Habitat for Humanity Consulting

consulting

Summary

Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity came to Far Reach for advice and direction on implementing a new project management system. Through our consulting process, we worked with their team to understand their processes, evaluate platform options, and implement a solution.

Challenge

The Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity team had trouble keeping track of their many projects. With both internal and external stakeholders, using shared spreadsheets was inefficient and messy. Communication across the team was scattered and information wasn’t in any centralized location for reference.

Solution

As we consulted with Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity on their processes, opportunities became clear. A project management system would help make work visible, move projects through their workflows efficiently, and improve communication across the team. Far Reach evaluated project management tool options, set up customized processes and best practices based on existing workflows, and trained the Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity team to use the tool.

First, the Far Reach team did a build vs. buy analysis. There are many off-the-shelf SaaS project management tools on the market that can be customized for workflows like Iowa Heartland Habitat’s (Asana, Monday, Teamwork, etc.), so Far Reach analyzed several of them and recommended the most fitting option. We then worked with Iowa Heartland Habitat team members to understand their project workflows, set up each workflow in the tool, and taught the team how to use them.

What’s the best way to learn a project management tool? By creating and working through a “learning” project in the new system, of course. As the Iowa Heartland Habitat team used the system more and more, we worked together to evaluate progress and iterate on refining the system.

Many of the discoveries through this project came from asking the right questions and listening to the Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity team. Implementing a new project management tool can be overwhelming, and many companies experience analysis paralysis. Having an outside partner like Far Reach as a guide helped the implementation happen in a timely manner.

"The software's success has been illustrated in quicker workflows and improved communication spanning multiple departments. The seamless process improvement was marked by Far Reach’s thorough training methods during implementation."

Ali Parrish | Executive Director, Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity