Visualising Strategy and Workplans

Questions
1

So as a “dencentralised network of individuals” its been a challenge to both visualise/share and practically manage our Strategy and Workplan. We did intially as a slide deck. Which we’ve not kept updated. Working Groups are all doing it differently, some using spreadsheets, Trello Boards, a range of documents with stuff in or just actions in agendas…

So my question is, what do your worker co-ops use? How do you create a shared, editable space to visualise and organise your projects, activites, progress and future plans? Help!

2

Hey @AthertonJohn, love the idea of making the strategy and workplan more visual! At WAO we use Whimsical for creating visual plans to use internally and with clients.

But I think you’ve hit the nail on the head when you talk about keeping things up-to-date :thinking:

3

Have you got an example of how to set in out? I had a play with Figma which I think is similar didn’t get further than throwing in some projects and our working groups.

4

I think you can use Figma for that, but it’s more for wireframes, etc.?

Either way, I guess you need to come up with templates or use existing ones such as those here: Tools and approaches - Learn with We Are Open Co-op

I also find The Decision Book handy. There’s several elements to this, though, right?

  1. Deciding what to work on
  2. Giving status updates on how the work is going
  3. Reporting back once the work has finished

I don’t necessarily think that these three would be done via the same platform.

5

We’ve got an enormous spreadsheet (think it fits on 3 sides of a3 when printed) that I’m trying to make into something more manageable, so I’m very interested to see others’ suggestions.

My only suggestion would be don’t use a spreadsheet!

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6

We quite often use Miro boards at Co-op Culture when we are at the planning or design stage of projects. Frequently starting with a mind map which we can then add things to. It is the digital equivalent of being in a room together with a whiteboard/flipchart and post its. Some projects then go onto shared documents, shared spreadsheets (for budgets) and/or into shared calendar if we have delivery dates nailed.