Part 2 of a 4-part series on Project Management by contributor Annika Vaughan, MBA, PMP
What is project management?
Project management arose from architecture, building engineering, and the construction industry. You can imagine some kind of planning, estimating, and milestone management took place when building something like the Pyramids. However, the application of project management methodologies to areas beyond architecture and engineering is a more recent phenomenon. According to the Project Management Institute, there are 51 million people around the world working in the area of project management today and an estimated 15.7 million new project management jobs will be created globally by 2020. This demonstrates how organizations across the board— including those in the creative arena—are recognizing the tremendous value project management brings to the business.
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The textbook definition of a project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.” Project management is defined as “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet the project requirements.” Although it sounds dry and rather complex, project management technique can be implemented as easy as following the five steps below.
Note: If you do not have a project manager on your team, appoint someone to be the coordinator/traffic manager for each project. If you have a client relations manager or customer service representative, these positions can become hybrid project manager roles too. Avoid asking your content producer (writer, designer, videographer) to project manage his/her own project, as it defeats the purpose of implementing control over the three key aspects of projects: scope, cost, and time.
Step1: The client brief is the key
Understanding what the client wishes to achieve through the specific projects you are about to undertake is of critical importance. In the world of business analysis, this action is called “requirements gathering” and it should not be taken lightly. In the creative industry, you often use a creative brief. This is a document to explain the vision of the project and officially kick-start a project. If you use a creative brief, treat it as a written agreement between the creative team and your client on critical items such as project objective, deliverables, and timelines.
In your initial discussion with the client, your project manager should be asking the right questions to fully understand what your client is asking for.

• What is the objective of the project?
• What are the deliverables you have in mind?
• When is your deadline?
• Who are the people involved in this project?
• Who needs to approve the project?
• What is the budget?

Remember that this phase provides the opportunity to right-size the amount of work to meet the clients’ objectives. Poor requirements gathering and unclear setting of expectations is, by far, the number-one cause of project failure (Infotech’s research suggests 70% of projects fail because of flawed requirements). Your project managers are there to ensure a good start, securing a good ending.
Step 2: Scheduling
Once you have determined the deliverables, break down what it takes to create the deliverables: How many activities are involved? How many people should be assigned? How long will each activity take? When should the client review the work? Work your way back from the desired delivery date and draw up a preliminary schedule for the project. If you realize the project cannot be delivered in the timeframe your client asked for, you can add more resources to some activities to speed up the process, or negotiate to push out the delivery date.
There are many scheduling tools you can use to make this process as painless as possible. Most project management tools come with templates you can easily adapt to your needs.
After setting the initial schedule comes the task of monitoring project progress and adjusting the schedule as the project progresses. All project schedules should be monitored on a daily basis. If things are not progressing as planned, the project manager should revise the schedule and alert the key stakeholders. Once project managers are used to this task, they should be able to detect the early warning signs of schedule deviation and take corrective measures before the projects become derailed.
Step 3: Budgeting
Whether you are in a charge-back environment or not, estimating resources (labor) and other costs to accomplish the project is a critical step to keep your clients happy as well as to keep your team (business) viable. Budget is closely linked with scheduling as well as scope. Project managers can use the preliminary schedule to price out the project’s labor cost and add the cost up as revisions take place during the course of the project. If labor or materials are required from outside vendors, the project manager has to communicate the estimates with the clients and keep track of all the critical information centrally. For design projects involving print buying, the project manager can also wear the hat of print coordinator, initiating requests for print quotes and scheduling press times.
Step 4: Managing change orders
Managing change orders initiated by both clients and internal stakeholders is probably a project manager’s most difficult task, requiring expert negotiation and relationship management skills. If you work in a large organization where your direct client contact does not necessarily possess the authority to sign-off on project delivery, managing clients’ change orders may become even more challenging. For example, your team may be working on a branding project, everything is running smoothly, and you are getting close to finalizing the logo. Then the client comes back, all of a sudden, saying that she shared the design with her vice president and he wants a redesign. What should your project manager do? Say no, or yes? Revise the schedule, and costs and present the client with new delivery dates? Or, should your project manager have ensured all key stakeholders were involved earlier on in the project to avoid last minute change orders? There is no right answer to these questions as it depends on your organizational culture, however, the presence of project management in your operation will surely reduce the risks involved in change orders.
Step 5: 20/80 rule—spend 80% of time communicating
Many studies suggest for project managers to be truly successful, 20% of project managers’ time should be spent on transactional activities to control the project (monitoring schedules, organizing files, writing requirements, etc.) and 80% of the time should be spent on communicating. Project managers should be updating the clients with project progress, asking questions, keeping the project team informed of upcoming deadlines—on a continuous basis. Effective project managers understand what type of information should be shared when, and know how to communicate with each stakeholder in the project. Emails and system-generated notifications are convenient, but, never underestimate the importance of face-to-face communication.
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After reading all this you might be wondering if there are any quick and easy ways to implement project management in your team. In the next post, I will introduce some useful toolkits for creative project management.
Coming up next on March 10th: Part 3 – Implementing project management in your team— tools and resources
About the author: Annika Vaughan, MBA, PMP
Annika works as Media Officer at the International Monetary Fund, in a project management team of an in-house agency with 40 + staff providing design, photography and video production services. Her previously held positions include TV reporter, PR manager and UN Communications Officer.
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of the author and should not be attributed to the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management