Workstreams Explained: Boost Your Agency’s Project Management

Workstreams have emerged as a key solution for effectively handling the complexities of project management.

As an agency professional, you’re probably juggling multiple projects at the time. Knowing how to simplify and organize your workflows to contribute to the shared goal is a crucial skill in this dynamic industry.

Whether you’re in consulting, development, or marketing, workstreams can be a part of your business operations strategy. This article explores what workstreams are, how they impact project management, and best practices for implementing them effectively.

The concept of workstreams can be somewhat confusing at times. Maybe you’ve seen various definitions and examples floating online, but not all are compatible, even within the same resource. In the Collins Dictionary, workstreams are understood as:

In the context of managing projects in professional services, it would relate to a specific set of activities or tasks within a larger initiative. Depending on your team structure and project flow, a workstream can be a set of tasks within a single team, such as a prototype created by designers.

It can also be a cross-functional activity, such as implementing an element of a website, which requires both design work and development. 

Although it can be a flexible term, in essence, workstreams refer to the practice of breaking up a larger initiative such as a project into its constituents. The idea is to simplify and resolve tasks step by step to speed up and improve delivery.

Workstreams are an essential part of any agency project management process. They provide a structured framework for breaking down complex initiatives into smaller, more manageable tasks. Each separate workstream operates semi-independently — this means that while each has its own set of goals, tasks, and timelines, they all contribute towards a shared, overarching goal.

Workstreams help project managers:

Using workstreams in project management is more than just a strategy — it’s about creating a collaborative environment in an agency. This approach requires every team member to work together effectively, knowing exactly what their tasks and responsibilities are.

The project manager’s job is to make this collaboration as smooth as possible and to keep everyone on track towards the final goal. This method highlights the need for good teamwork and clear communication to complete a project successfully.

Revenue operations take a similar approach by aligning marketing, sales, and customer service teams.

In everyday life, you can find examples of workstreams all around you. These are like small projects you do every day, such as getting ready for work in the morning, preparing dinner, or doing the dishes in the evening.

In an agency environment, some examples of workstreams would be:

In a consultancy, you might have a workstream dedicated to figuring out market trends for a client. This involves separate tasks such as gathering data, spotting trends, and putting together reports (usually by using consultancy software). Finally, the final results might be reviewed by the manager, and then presented to the client, completing the workstream.

A marketing agency workstream could be centered on a social media campaign, involving steps such as content creation, platform strategy, and analytics tracking. This involves close collaboration between designers, copywriters, digital marketers, and a project manager to monitor the progress. Tools for digital marketing agency workflows can be especially helpful in supporting these processes.

We also have a guide on project management for marketing agencies that you can check for best practices and tips.
 

At a design agency, a workstream would be something like a branding redesign for a client. This encompasses activities from initial concept sketches to final design deliverables and client feedback and review. Throughout this process, a project manager would ensure that the deliverables align with the client’s vision and timeframe by using tools for project management for designers.

Integrating workstreams into project management starts with carefully identifying the teams involved and establishing clear roles and responsibilities for each employee. This basic step ensures everyone knows their specific duties within the workstream.

Next, each workstream must be clearly defined, outlining its unique tasks, objectives, and expected outcomes, creating a focused and purpose-driven workflow.

To maintain steady progress and address challenges promptly, regular monitoring and control of each workstream are essential. Visualizing and documenting the workstream process is also critical, as it provides a clear roadmap and helps track developments over time.

This often involves using specialized agency tools to facilitate communication and information sharing across teams. 

According to a survey by PwC, 77% of companies use project management software. The same report maintains that this number results from a positive correlation between project management tools for professional services and project performance, as agencies that utilize modern technology are more likely to deliver high-performing projects.

Here are some examples of specialized tools for workstream management:

However, an advanced type of technology that can optimize your performance is all-in-one management software. These solutions support the end-to-end project management workflow and gather key capabilities on a single platform. The benefits of such solutions are increased efficiency, more accurate project metrics, and decreased spending on separate solutions.

A popular example of such a tool is Productive, used by agency professionals worldwide:

Learn how Productive helped a product development company support its growth.

Productive is a PSA software for agencies of all shapes and sizes. The tool gathers key features for operational efficiency, from lead management to project progress tracking and post-completion insights.

