When there’s chaos, often the first thing that breaks down is project management.
It’s easy to do things in an ad-hoc fashion. Sometimes, it’s even more efficient if everyone is in the same room and we’re all working together to do this.
We’ve been doing this five years and through hundreds of intense projects we’ve learned a few things about it:
Have automatic collection habits in place using modern tools
Our main tools are: Wistia, Slack, Trello, and Email. For documents we use PandaDoc and GoogleDocs. Our tools automatically sort, archive, collect, and create transparency. We can see what other members of our team are doing, working on, learning and creating together.
Now, we can’t subject our customers to external tools just yet: Trello largely lacks the finesse to be a client facing application, but for those of us that are in it, invested and in the weeds, it’s a great tool.
The phone (or video chat) is for nuance, creativity and discussion
We use the phone. Our friend and Client Maneesh Sethi says that that’s Tim Ferris’s superpower. A quick phone call can supply nuance, tone, and all the other information that human beings pass along via voice. It’s great for creativity. It’s great for script walkthroughs.
It is an interruption and there are some limits/diminishing returns to its use.
Get Bad News Handled Early
When you have good news and bad news, get the bad news addressed.
On a couple of recent projects, the client-side script approval took a little longer than it normally does. That means that the final deadline will be pushed a little bit. Rather than having it be a surprise, we need to get it out there fast so people can plan accordingly.
It’s better to let people know early and then replace bad news with good than it is for bad news to be a surprise.
What Now, What Next & When (Exactly):
We want to talk precisely when we are talking to one another. Rather than saying “this should be done soon” we’d say “the next 12 seconds, including revisions will be done by 2pm tomorrow.” That way we can close loops.
Example:
“This should be done soon.”
“OK, when?”
“2 PM tomorrow.”
“Great, and how much will be done?”
“15 seconds of finished product.”
Have A Dedicated Person Earlier Than You Think
For most of our history, we’ve had a dedicated person in the Project Management role. Every video company, every company doing client services should.
The promise of automation and automatic collaboration is tempting, and you can get a lot done through technology.
But you want to be high tech and high touch. In lieu of using technology to minimize contact, use it to enhance contact, get the logistics out of the way so that you can focus on making the best possible work for your client.
Write Down a Process and Use Templates
We have a planned out process that goes in four steps:
- Onboarding & Discovery
- Pre-Production
- Production
- Finalization & Launch
This means that we know what will need to happen for every project as we go. Since we do a lot of iterative work, and our projects are more alike than they are different, this makes a ton of sense in our workflow.
We’ve also learned from “competitors” and other people what to do correctly when it comes to project management.
This is an area where we will continue to try and lead, improve, and excel.
It’s the most important part of what we do, and the soul and lifeblood. Our Production Manager Victoria Rodgers does an excellent job keeping things moving forward smoothly and efficiently.
What are your best tips for project management? Reach out and let me know!