of course, this has gotten much harder during COVID response since I am heavily involved, but we are now 2 years in.  Do others experience this?  How do you find that balance between your meetings, tasks, and breaks? 

Katrina  I also am in so many meetings! Although it has gotten slightly better since I stepped away from COVID full time, I think all of our work has taken a shift with remote work and we have generally increased meetings as a way to connect & collaborate with our teams. I proactively block out focus and exercise time to ensure that I have some time for myself during the week. I also personally struggle to start a task between meetings if I don't have more than an hour beak so I use this time to catch up on emails and small things so when I have more time or hit that 4pm break from meetings, I can focus on the larger tasks that require more focus. 

So glad I am not alone-including digging into projects when you don't have more than an hour!  Thank you for those suggestions too :). For big projects I do have to work in evening or weekends but starting to block more time aside way in advance otherwise I lose that time quickly to adhoc meetings. I do think they are important for communication, but still challenging to be in so many meetings every day. 

Agree about not having time to "work" until 4! I have been looking for a project management tool that may build in scheduling? Any ideas or suggestions appreciated :)

You are not alone Katrina!!! I feel very efficient after 4:30pm! I try to block time in early mornings to catch up or read when it is quiet and the craziness of a day hasn't started yet. I also try to attend initial meetings to establish things and then delegate the rest but get updates. Another lesson I learned is to check emails whenever I have a minute so I don't face 100 emails at 4:30. It is a full-time job itself! Additionally, I found multi-tasking is a disaster for me, personally :)   

I struggle with both project management in a completely remote workplace (keeping team focused and communicating team priorities) and with actually getting work done during normal business hours. Admittedly, I am working on Saturday morning to get something done that is not a meeting or replying to emails. 

Our team has been talking about prioritization and I just started using Microsoft Lists to put down all of our projects, assign priority (must do, nice to do, do not need to do now), assign a project lead, and keep track of progress. I'm a new user so my ability to keep this up over time is TBD. Sometimes these project management tools seem to fall by the way side in lieu of getting the work done, so I'm trying to keep it high level so our whole team (~15 individuals) has visibility on our work. 

One other tip that my team member suggested is at the beginning of the week (or the day, or a project), assign the amount of time you think you'll need to complete a task. Once the time limit has passed, reassess whether you need to keep working on it or move along. I find it easy to get distracted with the seemingly unlimited number of projects that we could do, and this has helped me intentionally use my time and build in breaks to mentally move on.

Thanks for the A3 recommendation - I'll definitely look into it!

Wow! Thanks for telling me about the Lists app; didn't even realize it could be added to Teams. I hear you on struggling with project management software support. It often feels more laborious than just transferring lists from notebooks or using stressed memory skills. This is an area that I'd really like to learn from, though. Do you think you'd ever feel comfortable doing a 15-minute screen share for how you use Lists?

Elizabeth, I'd be happy to. I literally just started using it last week, so I'll need another week or so to get my feet wet!

This makes me wonder if a few of us could do 10 min case studies of our favorite project management tools during one of our CSTE Group sessions? No advance prep needed - just run through a tool and how we use them. I can reach out to Jessica about it if others are interested? I'm happy to go through how I'm using Lists, maybe Rachel would be open to talking about how she uses A3, etc?

Great idea! I'm interested to learn!
Thank you Laura and all!
 

My agency uses Google so we have a lot of shared spreadsheets and documents in Drive that we use to manage projects. I've also started breaking my own projects and professional development things that my direct reports are working on into tabs of shared Google sheets that we can update as we go along. We also link agendas and working drafts to meetings so that everyone can easily access materials via their calendar invites. 

Does anyone else's agency use Google?

Would love to learn about the list apps as well - count me in!

Natalie we use Google at the Utah DOH and leverage the GDrive a lot! I also created a separate calendar that only I can view, in which I block out 30-60 min "Tasks" that need to be done that day. It is a separate color from my meetings, which helps me visualize. It is also nice b/c I can move those tasks around if I don't get to them or as things come up. Google also has "Focus Time" & a Tasks List, but I haven't leveraged those functions as much. On top of my Tasks calendar I also create written lists, that I like to check off.

To manage project activities and grant initiatives I use Trello, which my entire team can access. I don't use that as much on a day to day, but it is nice for tracking and big picture.

