Streamline Project Management with Notion

Get the core elements of this streamlined project-management system in the pay-what-you-want template.

After knowledge management, Notion is most commonly used to streamline project management. Its unique combination of features allows you to view each project with its associated tasks, resources, notes, meetings and other useful information. Then, projects can be viewed on contextual dashboards, filtered by time, topic, team and other criteria.

This guide showcases a streamlined project-management system that leverages Notion’s powerful capabilities.

Take the “Bulletproof” approach.

As demonstrated in the Bulletproof methodology, my foremost recommendation for a Notion workspace is to:

1. centralize your information in interrelated master databases; then
2. create filtered views of that information within contextual dashboards.

I recommend a handful of master databases for every workspace; this guide focuses on three — Projects, Tasks and Resources — while referencing a few others.

Here’s a brief overview of the Bulletproof approach to organizing your master databases:

A top-level Vault page stores master databases among three sub-pages:

Buckets

The Buckets page is a database in itself. Your buckets are the high-level categories of your work, often including teams, departments and clients. If you’re familiar with PARA, buckets are like areas. “Finance,” “Marketing” and “Product Development” are common examples.

Bolts

Databases within the Bolts page represent progress. They display and measure your work. Most notably, the master Projects and Tasks databases live here, but the Bolts page can also contain objectives and key results, meetings and events, notes, and databases of specific timeframes, such as Months and Quarters, for summarizing information.

Bytes

The Bytes page stores information that supports your work; you reference its databases. That includes a master Resources databases that centralizes the bulk of your information. The Bytes page is also likely to include databases of contacts, companies, multimedia and other useful collections.

Create your master databases.

Below, I detail the Projects, Tasks and Resources databases. For the others mentioned, you’ll find independent guides on Notion VIP and videos on YouTube. For this exercise, you’re fine without the others, but you’ll likely want the aforementioned Buckets database. Feel free to tweet @WilliamNutt with any specific questions.

Create your Projects database.

Within Vault → Bolts, create your Projects database. Consider these properties:

• Project (Title)
• Timespan (Date, with an end date)
• Project Manager (Person)
• Team (Person)
• Bucket (Relation, related to your Buckets or Areas database)
  Be sure to rename the reciprocal Relation property within the related database.

Create your Tasks database.

Also within Vault → Bolts, create your Tasks database. Consider these properties:

• Task (Title)
• Responsible (Person)
• Due Date (Date)
• Do Date (Date)
• Complete (Checkbox)

Create your Resources database.

Your Resources database stores the bulk of the materials you use for your work — SOPs, policies, guides and guidelines, forms and agreements, client materials and much more. It will likely grow to be quite expansive, but you should only view it through filtered, contextual views. Create it within Vault → Bytes. Consider these properties:

• Resource (Title)
• Description (Text)
• File (File)
• Link (URL)
• Buckets (Relation, related to your Buckets database)
  Be sure to rename the reciprocal Relation property within the related database.

Relate your databases; add Rollups.

Linking your master databases with the Relation property allows you to filter and summarize your information contextually.

• Relate Projects to Tasks. Within the Projects database, name the property “Tasks.” Name the reciprocal property within Tasks to “Project” (singular), as each task will map to a single project.
• Relate Projects to Resources. Within the Projects database, name the property “Resources.” Name the reciprocal property within Resources to “Projects” (plural), as resources will often be used among multiple projects.
• Add a Rollup property to the Projects database; name it “Progress.” For the Relation, choose the Tasks database. For the Property, choose Complete (the Checkbox property). For Calculate, choose “Percent checked.” (You may also want to create a visual progress bar.)

Populate initial content.

• Add an initial item to your Projects database. Link it to the corresponding Bucket (or Area). Leave the other Relation properties blank.
• For that project, add a few tasks within the Tasks database. In the Project (Relation) property, choose the project.
• In the Resources database, add a few items that might be used for your project. Simple placeholders work for now. Select the appropriate project and buckets in their corresponding Relation properties.

Create a Project template.

When you open a project as a page, you want a snapshot of all associated information. That includes filtered views of related databases — Tasks, Resources, Contacts, Meetings and Notes, among others.

What’s more, you want this framework to be populated for each new project. Therefore, you’ll apply them to a template:

• Create a new template within the Projects database. You might name it “Project,” or “[Your Company] Project.”
• Add Linked Databases for your Tasks and Resources databases. Tasks display nicely as a List, Resources as a Gallery. Include any other related databases that would display helpful information within your projects, such as Contacts, Meetings and Notes.
• Filter each of those Linked Databases to show only the items related to the current project. Typically, that filter will read: “Project Contains [Company] Project” (the current template).
• Any resources you add via this filtered view, you’re going to want associated with the project’s bucket (often the client). This cannot be automated via the template, so add a note above the linked Resources database to add the bucket to the filter when the template is implemented. You might do the same for Meetings, Contacts and any other databases that are not project-specific.
• You might also add a heading for “Quick Links,” and arrange it alongside the Resources Gallery.

Each time you create a project with your template, it will automatically display its associated tasks, resources and other items. Tasks and resources created within the project will be automatically related to the project.

Display projects and tasks contextually.

You’ll rarely access your full databases of projects and tasks; instead, you’ll view them in contextual dashboards. For each, you’ll create a Linked Database, filtered to suite the page in which it appears. I recommend the Gallery format with the Timespan and Progress properties visible. (Display the progress bar, if you have it.)

Here are a few contextual views of your Projects database you might consider:

• Display all active projects on the “home base” of your organization.
• Display all associated projects within the page of each bucket (including clients). Include it in your Bucket template.
• On your teammates’ personal dashboards, display projects where the teammate is within the Project Manager or Team property.
• Personal dashboards can also include views of upcoming tasks — perhaps one view with tasks due within the next two weeks, and another for those due within the next month. In addition to a List, you might include a Calendar. Allow team members to manage the Do Date property for their assigned tasks.

Questions? Tweet @WilliamNutt.