Marketing Project Execution | Confluence for Marketing Teams
Last week we covered how to use Confluence for planning our marketing efforts. This shows us how having a centralized collaboration platform like Confluence improves our ability to ideate and share knowledge. Now we’re digging into how we can using COnfluence during the project to drive progress forward.
Sizes of Projects
Before we get into Confluence, we should consider the size of the project as this can have a direct impact on how we use Confluence (and other tools) to support our work. Note that the definitions below are mine, and that the ones you (or your organization) use may differ.
Smaller projects - These could last from 1-3 months, but still require some structure to help manage them. Personally I like using Confluence Databases to help me keep track of things. Databases offer a way to structure information into a plan, while also being a bit lightweight (e.g. I don’t have to spin up a whole JIra project). They have an added benefit of existing in Confluence, which can make them easier to share with folks (I find executives sometimes don’t like going into Jira).
Mid-sized projects - These are 3-12 months of work, and definitely require a step-up in managing how work is tracked, assigned and followed up on. For this I shift the tracking out of Confluence into Jira. Typically I’ll use a single Epic (typically one in a broader Marketing project) to help me organize things. I like this approach as it gives the team a single place to track work (the Epic), but doesn’t require the effort to build out an entire project to support it. It does, however, require me to split my attention between Jira (for tracking) and Confluence (for knoweledge). Fortunatley there are a number of integrations between the two to help minimize the manual effort needed to track things.
Large projects - These need 12+ months of work and can be incredibly complex. Here you’ll see me using a specific Jira Project for tracking. Ideally my organization would have a template I can copy (e.g. one specifically for marketing) that makes it easier to get up and running. Once I have it though, I’ll spend time modifying it to meet my specific projects needs. Having my own project has some advantages - mainly access control and organizations. Knowing that the only thing in there relates to my project makes it easy to jump in and get acquainted.
Databases
Databases allow us to put structured information in Confluence. I like to think of them as somewhere between a spreadsheet (something I use waaaay too much) and a Jira project (something else I use waaaay too much). Having this option gives me a good middle-ground that lets me plan out my smaller projects while also providing transparency on what is going on.
Databases also help plan out other aspects of our execution - including things like risk planning, budgeting and more. This is useful even if we’re using Jira to support the project planning as it allows us to host everything in a single spot.
Jira / Confluence Integration
Medium and Large projects can benefit from using Jira to support project and task tracking. Personally I like to use an epic to represent middle-size projects, but I’ll have an entire Jira project just for large projects.
Either way, this means some of the work of managing project execution will be done in Jira… which is bad because it means we’re now in two systems. Fortunately, this downside is largely mitigated by the tight integrations that exist between Jira and Confluence. These integrations go both ways, and let teams easily connect information in either system.
Linking Jira to Confluence - Inserting Jira information in COnfluence is possible in a few different ways. First, you can simply copy/paste a work item URL and have it appear inside a Confluence page. This makes it easy to reference tickets within existing documentation. This can be taken a step further by including a Jira Filter (a list of work items) in a Confluence page. This list updates itself based on it’s filter logic, meaning you can have dynamic dashboards directly in your Confluence pages.
Whiteboards can also represent Jira work items as objects, making things like planning and brainstorming easier as those work items can be visually represented on the screen.
Linking Confluence to Jira - Any work item in Jira can be linked to existing (or new!) Confluence content. This makes it incredibly easy to share information with a development/work team, and also allows those folks to stay in Jira. They can easily see the Confluence information from the screens and areas they’re used to, making it easier to access and digest.
Automations
There is a lot going on during a project and tasks like maintaining and managing something in Confluence typically don’t take priority. This includes things like auto-archiving old content, creating new content, re-labelling and more. Fortunately Confluence has a robust automations feature that allows teams to automate a lot of their work.
Automations comprise four parts, triggers, conditions, branches and actions. They must have a trigger (the thing that tells the system to use that automation) and an action (what the system will do). Conditions (basically filters that allow you to control the flow of the automation) and branches (allows the automation to run multiple times for sub-pages,etc) are optional.
Automations can be intimidating - both due to their technical complexity but also due to a lack of knowledge about what they can do. There are, however, templates that you can explore for a quick-start and for ideas. If you’re using Cloud Premium or Enterprise you can even use Atlassian Intelligence to help you create rules.
Wrap Up
There is a lot going on during marketing projects- tasks to coordinate, knowledge to gather and things to organize. Keeping everything in Confluence helps you manage all of that (and more) but also ensures it’s all in one easily accessible spot.