Key Features Include:

Additional features of Productive include Sales, Docs, and Automations. Productive also includes a variety of integrations that help blend the tool into your currently established workflows, such as Xero, QuickBooks, Google Calendar, Slack, HubSpot, Zapier, and more.

We’ve covered some generic benefits of implementing a workstream structure for your project management, including better collaboration, more effective organization, and goal-oriented execution. 

You might be wondering: What are some practical applications for agencies? 

Here are four agency 101s that can be improved by adopting workstreams:

Research by Gallup has found that engagement has approximately 4 times the influence on employee stress than other factors, such as work location:

Source: State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report

Workstreams enhance employee engagement by fostering a sense of ownership, collaboration, and purpose. Creating specific project segments helps employees feel like they’re contributing more directly to project completion. In comparison to working on larger project chunks, it also provides a series of milestones that can help keep your teams motivated.

Additionally, the cross-functional nature of workstreams contributes to knowledge-building and employee bonding. Both of these factors increase job satisfaction and create a stronger sense of belonging within the agency.

Workstreams contribute significantly to streamlining back office operations by breaking down complex processes into distinct, manageable segments. This approach involves categorizing various tasks such as finance, HR, and administration into separate workstreams, each with specific goals and timelines. 

We can use time tracking as an example. By dividing tasks into workstreams, the responsibility for timesheets shifts from a centralized project manager to individual employees. This means that each team member is tracking their own time and managing their entries, including descriptions for tasks that were worked on and completed.

Agency tools with time tracking capabilities can support this process with features such as integrated timers. This can speed up the tracking side of the process on the employee side, but also on the manager side by generating timesheets automatically. 

Some other examples of functions that can be simplified with workstreams are project budgeting and billing. Find out more by heading over to our article on the importance of a budget in project management.

Effective workstream management is impossible without the right resource planning strategy. This involves ensuring that you have the right balance of skill sets across teams and tasks in order to maintain efficiency and meet project deadlines. 

As a practical example, consider the resource planning features offered by Productive that simplify the allocation of teams to workstreams.

These functionalities collectively enhance professional services capacity planning, aligning it with the dynamic needs of workstreams.

Workstreams can significantly support the recruitment process in an agency, offering a structured and efficient approach to hiring. By dividing the recruitment process into specific workstreams, such as candidate sourcing, screening, interviewing, and onboarding, each stage can be managed more effectively.

Another, perhaps not so obvious, connection between workstreams and recruiting can be found in resource planning. By carefully segmenting employees across longer periods of time, such as the upcoming quarter, you can view your resource capacity for upcoming periods. This helps inform the hiring strategy.

For example, a website development company might find that services such as design are underutilized, while services such as QA are overutilized. This can lead to sales teams prospecting more clients for design services, and/or hiring more QA engineers.

With Productive, you can forecast resource utilization across various metrics, such as seniority. This helps you get even more detail for the exact employee profile you need in order to support your agency operations. This strategic hiring not only fills necessary roles but also supports existing team members, reducing burnout and improving overall team morale, which are key factors in retaining talent.

Learn more about resource planning with Productive:

Workstreams offer a transformative approach to managing agency operations. They can facilitate resource planning, streamline recruitment processes, and significantly improve employee engagement and back office operations.

By adopting workstreams, agencies can optimize their workflows, ensuring that projects are completed efficiently, and team members remain motivated and focused. A key step to achieve this is to implement a modern software solution that provides comprehensive features on a single platform.

Consider booking a demo with Productive, the all-in-one agency management tool, and learn more about how you can improve your team collaboration.

In the context of project management, a workstream can be seen as a sub-project. It’s a series of related tasks grouped together, making the main project more manageable. Each workstream has its own timeline, milestones, risks, and issues to track, as well as associated teams to complete them. They contribute to a shared goal of efficient project delivery.

In a consultancy, an example of a workstream might be analyzing market trends for a client. This would include separate tasks such as data collection, trend identification, and report creation, all of which can be streamlined and managed effectively with consulting software. Another example would be a marketing campaign, which encompasses activities such as content creation and KPI analysis.

According to websites such as the Collins Dictionary and Wikipedia, the term “workstreams” is more frequently used as one word. However, as the term is relatively new, you might also see it used as “work streams”. Whichever variant you choose, make sure you’re using it consistently.

Another term for workstream can be workflow, as they both encompass tracking and managing a series of activities from start to finish. Alternatively, you can also compare workstreams to milestones, as they encompass smaller constituents of projects that are organized into a whole.