How are projects organised in Workli? 4 min read
Workli decouples project management from deep work
Workli organises your projects by decoupling project management (what Workli does for you) from project deep work, the creative aspects of work that only you can do.
To do this, Workli separates the management aspects of a project into a project line and the creative aspects of a project into a project train (or train for short). Moreover, from your station you can have an overview of all your projects.
Thus,
Stations: Are the command and control hubs from where to control project lines and see which projects require your attention. Every Workli user has a station from where to control its projects.
Lines: Represent projects. A project line specifies who (which station?) and when (the order) a project becomes available to a collaborator to work on. A project line passes -in order- through each of its stations. The order is under the control of the project owner. One can add or remove collaborators from a project line by adding or removing their stations from the project line.
Trains: Brings to stations a chunk of work to be done by following the schedule (who-when) given by the line they run on. One can work on a project only when the train is at their station; then you forget about it until next time the train visits. Similarly, a collaborator can work on the documents carried by the project train only while the train is at its station; once it moves down the line, the collaborator must wait until the train comes back to its station after a full cycle.
In this way, momentum is maintained and your projects keep moving forward automatically collecting deep work chunks from your collaborators without you needing to send reminders, nudge or chase your teammates. The schedule of work is predictable and repeatable, which minimises project uncertainty and distresses collaborations. Workli also helps to compartmentalise work as, at any one time, one can see and access only those projects that require attention at the present moment.
In Practice
The Project Lines
Capture the administrative nature of projects, including starting and end dates, who participates in it, when -in the life cycle of a project- a specific collaborator’s input is needed, etc. Workli handles all the notifications (e.g. work reminders, etc) related to project management for you.
The Lines dashboard shows a summary of the project you participate in, either as the project owner or as a collaborator.
By clicking in a line name, you can gather further details about a project:
and if you want to modify, e.g., the order in which your collaborators will work on your project, the project name, duration or the amount of time each teammate will have for working on the project, then you simply click on the View or Modify Project Line Details button. This will take you to a new screen where you can see -and if you are the project owner modify- project administrative details:
The Project Trains
Project trains are where the deep work takes place. These are brought automatically to your station at a time defined by the line schedule. The project train is the ultimate source of truth for your project: it contains all notes, all files related to the project in one place. Like this, you can do deep work on the project at hand without getting distracted by looking for emails, files or notes: all of them are there in front of you.
When the project train arrives to your station, you have a “token” for deep work that must be attended to. You then work on the project for the duration of its stay. Once the project train has moved to the next collaborator down the line, you forget about the project until the next time it visits you. This cyclical automated process ensures timely delivery and achievement of goals and helps busy individuals to keep focused on the task at hand without distractions from other projects.
Your Station Dashboard
From the station dashboard, you can see all the project trains available for deep work:
By clicking on the “open folder” in a relevant project card, or on the project train name in the list of trains at the station, you can access the project train and see all relevant details:
