How to Launch a Project (and Hopefully Not Perish)

Today’s post will cover some basics; a bit of the nuts and bolts of creating projects and reports. It’s all about understanding the process, so that you can obtain your data analysis quicker, and act on it.

Now quickly: what’s the one similarity between your Blue survey project and a rocket, ready for liftoff? It’s simple: if there’s one thing they both need, it’s a successful launch. A project is “launched,” so to speak, on the Publish tab. And before Publishing your project, you need to know if everything is ready to go:

• Have all the (basic) questions been written?
• The groups, each with their own responsibilities, have they all been populated?
• Have you, at the very least, created a Fill Out task for your raters to complete?
• Is there at least one group that has the Form Fill Out privilege – i.e. they are allowed to fill out the questionnaire?

Assuming the answers are Yes, Yes, Of Course and Definitely, you’re getting closer to Publishing your project. In fact, once you’ve clicked on the Project’s Publish tab, you (should be!) almost ready to launch your project. And just like the astronauts in the space shuttle, there are a few last-minute items you need to adjust:

• Set the project start and end dates.
• Send a test email to verify that the email service is working, and the questionnaire can be accessed.
• Validate your project.

Clicking on the Validate button will tell you if there are any errors or warnings that require your attention. Errors will definitely keep you from taking off; these need to be fixed or your project cannot begin. Warnings may not stop your project from being Published, but something’s amiss and requires your attention.

Once you’ve fixed any and all errors and warnings, click the Validate button again – this time your project has been successfully validated. A series of potential issues have been checked, and you’ve passed the test. All systems go!

Now you’re ready to click on the Publish button. And time to break out the bubbly (not the cheap stuff, either), because you are officially “launching” this project. Once the project is successfully Published, emails will be sent out according to the schedules you’ve previously set. Different individuals will soon be opening their emails to see the task(s) they are required to perform. And once all these tasks have been performed, the most important task of all, Form Fill Out, can begin.

As the raters begin to fill out their questionnaires, results start to flow in. Next, you generate your report(s) based on this data, and you and your executive staff should be – please pardon the pun – over the Moon.