Table of Contents

Creating Course Project Plans in Wrike

Casey Shew Updated by Casey Shew

Course projects in Wrike should be done once a program is transitioning, or about to transition, from the "Planning" stage to the "Development" stage. The "Development" stage begins for a program once the courses are being outlined. This article will walk through all of the steps needed in order to correctly create those projects.

1. Create Series Course Template

In order to more easily create each individual course project in a program series, you will want to configure/setup a course series template. That way only one course project will need to be fully customized to the particular program's needs, and can then be duplicated for all of the courses in the program.

Steps:

  1. Locate the "00_Course Development Template 3.0" within the "Official Templates" folder in the Blueprints section of the folder tree.
Note: The Blueprints section of Wrike can be accessed by clicking the "Blueprints" link in the right side panel of your Wrike homepage.
  • Full location pathway can be seen here:

  1. Right click the project, and select "Duplicate"
  2. In the following options window enter the following info:
  • Title: [COURSECODE] Course Template
  • Title Prefix: Leave blank
  • Location: Blueprints/A0 - Project Templates>Course Specific Templates>[IDD's Name]'s Team
  • What to Copy: (Check the following boxes) Tasks, Descriptions, Attachments, Assignees, Custom Field Values
  • Screenshot of a completed example:

2. Remove Variable Tasks as Needed

The default course template is designed to house all of the potential tasks that might be needed for one of our programs. However, there is a wide range of potential tasks, and not all programs will need all of the tasks provided in the template. Here are some common considerations to make when assessing which tasks should be removed from your project:

Multi-Feed vs. Standard Video

The template contains two different task buckets for video - one for video using Multi-Feed and one for Standard video, labelled respectively. In some cases keeping both buckets may be appropriate if you are using a mix of video approaches for this project. In most cases however, you will want to delete the task bucket that is not relevant to your project by simply right-clicking at the task bucket level and selecting Delete.

Multi-Feed+ vs. Standard Animation

Similarly to the video task buckets, the template also includes two different task buckets for animation, one for Multi-Feed+ and one for standard, labelled respectively. The same logic applies here as with video, simply right click at the bucket level and delete the tasks not relevant to your project.

STEM vs. Soft Skills

There are certain tasks included in the template which only pertain to STEM projects, and even further some that only pertain to projects containing programming environments. If your project is not STEM/technical in nature, you will want to delete the following:

  • The entire "1. Codio Units" task bucket
  • The entire "6. Alpha" task bucket
  • Under the "5. Review" bucket, the following tasks:
    • 1. Create Alpha Schedule Doc from Template
    • 7. Conduct Technical Review of Course (STEM-only)
    • 8. Implement Tech Review Edits

If your project is STEM/technical in nature, you may want to leave all of the tasks mentioned above. However, you should assess if the project will have Codio Units, if not, you should delete that entire task bucket. You should also assess whether or not the project will have an Alpha review or not, and if not then delete that task bucket as well.

Steps:

  1. Navigate to either the Table, List, or Gantt view (user preference) of the newly created template project
  2. Open the filter drop down, select "More Filters", then in the right hand pane select "Add More Filters", select "Add-On", and select "Checked"
  3. Remove any unneeded tasks or top level task buckets from the "Add-On" selection

Ask The Expert (ATEP) and On-Demand

If you will definitely not have ATEs or ODs:

  1. Click into each section
  2. Mark the bucket and subtasks as Not Applicable
  3. Remove the start and finish dates.

3. Add Unique Tasks

Some programs will need unique actions taken during the Development phase. These steps might have been brought forth by the faculty member during outlining, or determined at some point by the ID or IDD, etc. When such actions will be needed, you will want to represent those as tasks in the course series template.

