Lab: Build a Department Project from Scratch

Why this matters

Reading prompt libraries is not the same as building one. This lab takes you through creating a complete, working Claude Project for a real department — from the system prompt to the first saved prompts — so you can repeat the process for every team in your organisation.

What you will build

A fully configured Claude Project for one department containing:

• A system prompt with your company context
• At least 3 saved prompts covering high-frequency use cases
• A one-page reference sheet ready to hand to the team

Estimated time: 35-40 minutes.

Prerequisites

• Admin or Editor access to your Claude Enterprise workspace
• Completed M64-L2 (Configuring Projects)
• 10 minutes with a team lead from the department you are configuring for

Step 1 — Choose your department

Pick the team with the clearest, most repetitive writing workload:

1. Sales — fastest adoption and most visible ROI
2. HR — biggest reduction in documentation time
3. Operations — highest improvement in meeting output quality

Step 2 — Gather context (10 minutes)

Before opening Claude, collect from a team lead:

• What the team does (2-3 sentences)
• Who their main audiences are
• The top 5 writing tasks they do most often
• Their preferred tone (3 adjectives)
• Things they should never say or commit to in writing
• Any documents Claude should be aware of

Do not skip this step. Projects with vague context produce generic outputs.

Step 3 — Write the system prompt

Using the template from the relevant lesson, draft a system prompt.

Evaluation criteria:

• Someone new to the company could read it and understand what the team does
• Tone guidance is specific — not just "professional"
• Boundaries section says what Claude should NOT commit to
• Under 500 words

Step 4 — Create the Project in Claude

1. Go to Projects then New Project
2. Name it: [Department] — [Company Abbreviation]
3. Paste your system prompt into the Instructions field
4. Set visibility: shared with the relevant team members

Step 5 — Build the prompt library

Create at least 3 saved prompts.

For each prompt:

1. Write the prompt using templates from this module
2. Test it with real content — paste in an actual email, notes, or document
3. Refine until the output is good enough to use with minor edits
4. Save it with a clear name: Email — Cold Outreach or Meeting — Action Items

Quality bar: can a team member paste in their content and get a usable output in under 2 minutes? If not, the prompt needs more specificity.

Step 6 — Test with a real user

Sit with one person from the team. Give them a real task they need to do today. Watch them:

1. Open the Project
2. Find the relevant prompt
3. Customise it for their specific situation
4. Evaluate Claude's output
5. Edit it into something they would actually send or use

Note what confused them and what worked. Update the prompts based on what you observe.

Step 7 — Document what you built

Create a one-page reference sheet:

• Project name and how to find it in Claude
• What it is configured for
• The 3-5 prompts available and when to use each
• What to do if Claude gets it wrong
• Who to contact to add prompts or report issues

Deliverable

• A live Claude Project with a working system prompt
• At least 3 saved and tested prompts
• A one-page reference sheet ready for the team
• Notes from your user test incorporated into the prompts

Extension task

Set up a second Project for a different department. Notice how differently you need to configure it — the system prompt for Sales and HR will have almost nothing in common beyond the company name. That is by design. One of the most common mistakes is building a single general Project for the whole company. Specific Projects for specific teams consistently produce better outputs.