Hannah SigelProject Manager| EG AmericaBoston, MA, United States
Hello All,
I’m looking for some guidance from this community as I step into a new challenge. I’ve recently taken on responsibility for a brand-new department made up of food category managers. They’re highly skilled in their areas, but they have little to no formal project management training. My role is to set up process and structure for our team that can scale and eventually echo across the broader department.
I’d love some back to basics recommendations from those of you who have been in similar situations:
Daily/weekly planning: How do you structure your own day, tasks, and workstreams? Any best practices for prioritization?
Tools & platforms: What programs/software do you and your teams find most useful for planning, tracking, and collaboration? (e.g., Asana, Smartsheet, Jira, Trello, etc.)
Reporting & dashboards: How do you handle visibility into workstreams for leadership? Any go-to templates or dashboarding tools you’ve found especially effective?
Essentially, I’m trying to stand up a foundational PM toolkit that’s simple enough for my non-PM colleagues to adopt, but structured enough to build discipline and scalability.
Any advice, resources, or war stories would be hugely appreciated!
Determine how you would like things to be running one year from now. How will things be different? Who will be doing what? What processes will be in place? (worry about the tools later).
Work backwards to where they are today. What steps do you need to take to get from today to one year from now? Who will do what? When? What's realistic? How will you involve them in building out the plan?
Disciplined Agile has a concept called Guided Continuous Improvement, with ties to the Shewhart Cycle, where you work with the team to identify where they are, where they need to improve, and the steps to improve. You put the steps in a backlog and work your way through them.
By the end of a year, you may not be where you originally envisioned things, but you may be better off than expected.
I've helped stand up a PMO before. It goes more smoothly when people feel like you're doing it "with" them, as opposed to "to" them.
There are several books on "just enough project management" or "project management-lite" topics that provide relatively simple approaches, just remember to customize them to your needs.
For prioritization, start with business value - focus on work that is tied to company objectives and strategy. If you need a framework, the Eisenhower Decision Matrix can be helpful. Trello could work for tracking work if you don't need a lot of collaboration or high visibility into everyone's work. Jira can be a lot of administrative burden (at least it was the last time I used it, but it was a larger organization). If you go with SmartSheet, you'll want a power user, but once things are set up it should be smooth. I'm using ClickUp, now. Like most of the newer work management tools, there is a little bit of a learning curve and you likely will want to customize the boards and statuses, but they provide free training. As long as you don't get too crazy or try to micromanage everything, it works well.
Find out what kind of information and updates your leadership wants/is used to before investing in tools. You could end up spending a lot of money on a dashboard only to find out they just want a powerpoint slide. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
What an exciting and meaningful challenge — congratulations on stepping into a role where you’ll be shaping not just workflows, but culture and capability!
I’ve faced similar situations building PM capabilities from the ground up in cross-functional, non-PM teams. Here are a few battle-tested suggestions, keeping it lightweight and scalable:
1. Planning Cadence — Start Simple
Daily: Introduce short (15–20 min) standups focused on priorities, blockers, and updates.
Weekly: Use a "Pulse Meeting" format to review progress, align on key goals, and highlight upcoming deliverables.
Tip: Introduce basic Kanban or task boards for visibility (physical or digital).
2. Prioritization — Visual & Shared
Try a Priority Matrix (Impact vs Effort) to co-create priorities with your team.
Use the “Now / Next / Later” structure to organize backlogs without over-engineering.
Bonus: Consider the “One Critical Task per Day” habit — builds momentum and avoids overwhelm.
3. Tools — Use What They’ll Actually Adopt
Start where your team is comfortable (e.g., Trello for visuals, Google Sheets for shared plans).
Gradually layer in tools like Asana or ClickUp when the team is ready for more structure.
Golden rule: Simplicity beats perfection. Adoption beats sophistication.
4. Dashboards & Visibility
Use shared Google Sheets or Notion pages with color-coded status, owners, and dates.
For leadership: a simple one-page summary (traffic light format) works wonders — keep it high-level, with space for risks & wins.
Optional: Use Loom or short videos to walk through dashboards if stakeholders aren’t in daily syncs.
