Let me throw you a hypothetical: Say you have free time between your last project and the next one that has yet to start.

I know, I know—who has free time anymore? But perhaps there’s a slow period in your work, where you aren’t inundated with projects. What’s the most productive way to spend that time?

Sure, you could busy yourself with small, insignificant tasks or old emails that don’t really matter anymore; but ultimately, that’s not productive—it’s just a way to pass the time.

Here are four activities that can help you evolve as a web project manager, recharge your batteries, and put in you in a ready state for the next onslaught of calls, meetings, and web work.

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Posted in: Project Management

After hours upon hours of designing, coding, and communicating, the project is finally done. Whether the project’s a success or a failure, you can rest easy because it’s launched—complete—over.

But before wandering to the next project, you should take a moment to reflect on what you just spent the last few weeks or months working on.

What did you take away from the project? What errors did you make that shouldn’t be repeated in other projects? What did you do right that should be repeated? These are questions I posed to myself recently after wrapping up a project. I sat at my desk, wondering about the answers and trying to determine how best to capture my thoughts.

So I decided to create a quick, one-page Web Project Debrief document. The purpose of the document is to allow a project manager or freelancer to swiftly record the basic outcomes of a project. Anything longer than a page and I know I’d never fill it out. And keep in mind—I designed this document to serve as a sort of cover sheet for the data you should be recording in systems like Basecamp and Harvest over the project’s lifespan.

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Posted in: Project Management

Time is one thing almost everyone wishes they could have more of. With more time, we could accomplish anything – finish those long-delayed projects, get more sleep, learn new skills, read Lord of the Rings backwards. But sadly, we only have a finite number of hours in a day, and that’s a fact of life we can’t change.

But given how valuable time is, why do we allow it to pass so casually? Shouldn’t we track and understand where it’s going?

The obvious answer: yes. At least for our web projects.

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Posted in: Project Management