Project Management Posts

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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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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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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A couple of weeks I found a big problem in one of my client’s Wufoo forms. The submit button on a payment form had disappeared.

Despite many vain attempts to fix the problem, I eventually resorted to contacting the Wufoo support team. After all, a missing submit button on a payment form is a pretty big deal.

I don’t usually contact support. I like to try to figure out things on my own. It’s one of the best ways to learn. But the biggest reason why I cringe at contacting support at most companies is because they can be slow and unhelpful.

Unfortunately, I was really stuck in a rut. So I filled out Wufoo’s contact form and shifted to another task. Pretty soon I received a response. Wufoo was aware of the bug in the system, but the developer working on it was unavailable.

I gritted my teeth and responded that it was a fairly significant issue. This wasn’t just affecting my form, but many others as well.

They got the message.

Shortly after, I received an email that the issue was being looked at. Better than nothing, I said to myself. Within an hour, though, the problem was fixed.

I never doubted Wufoo. Their service is excellent and they have some bright people working hard to make it even better. And I think there are some lessons we can learn from the way Wufoo handled this situation.

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A couple of years ago I was confronted with a website I had always wanted to re-develop. I knew the organization well – a local fitness center – and I was all too aware that their existing website was complete garbage. Nobody liked the current site. Not the staff, not people in the community, and not their clientele. And so when I was approached with the opportunity of re-doing everything, it was as if I were a moth and somebody switched on a thousand light bulbs. I was attracted to everything – and everything beckoned me – screaming out for my attention. I wanted to change it all.

And then it hit me. I was directionless.

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This is just a fun little post that I’ve wanted to write for some time.

Jack Bauer is a man who knows no boundaries. He’ll do whatever it takes to achieve an objective, from disobeying the higher-ups to working past internal conflicts, and although he’s merely a fictional character, there are some lessons we can learn from Agent Bauer’s unique approach to problem-solving.

So if Jack Bauer was finally able to settle down without being dragged into another day-long chaotic adventure, and if he got a job at a web design agency, what would be some of the guiding principles he’d use to execute his first project?

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We’re in an era of tool overload. Not only does there seem to be a tool to accomplish every imaginable task, but there are also tools to make these tools easier to use. Some of these tools are great – well-built and feature rich – while others just get in the way, and we as web designers don’t have the time to keep up with them all. So what I’ve done is compile my top seven tools that my business and work thrives from.

Really. I would be lost without these tools.

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Have you ever felt like a third wheel on a project? I’m talking about those projects where a client brings in an outside vendor – typically a marketing company – to help with the process. It’s not common, but it does happen, and when it does, you have to be prepared handle a completely new layer of relationship management – or else you may blow a gasket.

I don’t mean to rag on marketing companies, but I’ve encountered far too many that needle their way into web projects and then overcomplicate decisions by attempting to add their “unique” perspective to everything. And then I’ve encountered marketing companies that really know what they’re talking about – and they especially know when to stand back and let the designers and developers do their job.

In both types of encounters, I had to employ new relationship tactics separate from normal client communications.

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Some time ago, I wrote a post about implementing simple planning to achieve better results in web projects. Now I want to expand on that idea and provide more specific, actionable steps you can take to actually put simple planning into motion, and the best way to do that is by splitting the simple plan into three distinct actions.

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Project failure is not a matter of “if” but “when.” It will always occur, and it’s almost never pleasant. This is an unfortunate fact of projects, especially web projects. But knowing beforehand what types of issues might creep up in a project, and devising ways to prevent or alleviate them, can help soften the blow.

What are some of the common project failures? Let’s take a look.

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