Our best project management tips
Written by niki juhasz
You worked *so hard* on that campaign. It’s so, so close to finished…and then someone comes in and blows it all up. 💥
We’ve all been there. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You CAN have smooth processes and easy review rounds. We promise a brighter future exists.
Today, we’re sharing three tips – tactics we use with our own clients — to make sure your projects have a clear process and a clean launch.
How do we do it? Let’s dive into our special sauce.
get very clear on roles - early
One of the biggest setbacks we see in projects is if someone isn’t consulted early enough – or someone who should be a reviewer isn’t involved til the very end. That’s why we recommend starting with a kickoff meeting. When we lead a project, we always ask:
Who’s leading the project? This is the person in charge of ensuring it all gets done, on time and on budget. The conductor, essentially. (This is typically us when we partner with organizations on communications projects.)
Who will help with the project? In some cases, one person can’t do it all! For example, if you’re planning your association’s next conference, you’ll want to assemble the full team at the beginning. Whether it’s writing content or leading the design, identify who does what.
Who needs to share feedback? When? For example, it’s possible that your policy lead wants to look at your once-a-month social media posts tagging the mayor, but not your once-a-week ask to major donors. Think about:
Top leadership
Your development team
Your policy lead
Legal and/or HR representatives
Team members or partners with lived experience
Who is our final approver? This is the almighty queen (or king! Or non-binary royalty!) of signing off on the project. They have final say. Period.
The Management Center’s MOCHA framework can be really helpful during this phase.
create a project plan + Timeline
We do this for every single project we run. It doesn’t matter if it’s a one pager or a full communications campaign with a research phase, messaging, tactics plan and partner toolkit. After our kickoff call, we put together a project plan that includes the most important info:
Goals and what success looks like for the full project
Target audiences – and what we want them to know, do or think differently as a result of the campaign
The selected roles and approval process
A project plan timeline – we like to break ours down week by week, and color code it because of who we are as humans
Then, ask the team to review the plan. Once everyone feels good about it, use it as your North Star.
lead smart feedback rounds
I cannot stress this one enough. Half the battle of getting smart feedback is in how you ask for it! Here are some of our best practices:
Tell reviewers what to expect. Let them know what they’ll be reviewing throughout the project and when to expect it. For example, they’ll need to save more time to review a 50 page research report than for a series of social media graphics. When I’m a reviewer on a major project, I like to save time on my calendar ahead of time, so I have dedicated time and space to give my full brain to the project.
Make your ask specific. Let reviewers know what they’re reviewing for, how you want their feedback and their deadline. There’s nothing worse than getting one set of feedback through comments in a Word doc, another as untracked changes in a Google doc and a third as a scanned in set of handwritten notes. (Yes, this last one HAS happened to me.)
Get text finalized before design. If you’re working on a project that includes design – think an annual report, website or brochure – complete approvals in two phases. First, get the text fully approved. We recommend two rounds of text edits. Let your team know that once this text is final…it’s final.
Get design approved after the text is complete. Only start your design phase once your text is approved! Once the design is complete, ask for feedback – but remind reviewers that they already signed off on the text, and these reviews are exclusively to share thoughts about the graphic look & feel. This will save you *so much time.*
P.S. Katie recently wrote a LinkedIn post about this that went viral - see it here.
Your time is valuable. By running smart project planning and feedback processes, you can save your entire team time, effort – and a good amount of grumpiness.
Happy planning!
PS - Did this sound like just what you need? You might be interested in our coaching program, where we sit down with fellow communicators and share our best practices, working alongside them as they grow in their role.
