Wrike

Wrike project management guidelines

What is Wrike?

Wrike is the Office of Communications and Marketing (OCM)'s centralized, collaborative project management system. It serves as the single source of truth for tracking, managing, and executing all creative and  strategic work as well as marketing communications requests across our unified team. Rather than spreading project information across disconnected emails or chat messages, Wrike centralizes workflow intake, assignees, deadlines, and project communication into one transparent ecosystem. Wrike helps us shift from reactive to proactive, strategic work. Partners outside of OCM may be added to Wrike as collaborators. 

Core rules of engagement

To maintain clarity, ownership, and efficiency across all team initiatives, OCM adheres to five rules of engagement in Wrike:

1. Single ownership

Rule: Every task must have exactly one assigned owner and a firm due date.

• If a task has multiple stages with different owners, assign the task to the next person who needs to work on it after you've completed your work.

• Tag them in the comments to check in and ensure they don't have questions.

Application: This ensures strict accountability and eliminates split or ambiguous responsibility.

• Exception: Tasks that are strictly used for the broad tracking of large, multi-person group initiatives may feature multiple assignees.

2. Live task statuses (real-time alignment)

Rule: If a task's status changes in the real world, it must change in Wrike immediately.

Application: Wrike serves as the single source of truth for the entire team. Keeping statuses live eliminates the need for status-check emails, distracting direct messages, or micromanagement.

• All new Wrike tasks that are not yet in progress will be in the ***NEW folder.

• As soon as the tasks are in progress, they should move to the appropriate folder(s) for their work stream. 

Example general status updates:

• New

• Completed

• Waiting

• In progress

• On hold

• Cancelled - tasks should always be cancelled and not deleted to maintain records. 

Example web status updates:

• Not started

• In progress

• Ready for review

• In internal review

• Ready for QA

• In QA

• Closed

• On hold

• Cancelled

3. Clear and descriptive

Rule: Avoid vague or shorthand descriptions. Anyone outside of the team working on the task should be able to read a task title/description and instantly understand the exact deliverable, the context, and its goals.

Application: Use complete, descriptive phrasing and include all necessary links, context notes, and clear specifications in the task body.

• Consider links to Google Drive items or Adobe Creative Cloud files and who might need to have access to view the information in Wrike. 

4. Consolidated communications and context

Rule: All updates, feedback loops, approvals, and context shifts must live directly inside the comments section of the corresponding Wrike task.

Application: Do not distribute project context across disconnected emails or Slack/chat messages. Keep a complete, auditable paper trail within the task so any collaborator can step in and understand the history of the work seamlessly.

• Ideally if a partner is requesting a task, the partner or OCM team member should submit a request using our request form. This ensures they will get updates through Wrike and that everything is documented.

• If there are multiple partners, beyond the submitter, who need updates, use "email to Wrike task" to cc the Wrike task in your email to the group. This will add your email to the comments of the related task automatically. If partners keep the "email to Wrike task" on the cc of the email, the email chain will continue to update the Wrike comments. (Note: If a partner is listed as a collaborator, it will also add them to the task automatically. )

• Alternatively to quickly add a task to Wrike, emails can be forwarded to Wrike at the address wrike@wrike.com.

  • • You can include [Folder Name] at the beginning of your subject line to automatically add them to a corresponding folder in Wrike. 

    • Otherwise, these will show up in your personal workspace and will need to be moved to an appropriate folder.

    • Ideally, move them to the ***NEW folder until you begin working on them or assign them to a teammate.

• If a Wrike task wasn't cc'd on an email, copy/paste email conversations into the comments of a Wrike task to keep the status of the task up-to-date.

5. Regular process and form review

Rule: Schedule time to review our project management processes and requests forms at the end of each semester to ensure our workflows keep up with our processes and structure.

Application: Block time during our OCM meeting at the end of each semester to discuss project management generally and our form.