Saturday workshop: Leveling Up Project Coordination

Leveling Up Project Coordination: Revealing the Hidden Infrastructure Behind Project Success

with Erin Cooper, PhD, and Stacey Kesten, PhD, Collaborators Consulting Group

Evaluation projects succeed or stumble on their hidden infrastructure: the often-invisible coordination work that connects people, tasks, and information. This interactive workshop introduces a clear framework and practical tools to help attendees level up how they plan, communicate, document, and coordinate project workflows and the humans at the heart of them.

This two-hour workshop blends brief didactic conceptual grounding with highly interactive, hands-on learning. After a short overview of project coordination as hidden infrastructure and description of five coordination practices, participants will engage in structured reflections, small-group discussions, and guided exercises that help them surface and analyze the coordination systems they already use.

Throughout the session, the facilitators will demonstrate key coordination practices across planning, task management, meetings, communication, and documentation, with participants applying each concept to their own project contexts through short partner or small-group activities. A scenario-based group exercise allows participants to diagnose realistic coordination breakdowns and identify strategies or tools to resolve them. Facilitation techniques, such as a clear agenda, visible documentation, and clear communication, are intentionally used to model the practices being taught. The workshop concludes with an individual coordination planning exercise to support immediate application.