5. Build the Culture, Not Just the Process
Introduce basic PM concepts through storytelling and relevance to their work (e.g., “Project = a goal + a deadline + a plan”)
Celebrate small wins and early adopters — it builds momentum and confidence.
Final thought:
You're not just implementing a toolkit — you’re cultivating a mindset of clarity, ownership, and collaboration.
Start where the team is, grow with them, and keep it human.
Happy to share templates or experiences if helpful. Wishing you and your team a great start!
PMO Leader | Speaker & Mentor | Content Leader – PMOGA Latin America
Hub| Catholic University of UruguayMontevideo, Montevideo, Uruguay
What a great challenge, and what a valuable opportunity! 🌱 To start with the basics:
- Planning: a daily routine with focus blocks, weekly review with clear priorities (using Eisenhower or MoSCoW) can make a difference.
- Tools: Trello and Asana are often intuitive for new teams. Start simple and evolve as needed.
- Visibility: A shared dashboard with key tasks and visual metrics (Kanban + traffic light type) helps a lot. Power BI or Google Sheets with simple charts can work well.
Bottom line: clarity, constancy and co-creation. much success in this new stage! Saving Changes...
Anonymous
I also am looking for some resources in Webinar or Course format, but there is little to no content that I can find on ProjectManagement.com. Can someone please direct me to where to find this type of content? What I am looking for is hands-on type training that provides an opportunity for managing a hypothetical project from beginning to end, developing schedules, risk plans and other core elements. Please not AI focused. AI content is highly available and valuable but should not be prioritized over the core disciplines of Project Management. Saving Changes...
Melvin NocheFunctional Manager| GoogleSunnyvale, Ca, United States
Generally, the simplest tools (Google Sheets / Microsoft Excel Cloud) will work as long as there's alignment that's what will be used by the team for project tracking / collaboration. As for managing yourself as a project lead / manager, try different tools for yourself like spreadsheet or JIRA or Trello. You'll figure out one of those tools resonate with you more than others and stick with those. You are unique and what works for others won't necessarily work for you. Saving Changes...
Thomas KishPlant Project Engineer| Volvo Cars CharlestonGoose Creek, Sc, United States
Daily 15 min standups to identify & remove impairments is a great start. I've recently started a Kanban board on MIRO for my team, it seems to be working well. Saving Changes...
Consultant| Canarys Automation LtdBangalore, Karnataka, India
This is a great challenge to take on—and I’ve been in similar situations where highly capable team members just needed the right structure and simple tools to thrive. A few back-to-basics recommendations that have worked well for me:
1. Daily/Weekly Planning
-- Keep it simple to start—weekly check-ins with clear priorities and ownership go a long way.
-- Use a rolling two-week view so the team has visibility of what’s happening now and what’s coming next.
-- Encourage team members to set 2–3 daily priorities (instead of long to-do lists) to stay focused.
2. Tools & Platforms
-- If the team is new to structured PM, start with something intuitive like Trello or Monday.com for task tracking. These are visual, easy to adopt, and don’t overwhelm non-PMs.
-- As maturity grows, tools like Smartsheet or Asana can provide more structure with dependencies, reporting, and dashboards.
-- I’ve also seen success with using Confluence or SharePoint as a simple knowledge hub for templates, processes, and decisions.
3. Reporting & Dashboards
-- Start lightweight—an Excel or Google Sheets tracker with key milestones and owners is often enough in the beginning.
-- As you scale, tools like Power BI or Tableau can automate dashboards for leadership.
-- Always align reporting with leadership needs—avoid unnecessary detail, focus on outcomes, risks, and decisions required.
4. Building Discipline & Scalability
-- Introduce a few core templates (e.g., project charter, risk log, simple status report) and use them consistently.
-- Conduct short retrospectives at the end of each cycle to learn and adapt.
-- Position the framework as an enabler, not a burden—emphasize how structure frees up time for value-added work.
In my experience, the key is to start small, keep it simple, and scale gradually. Overloading a new team with processes and tools can backfire—but giving them just enough structure and quick wins builds confidence and sets the foundation for growth. Saving Changes...
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