I used to schedule all the 'big picture' projects (internal & external), their timelines, & due dates in an Excel spreadsheet but to try to make it more interactive for a larger team at the suggestion of a colleague in Env Health Epi we're using the free version of ClickUp. For example, we have sections for conferences of interest (abstracts open, due, dates)  and for CDC submissions. We're not using it as much as I'd like (I still do most of the posting) but at least I feel confident anyone on the team can see exactly when our Y3 CDC reporting is due & when I'd like to have the various pieces they're involved with for review even if they didn't save any of the emails about it. (Too many emails, too many meetings!) Like everyone posting earlier, I'm also interested to see what others are using both for big picture & day-to-day management. 

Our team has just started playing around with the "Planner" feature in Microsoft Teams (which seems similar-ish or related to Lists?).  It is nice because it allows you to visualize tasks as a list, on a Kanban style board, or on a calendar.  So a little something for everyone! It's been a little challenging to get folks to transition to tracking work in this shared space (myself included) but it seems like it has a lot of potential.

We can definitely spend a few minutes demonstrating project management tools during our calls. Would anyone like to volunteer to share on this upcoming Tuesday's call? Also at CSTE we use smartsheet for project management, it is an excel on steroids and very useful. https://www.smartsheet.com/

Thanks all for sharing these project management tips and tools.

I am late to the game in responding, but also appreciate the tools and strategies you've all shared.

I'm not a pro at project management or facilitation, but am trying to improve over time. Some strategies that I use for individual and team project management:
-I create a work plan for myself at the beginning of each week (and also send this to my supervisor, who might or might not look at it). The work plan has been useful for orienting myself (especially mid-week) to what needs to be accomplished, but I have found I tend to be over-optimistic about what I can actually do between meetings and responding to email. I document the progress I made at the beginning of the following week, and carry over tasks that didn't get accomplished. I've found this documentation to be helpful in completing the monthly activity reports we need to submit internally each month.
-I do my best to create agendas for every meeting I facilitate and follow up with decisions and action items. 
-I am also beginning to use the Tasks and Planner features in Teams for project planning and communication with my team. Hoping to get more proficient with these tools in the coming months.

I am super late to reply to this February thread, but will chime in here about Google Tools for project management that Natalie and Amelia mentioned.

We have Google business suite that is used throughout our organization. Though there aren't specific project management tools like ClickUp or Trello features available, I've tried to make the most of what is available. I've set up "workspaces" in Google Drive (priority tab) to list all project associated documents in one spot or homepage. Our team uses several Google spreadsheets to track performance goals. We use the "tag" feature to assign tasks as needed. This seems to work well since the tag or assign to item is emailed to them as a reminder.

Like Sujata mentioned about creating a workplan each week, I try to do this as well by adding tasks to my Google calendar for items that need to be addressed. It is satisfying clicking "mark completed" when it's done!

I love all the ideas around Microsoft Teams. Right now we only have the 'chat' function and haven't had full approval to use teams from our IT. Some people use OneNote , but otherwise, we don't have any Division wide resource for project or time management. I think our Department is moving direction of full Teams , but it has been a slow process. Does anyone use OneNote? I am still learning functionality and have mixed opinions about it. Thanks! 

I have started using OneNote... probably 6 months ago. I don't find it useful for day-to-day tasks (I find it too cumbersome) but what I have found it super useful for is just quick bullets for what we talked about on a lot of weekly calls. What I have is basically a tab for each of my weekly update/leadership/whatever calls and then you can add a page within each tab for each week. I find my brain simply isn't able to remember what happened or when (thanks COVID) and it helps to just have a quick reference and to identify unfinished tasks that need to be brought back up next week/later. It definitely has it's limitations but I have found it useful for that aspect at least 

We have started using Microsoft Teams on a daily basis. We found it super helpful for creating a project space, sharing documents, getting inputs from different teams simultaneously and monitoring progress, in addition to quick/easy communication. Another function we like is to record training sessions for future use e.g. new epi training. 

I'd like to revive this thread -- Jessica  , are you available to demo smartsheets to me and others? I'm primed to accept project management support!

Elizabeth  happy to demo our uses of Smartsheet although there are already some pretty great examples on their website. Maybe we can set up a 30 minute open call to anyone who is available to share their project management tools and use cases. I will add it to the announcements for Monday.