Manage Projects with Roles

Rolebase does not have a separate "project" object, and it does not need one. A role already gathers people, tasks, discussions, decisions, and meetings in a single place, so it makes a natural home for a project. The recommended approach is to create one dedicated role per project, for example a product launch, a client engagement, an event, or a music release.

This guide walks through setting up and running a project this way.

Why a dedicated role per project

• Everyone in one place. The people working on the project sit together in the project role, whatever team they come from.
• All the work together. Tasks, discussions, and decisions for the project live in that role instead of being scattered across teams.
• A clear objective on top. The role's purpose states what the project is aiming for, so anyone opening it sees the goal right away.
• A clean history. When the project ends, you archive the role and keep its full record for reference.

Before You Begin

Make sure you have:

• An organization with a few roles already in place.
• The members who will take part in the project.

Step 1: Create a role for your project

1. Open the org chart and navigate to the role where the project belongs. A project that spans the whole company can sit under your top-level role, while a team project can sit under that team's role.
2. Click Add and select Role.
3. Name it after the project, for example "Launch - Spring Album" or "Client - Acme".

Step 2: Bring in the people involved

A project usually pulls people from several teams. You have two ways to add them to the project role:

• Add members directly. Assign the people who are dedicated to the project as members of the role.
• Invite their roles. Use invited roles to bring in a role from another team without moving anyone. A member of the invited role can then take part in the project's work while keeping their home role. This is the cleanest way to run a group that spans production, marketing, legal, and more.

Step 3: Define the objective

Give the project a direction that everyone can see:

• Use the role's purpose to describe what success looks like, for example "Release the spring album on time and reach 50k streams in the first month".
• Add indicators to the role to track the metrics that matter, so progress toward the objective stays visible over time.

Step 4: Break the work into tasks

1. Open the Tasks section of the project role.
2. Create the tasks the project needs and assign each one to a member.
3. Set a status and a due date so the team can follow progress.
4. Switch between the Kanban and List views to plan and track the work the way that suits you.

Because every task belongs to the project role, you get a single board for the whole project, even though the people come from different teams. See the tasks documentation for details.

Step 5: Coordinate with discussions and decisions

• Open a discussion in the project role for anything that needs input, a proposal, or a poll. Everything stays attached to the project rather than lost in a chat tool.
• Record important choices as decisions in the role, so the reasoning behind the project stays documented.

Step 6: Review progress in meetings

For projects that run over several weeks, schedule a recurring meeting on the project role. A simple agenda works well:

• A Tasks step to review what is in progress and what is next.
• A Discussions step to go through active discussions and unblock them.
• An Indicators step to check progress against the objective.

Step 7: Close the project

When the project is finished, archive the project role from its actions menu. Everything nested under it, tasks, discussions, decisions, and meetings, is archived together and stays available in the history if you ever need to look back.

What's Next?

• Create your roles and org chart to structure your organization.
• Add members and assign them to your project.
• Run your first meeting to coordinate the team.