I’ve said before that everything in the world is made up of projects, which means that case studies are everywhere! Let’s take a look at a web design agency as a project management case study. Today I was reviewing an “about” page for a web design company and they used the following image to describe their workflow:
From a design perspective I think it’s odd that this is designed as an infinity loop lol BUT I think it’s a good breakdown of using a design agency as a case study for “what is project management and what does a project manager do”. (I also think they just needed to find a way to have it converge in project management.)
So let’s break down what we see here! On the left, we’re looking at strategy. Remember that strategy asks WHAT is the work that will get done, and WHY? In this case, they’re a web design agency… so the more specific question they’re asking is WHAT are we doing to do if the WHY is getting our clients in front of people online?
Once we’ve defined our strategy, from there, we choose tactics. And remember that tactics answer HOW. So how are they going to get their clients in front of people? Again, in their case, they’re a design agency, so their tactics will be largely creative. They’re going to design a lot of assets (could be social posts, could be web headers, could be print material like posters), they’re going to have copywriters who understand exactly how best to make a sale in a given industry, they’re going to have web developers who understand how to turn all this into a website. And all these folks on the creative side will be looking to the strategy that the folks on the “strategy department” side said were important, like: we have to establish a strong social media presence, we have to have a user interface that actually makes people want to USE our websites… etc.
Project Managers Meet in the Middle
Now, remember that all of this is happening because a client wants to buy something (in this case, probably a website). This client also wants the website they’re buying to be delivered on time (they may be tying an important initiative to the launch of their new website!), and on-budget. What they don’t want is to be told midway through: oh, we had a wonderful idea for a new widget for your website, so it’s going to take longer to deliver, or be more expensive. For clients, the bottom line is always: on-time, on-budget.
Project managers are the ones on the team whose job is to make THAT happen. An animator’s job is to animate, and the deliverable is a beautiful file that makes the viewer want to see more. A web developer’s job is to develop, and the deliverable is a modern, responsive website that’s easy to use. A social media strategist’s job is to define strategy, and the deliverable is an executable plan to grow a following.
A project manager’s job is to manage, and the deliverable is an on-time, on-budget project that encompasses all of the above.
You can imagine, now that we’ve sketched all of this out, that this is going to involve lots of communicating. In our above paragraph’s example: does the social media strategist need more time to do competitive research? What does that mean for the animator’s schedule? Do we have time to do that, or do we need to find a way to squeeeeeze that research into a tighter timeframe?
A project manager’s job is to know those answers — and when the answers aren’t clear, to make informed judgments and decisions about how best to move forward. They’re communicating with everyone on the project team, as well as the client. (Example: your copywriter needs some background detail on a program the client ran a few years ago. The PM will likely be the one to reach out for this detail and pass it back to the copywriter.)
Left Hand/Right Hand
Sometimes when I share an example like that — that a PM will reach out after a copywriter requests more info — the reaction is something along the lines of: why doesn’t the copywriter just do that directly, themselves?
I want you to think about alllll your time in higher ed, and think about the times that you’ve declared that at your university, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Why doesn’t service learning talk to the volunteer center?? Why doesn’t the arts faculty talk to the student org office, who directly oversees five different arts-related student orgs? Why is the orientation office answering the exact same question from every single academic advisor? Moreover, why is the senior advisor getting the same question from every single orientation group leader?
Project managers eliminate this issue by ensuring that all communication goes through a centralized point: the PM. When we remove ourselves from the reality of what it’s actually like to work at a large organization, it’s easy to think of some of the PM’s role as “just busy work”. But when we re-ground ourselves in all the things that are painstakingly annoying about working in disorganized teams, it’s easy to re-realize why PM is actually an essential role once your team gets above 10-ish people.
The rest of this blog talks a lot about how to operationalize and translate this work into value… but that’s a bit beyond the scope of this post. Today, I really wanted to live in the visceral what does a project manager do question, using a web design agency PM as a case study. I hope it was helpful… and I hope if it’s sparked your curiosity, you’ll stick around for said translating-into-value conversations!
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