Steps:

  1. Navigate to the Gantt view of the course series template
  2. Find the appropriate place, chronologically, in the timeline, right click, and select "Add task below" (or above depending on relative location)
  3. Once a task has been added, add the course code and appropriate sequence number for future sorting/search
Tip: For more advanced users, when adding unique tasks, you should take the extra step of tying the new tasks into the dependency/predecessor chain. If unsure about how to do so, you should contact Casey Shew for further guidance.
Note: Adding in additional tasks at this stage will be adding them into the course template, which will eventually add the new task into each course project. If a task will need to be completed in only one course, for example in ABC101 but not 102 or 103, add the task once the individual course projects have been created in Step 9.

4. Fine Tune Task Durations/Predecessors

The course template will come with pre-determined durations and predecessors (aka "Dependencies") associated with each task. These are the standard assumed amounts of time that a task will take (duration), and the standard assumed relational effect between each task (predecessor). However, it might have been determined during the Planning stage that a certain task will be more or less time intensive, or that a task/tasks will be started in a non-standard timeframe/sequence. Adjusting the durations and predecessors will help address these changes.

Steps:

  1. Navigate to the gantt chart view of the template
  2. In the top left corner, click the gear icon, turn off all fields except the following:
  • Duration
  • Predecessor
  1. Adjust the duration of the task(s) that need to be either lengthened or shortened
Note: The duration is equal to the amount of business days that a task will take to complete
Note: Duration is a different value than the "Effort" field which indicates the number of hours required by team members to complete the task (the effort field is not currently being utilized)
  1. If needed, adjust the predecessor chain by adjusting the correlating task number in front of the "Finish to Start" (FS) predecessor to the new task number that should trigger the edited task's start date
Note: For more information on predecessors you can view the article on predecessors here
Note: This is the stage, as an IDD, where, through deliberation with the program's ID, you assess whether to remove all 2nd level predecessors and dates. Predecessors and dates should be left at the top milestone/bucket level. Further documentation will be provided on this process but, until then, if there are further questions please reach out to Casey Shew for guidance.

5. Mass Assign ID/IDA/IDD Tasks

Mass assignments within the course series template, for all instructional design (ID, IDA, and IDD) related work, is the quickest and easiest way to pre-assign a major percentage of the program's tasks. This will be saving time down the road for the project's ID or IDA, who will no longer need to worry about making sure these tasks get assigned to the appropriate team member.

Steps:

  1. Navigate to the list view of the template project
  2. Filter for, and assign, all "ID" tasks within the project
  • Open the filter drop down, click the "Assignee" dropdown, click "Add user" and search for and select the dummy user "Instructional Designer"
  • Select the "Mass Edit" button in the top left of the list view pane
  • Select the "Select All" option
  • Select "Switch Assignees" in the right hand pane
    • In the "Reassign from" field, specify the dummy user "Instructional Designer"
    • In the "Assign to" field, specify the actual Instructional Designer who is assigned to the project you are creating the plan for
    • Click "Reassign"
Following these steps to mass assign the tasks, rather than filtering by the "Role" field as we used to, will retain the default effort distributions from the template, which is important for workload reporting.
TIP: Once above steps have been followed you can save this as a filter preset for much quicker filtration in the future
  1. Filter for, and assign, all "IDA" tasks within the project
  • Follow same instructions as filtering and assigning all ID tasks, except filter for the dummy user "Instructional Design Associate" instead
  1. Filter for, and assign, all "IDD" tasks within the project
  • Follow same instructions as filtering and assigning all ID tasks, except filter for the dummy user "Design Director (Instructional)" instead

6. Manually Assign Unique Tasks

Any unique tasks that were added in Step 4 should now be manually assigned in the course template. These tasks would not have been pre-assigned to one of the dummy users representing a role, unless specifically done so by task creator, so they will not have any assignees after mass assignments.

Steps:

  1. Navigate to the list view of the template project
  2. Locate the unique/added task(s), click on each task, and add the appropriate assignee in the right hand pane

7. Populate Course Fields

In this step you will populate the custom and system fields that the IDD is expected to fill out once a program series enters the development stage. By doing this on the course template, these pieces of data will only need to be populated once, apposed to 4-6 times.

