How To Structure Your Projects In Hive
Starting a new project in Hive is a great feeling. It means you now have a clean slate that is just waiting for you and your team to get to work. So once you’ve named the project and added your teammates, it’s now time to structure your project according to actions and hierarchy. Not sure how to go about that? Don’t worry. Here’s a quick start guide to structure your next project in Hive.
The Hive project hierarchy
A hierarchy enables you to keep your projects neatly organized and ensures that everyone knows their actions, priorities, and deadlines. In Hive, projects are structured based on the following hierarchy:
- Parent project: The overarching project
- Child projects: Sub-projects within the Parent project
- Actions: Tasks within the project
- Subactions: Subtasks within actions
Understanding these terms will help you get the most out of Hive. Keep reading to learn more about how each of these components relates to one another.
Parent and child projects
In Hive, the parent and child project hierarchy allows you to nest smaller ‘Child projects’ under larger ‘Parent projects.’ If you have many projects in your workspace, this is a great way to keep things organized and easily find what you’re looking for.
Parent and child project designations can be made at any point of the project’s life cycle. If you are creating a new project and already know that you want to assign an existing project as its ‘Parent project,’ you can do this on the first screen of the ‘Create new project” module.
To nest two existing projects, go to ‘Project Navigator’ on the left navigation panel. From there, hover over the project you want to nest and click ‘Edit.’ Then select your desired Parent project and save the changes.
Once you’ve set up your parent and child projects, you can easily view them together on the ‘Project Navigator’ page. Child projects will appear underneath their parent projects, giving a clear view of which projects belong to others.
Wondering when exactly you should next a child project under a parent project in Hive? A parent project could be, for example, a client account where multiple child projects sit under a single umbrella. So, under the parent project ‘Client A’, you may want to break down your activity into child projects such as ‘Account Management’ with recurring subactions for the day-to-day, along with specialist child projects with a specific, set timeline, like ‘Product launch 2022’.
Actions and subactions
Within a project, you can create actions by selecting the blue ‘+New’ button and then ‘Action’ from the drop-down menu. Add a description, so all members know and understand the action and assign the action to an owner. You can also add a due date to this action, so everyone working on it is aware of their deadline.
You can then add subactions within that action card if you need to, add attachments, share comments, schedule meetings, and get email updates. You can apply templates to actions, so you can use structures you’ve used before, which saves setup time. You can also mark as urgent if required and convert actions into either projects or subactions.
Want more inspiration for your next project? Check out this blog post to learn how to structure a communications or content project in Hive.
How to view project hierarchy with Hive layouts
With Hive, you have six different ways to view the status of your projects and actions within them. Each of Hive’s project layouts follow the same hierarchy, so your actions and subactions will remain connected regardless of which view you choose. This means you can toggle back and forth between views with just a few clicks to instantly view your project in a new light.
Hive’s six project layouts include:
- Status View: Enjoy a granular overview of your project by stages of completion
- Team View: See what each member of your team is working on
- Label View: See updates by label
- Calendar View: View projects by their delivery timelines
- Gantt Chart: Gain a comprehensive overview of projects and actions over time
- Table View: Prefer to organize things by spreadsheets? This layout is for you
To learn about the benefits and ideal use cases each view, check out our blog post on your six layout project options in Hive.
