How to Write a Brief for Your Next Community Project (Template Included)
Your new go to resource for planning your next project
I recently attended a “Project Management for Non-Project Managers” training. It was incredibly informative to learn about how others at my company organize their work and lead their teams.
What was most eye-opening though was that while backing up our plans with a heck of a lot of data, validation of hypotheses, and buy-in from relevant stakeholders has become second nature for those in the community space out of necessity, the same standards haven’t been in place for those outside of the community industry.
It’s much easier for a product manager to say “hey I launched this product and our customers are this much more successful” than for a community manager to say “hey I launched this webinar series and now our customers are this much more successful”. And so inadvertently, us community managers have gotten pretty darn good at creating briefs and managing our projects.
So with that, I thought it would be helpful to document, both for fellow community managers and for those outside of our industry, how I put together a brief when I’m ready to campaign for buy-in on a new project. I’ve also included a template you can use as a jumping-off point.
~ The Definitive Guide to Writing a Community Project Brief ~
Stakeholders
Outline who across your organization you’ll need to get buy-in from or make aware of the work you are doing. The more explicit you can be about who is involved at the beginning stages, the less you’ll face blocks later on from folks who wanted to be clued in from the jump.
Questions to answer:
Who on my team should be aware of this project?
Who across my organization will I need support from to accomplish this project?
Whose approval is a blocker to launching this?
Goal (5-6 sentences)
Outline the goal of the project you are proposing. Provide a short overview of what readers can expect in the rest of your brief.
Questions to answer:
What are you trying to accomplish with this project?
What are the overarching business metrics you are hoping to be able to move?
Background (6-12 sentences)
Provide background information to clue whoever is reading your brief into the context of this project into the larger work that your team is doing or has done in the past.
Questions to answer:
What historical context is necessary for understanding the work you are proposing to do now?
Have you or your colleagues done any work that is related to the work you are proposing to do now?
What do you already know about the audience or area you are trying to impact with this work? Can you include any numbers here to demonstrate the size of the opportunity?
Objectives + Plan
Detail how you plan to accomplish the work you’ve described above. I usually utilize bullets here to organize my work into phases and demonstrate what will be accomplished at each part.
Questions to answer:
How will you accomplish this work at a high level?
Are there multiple phases to the work?
What will you seek to learn at each part of the project?
Metrics & KRs
Make note of how you will be measuring your success and ensure you tie these metrics back to the overarching goals that your team or company is working on. At this point, you’ll also want to set KRs for the project to be able to say once it’s concluded whether this project accomplished its goals. Use other related work to set reasonable estimates for what you’ll be able to do with this one.
Questions to answer:
Which team or org level metrics are you seeking to impact with this work?
How will you measure the impact?
Are the mechanisms that need to be in place to measure this work already in place?
Community Impact
As a community manager, you are responsible for knowing how your project will impact the business bottom line but also the community that you are managing. Including this information in your original brief will help ensure that meeting community needs is a forethought, not an afterthought.
Questions to answer:
What impact will this work have on your community?
What will your community be able to do, learn, or accomplish if this project is successful?
Timeline
Break down your objectives and plan into a table so readers can see what you’ll be working on each week. Highlight key milestones and dependencies so both you and your stakeholders are aware of them from the jump.
Questions to answer:
How long will this project take?
What are the key milestones?
Who do I need to bring into the project at which point?
Budget
If applicable, include a high-level overview of the budget you will need for this project and how much you anticipate spending on each thing.
Questions to answer:
How much budget did you originally set aside for this work?
What do you anticipate to be your biggest costs?
What is the estimated cost of each element of this project?
If you didn’t have budget set aside originally, where will funding for this work be coming from?