Steps:

  1. Navigate to the table view of the series template
  2. In the top left hand, click the gear icon and select the following custom (and system) fields to activate them in the table view, and the proceed to enter to appropriate information for each:
  • Owner (ID assignee)
  • Faculty
  • IDD
  • IDA

8. Duplicate Individual Course Projects from Course Template

Once all previous steps have been taken/addressed on the course series template, you can now duplicate this specific template for each of the courses within the program series. All of the adjustments made to the series template will be reflected in each of the new course projects you create.

Steps:

  1. Locate the course series template in the left hand folder tree within the Blueprints section
  2. Right click on the template and select "Create from blueprint"
  3. In the following options window enter the following info:
  • Title: [COURSECODE] (the course title will now be populated in a "Course Title" custom field)
  • Title Prefix: [COURSECODE - ] (make sure to enter the "SPACE DASH SPACE" after the course code)
  • Location: A2 - In Development>[IDD's Name]'s Team>[PROGRAMCODE]
  • Notify Assignees: Recommended to uncheck this box to avoid sending large amounts of notifications to course assignees
  • Reschedule: Check box/select this option and add start date for each individual course if start dates are known - do not set an End Date
  1. If you are making more course templates in this cert (i.e., JCB522, JCB522, etc.), check the Add Another button (this will make this pop back up after it makes your project plan, and you’ll have less you have to do for setting up the rest.).
  2. Click Create.
After the first one is finished being created, the create from blueprint window pops back up. Now just change the course code to the next one in the series, change the title if you put one in under title and just hit create. Repeat this process for as many courses as there are in the program

9. Set Project's Item Type

After creating the projects, you will need to set the appropriate Item Type for the project so that it shows up appropriately in reporting. This article contains the definitions of the different item types to choose from, and this article contains instructions for how to set the item type for your project. Follow the guidance and instructions from those articles to set the appropriate item type for your new projects.

10. Set Cross Project Predecessors

Once all of the individual course projects have been created, there is now an opportunity to establish predecessor relationships between tasks, or task buckets, within each of the courses. For example, we could establish that once course A's video task bucket has been completed, we will now want to start course B's video task bucket. This would mean if there are any delays in completing the video work for course A, and the dates were updated accordingly, course B's video work's start date would be pushed back as well. These relationships will not be present by default, and without predecessors would need to be updated manually by the program's ID.

Steps:

  1. Navigate to the gantt chart view of the entire program
  2. In the top left corner, click the gear icon, turn off all fields except the following
  • Start Date
  • Due Date
  • Predecessor
  1. Find the task, or task bucket, for course A, that you want to trigger a task, or bucket, in course B, by locating the task and noting the number in the far left column of the cells in the gantt view:
  1. Next locate the task in course B that's start date you would like to have triggered by the previously located task
  2. In the "Predecessor" column, enter in the previously found task number followed by "FS, " (the comma and space is to separate it the new predecessor from any previously existing predecessors that were present and that should be left to preserve the already existing project dependency chain)
  1. Repeat the above steps for as many dependency relationships as you would like to configure between projects
Note: The above can also be accomplished by using the "handle bars" next to each task, or bucket, in the right had gantt view:
  • As you do this, you can see the same predecessor value being generated as was done in the above steps
  • The choice between the two techniques comes down to user preference

11. Populate Custom Fields in "Attributes & Measures" Space

As a final step, you should navigate to the space titled "A&M - {your name}'s Space", where {your name} is replaced with your individual name. open the "A&M - {your name} Folder" there. See below for a generic example of how to navigate to this view:

This view is pre-set to show all of the essential project-level custom fields that should be populated over a project's lifecycle. Expand the tree in the table view to the projects you just created, and populate all of the fields in the table that you are able to at this time for these projects.

Revisit this view regularly and to populate fields as a project progresses through to completion. By the end of a project, every column in this view should be populated for the project.

You will need to scroll horizontally to see all of the fields in this view.

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