Wrike for Project Management

Wrike.com

Wrike is another project management tool designed for collaboration. It offers templates and workflows for many categories of teams such as software developers, creative developers, marketing, etc. I selected the free trial with the Creative Design Team workflow. I selected the KanBan board so that I could compare it with Trello.

I created a quick sample of my informal online learning modules for my coaching clients. I have a class of four clients - parents with young kids - who are stressed and arguing about shared chores and how to split parenting tasks. I'm in the very early stages of creating this course so the sample below represents a sliver of what I'll use Wrike for to manage this project.

What I appreciate about Wrike, Smartsheet and Trello is the free trial they offer. Additionally, I like that they have free products if you're working solo. This is a distinct possibility for me after I graduate. As much as I'd love to land the perfect Instructional Designer role, in the job market where I live the norm is to hire contractors. Much of the work is focused on intermittent design projects where a fulltime employee isn't needed. This was the case with my first two-year E-learning Instructional Design job with a local credit union. Credit unions are non-profit and they require that all new jobs get Board approval before the manager can create and hire for the position. In my case they determined there wasn't going to be a need for a 1.0 FTE (full time employee) to do just the instructional design work. This was actually an error on their part. So, instead, they specified my role as 50% instructional designer and 50% as technical writer for the knowledgebase.

I'm a technical writer by training and experience so I didn't mind this shared role. However, the managers decided to outsource the knowledgebase because other credit unions were doing this with a service that authored and edited all the articles. When this half of my role was gone my job as an instructional designer looked very precarious so I left. What also happened is that one of the Trainers started using Articulate Rise - the equivalent of using PowerPoint for learning modules. I was using Articulate Storyline 3 and Adobe Captivate which have a steep learning curve. Since he didn't want to learn it, he proposed to our supervisors to use Rise instead. This meant that my 74 elearning modules would not continue to be maintained and updated over time. I do realize they were time consuming to develop. Anyway, I'm cautious about seeking fulltime work but instead and thinking of seeking independent projects that I can complete for businesses who don't have the funds or need for a fulltime instructional designer.

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