Confluence for Project Managers

Confluence is a widely available tool that offers a lot of functions that support project managers. Unfortunately much of the time project managers are unaware of the various features available in Confluence that will help them better run their projects. These features include things like using templates to easily spin up content, databases to track tasks and whiteboards for planning.

Templates

Templates are pre build pages you can use to guide content creation. Confluence comes preloaded with over 100 of these, and you can even build your own (or modify existing ones) to better fit your needs. I find they serve two main purposes - making it easier to create content, and setting expectations for folks using that content.

One of my favorites is the meeting notes template, which I use for almost every meeting I'm in. If I have time I'll create it in advance so I don't have to enter attendees or other background info. This makes it much easier to write down real time notes on how things are going. The template comes with an area for attendees, an agenda, meeting notes, follow up tasks and decisions. Those last two use Confluence Macros to easily share information between pages, making it easy to pull in a list of every task or decision on a specific project.

Databases

Databases are what tables want to be when they grow up. They take the visual organization of a table, and expand on it. This allows you to more easily structure data, including adding multiple columns of information, linking in Jira tickets or Confluence pages, tagging individuals and more. I frequently find myself using them for project planning as they have a lot more horsepower than a spreadsheet, but aren’t as complex as a series of jira tickets.

Databases also allow you save views - for example a list of just items that are blocked, or assigned to a specific person. This makes it easy to share a link and empower stakeholders to get specific information at their fingertips - further removing roadblocks to important information.

Whiteboards

I used to spend a lot of planning using a physical whiteboard to draw out process flows, list ideas and more. While it's not quite the same experience, confluence whiteboards offer a great digital alternative to this. They are essentially an endless digital space where you can add shapes, lines and text to map out ideas, share brainstorming and more. They also allow you to pull in Confluence pages or Jira tickets, making it easy to represent existing work or knowledge in your diagrams.

They allow for easy collaboration across locations, with multiple team members being able to easily contribute or follow along. A recent addition also added the ability for folks to vote on items. This gives your team an easy way to indicate which things they think are most important, allowing you to focus on the biggest impact items.

Organization

A big challenge I run into on a project is organizing data. Confluence offers a number of different options to help with this, including things like labels, a nested content tree and folders.

Labels serve as meta data - information about content - that enable a number of features. Most apparently is improving search. Not only do labels impact search results, they can also be used to filter content. Additionally they tie into a number of marcos/page elements to automate things (such as gathering a list of content containing specific labels).

The content tree helps you visually organize information. For example anything related to your kickoff call could be put under the 'kickoff call' page. This makes it very easy for your team to find specific pieces of information quickly. These structures can be easily edited to via drag and drop, or even moved between spaces with a few clicks. 

Folders are a recent addition that serve as a way to group information without being information themselves. This lets you easily group information without cluttering up your documentation. For example, before folders were available I would frequently have a blank page in my content tree whose only purpose was to house other pages. It helped me organize content, but it didn’t do anything else. This cluttered up space and confused folks who ended up clicking on it.

These are just some of the Confluence features I’ve found helpful as a project manager. If you’ve got access to the tool I’d highly recommend checking them out and seeing what they can help you do!