Keep teams aligned across every project with Lucidspark

If you fail to plan, then you’re planning to fail. We’ve all heard this statement and, chances are, we’ve experienced it, too. So, what can we do within our teams to ensure that we are prepared to complete our projects both efficiently and effectively? 

First thing’s first: Whether you work fully remote, in office, or hybrid, it is essential to have a collaborative platform that gives every team member a voice while keeping the project flow moving along. After all, collaboration and successful project management are a dynamic duo.

In this blog post, we’ll dive deeper into the tools available to you in Lucidspark to help with project alignment.

Keep track of important project details

Reaching project alignment often involves managing lots of people and tasks. Project planners face particular challenges, including:

• Lack of structure in brainstorming sessions. If meetings wander, you might not reach your goal of brainstorming valuable solutions or ideas.
• Lengthy meetings. Great ideas can sometimes extend meeting time. 
• Miscommunication about tasks, ownership, and purpose. When a project has many steps and deadlines, team members might feel confused about who is doing what and when.

Lucidspark is here to help you combat these challenges and sort out the critical details involved in your projects. Lucid provides teams access to a single source of truth where all project details live and are kept up to date. This ensures that everyone has access to pertinent information at all times. 

In addition, Lucid Cards help you visualize all responsibilities and dependencies associated with a project, so everyone knows how their work has an impact. Knowing this gives individuals a sense of ownership and purpose as they can see how their part directly contributes to the larger project.

The Lucid Cards feature offers enhanced capabilities such as:

• Designating task owners
• Indicating prioritization and dependencies
• Inserting descriptions
• Setting dates
• Converting sticky notes to Cards or dragging out blank Cards
• Adding primary fields like assignee and status
• Adding to timelines

This feature transforms the visual planning flow and enhances each step from ideation to execution of a project. Thanks to Lucid Cards, you can create customizable shapes for all the details of each project. This feature allows for higher visibility and reduced time editing and refining project plans.

Create visual project timelines

Lucid's Timeline feature allows you to break down projects so that your team can easily visualize deadlines, goals, and team responsibilities. Timelines simplify task lists to help everyone stay on track and gain transparency with a high-level overview.

The Timeline feature in Lucid empowers individuals and teams to prioritize their ideas in several ways. Create timelines to increase visibility across silos, while also gaining the flexibility needed when managing a project. Project planning with Lucid Timelines takes the guesswork out of whether or not your project will be completed and successful. The tools you need are all within one platform so that you can own your tasks, manage deadlines, and plan collaboratively with your team.

Establish more streamlined processes

Establishing streamlined processes is crucial to take projects from early ideation to the planning stage and into ongoing collaboration with your teams. Though projects may vary, having a standardized workflow will allow team members to feel more prepared to dive into tasks and participate in meetings. And team members’ increased participation and motivation will help you meet deadlines and find innovative ways to work together on future projects.

Some benefits of streamlined processes include:

• Clarity across teams
• Time and resources saved
• Enhanced decision-making 
• Strengthened collaboration among team members

In Lucid, you can easily visualize all the steps of your project’s process with a flowchart. Flowcharts are helpful tools for mapping out workflows by breaking down the chronological steps and phases of a process. By creating a flowchart in Lucid, you can provide clear action items to your team members and enhance project alignment.

Working as a team within a robust visual collaboration platform like Lucid makes it easy to ensure project alignment, keep track of project details, and reduce typical bottlenecks.

Collaborate and manage workflows to get projects across the finish line

Sustainable collaboration is an essential piece of team success. Strong collaboration skills help ensure projects are completed, goals are met, and teams are aligned. Implementing a visual collaboration platform into your workflow processes can yield incredible value-add for your team.

Some benefits of using a visual collaboration platform include:

• Reducing errors and the need to rework
• Building strong communication skills
• Enhancing team relationships
• Improving innovation and diversity of thought
• Enhancing task management

Using Lucid Cards and the Timeline feature together can help you create a single source of truth for your team that helps enhance collaboration and alignment as you plan—and complete—projects.