Web Design as a Project Management Case Study

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!

Strategy

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 this looks specifically like:

WHAT are we doing? Putting our clients’ work in front of more people online.
WHY are we doing that? Because our clients have determined that they need more people to see their work in order to have some of those people choose to BUY their work.

Note that we’re not talking here about HOW we’re going to put our work in front of people. We’re only establishing that that is the most important WHAT of all.

And if you’re thinking… well, Caroline, everyone’s what is to get their work seen by more people… not so. Some people’s what is to put out extremely unique work that’s never been seen before and that won’t appeal to everyone. Some people’s what is to not put their work out there at all and go all-in on in-person referrals.

So a strategist has to get very clear on the “what” very early on because people will start to say things like “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we did this really unique thing no one has ever done before?!”, and the strategist’s job is to say… well, sure, but only if it also gets us seen by more people. Because that is our what.

Tactics

Once we've defined our strategy, from there, we choose tactics. (Remember that tactics answer HOW the work will get done.)

So, how is this particular web design agency 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 probably going to:

• Design a lot of assets (could be social posts, could be web headers, could be print material like posters)

• Have copywriters who understand exactly how best to make a sale in a given industry

• Have web developers who understand how to turn all this into a website.

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!