Although that statement might make most project managers think ‘Eh, what’s he on about?!’, Andy makes a number of valid points in the article. He’s partly right: a designer shouldn’t let the project manager stand in between them and the client to block the design process.

Having said that, a lot of the article’s suggestions are pretty unworkable, especially within agencies. As always, context is key (more on that later).

What does Andy argue?

For those who haven’t read Andy’s article, here’s a brief summary, or you can access a (paid) copy here: .net magazine back issues

• Project managers are often unnecessary, or at least ill-employed. Once a project manager has introduced the client to the agency professionals, they should step aside and leave everything to the designer.
• Bad project managers take too much control of a project.
• Good project managers are facilitators and administrators—the project manager is actually the administrative liaison, and should ultimately remain on the sidelines of a project.
• Whether it’s the project manager’s, or the designer’s fault, project managers take over too many of the designer’s responsibilities which inevitably leads to a diminished result.

So why don’t I agree?

A project manager’s role is to communicate with the client. As Andy recognises in his article, the client needs to feel that the agency is invested in their project. This requires time, and an individual to take responsibility of the communication; someone whose primary role is not a crucial part of the project outcome.

In a busy agency with competing needs, handing over this task to the designer on the project wouldn’t be achievable (or desirable, by either designer or client).

‘Clutter’

In my experience of agency process, a project kicks off with the project manager taking control of the project and setting it in motion. They then involve the necessary people in the internal team, together determining how the project will run. In Andy’s opinion, this is where a project manager takes too much control.

However, if the designer has to deal with all project communication with the client day-to-day, then when do they get the time to design? A good project manager frees the designer from having to concentrate the majority of their time talking to the client—time better spent where their primary skillset lies! The project manager can plan in the whens, wheres and hows in the project, recognising the competing needs of other projects and ensuring that designers’ time is available.

Our job as project manager is to involve the designer as much as necessary, whilst making sure they avoid unnecessary ‘clutter’ and freeing them to spend the necessary time on the creative and design process. This might be taking a certain amount of control away from designers, but it’s crucial when they need to focus their attention on the actual creation of the site.

Andy believes that designers should be managing timelines and setting deadlines as they have the best understanding of the factors and work involved.

But a good project manager will not set deadlines and timings themselves without thinking or just using guesswork; they will consult the designers and developers and manage their recommendations to work up a project plan (saving the designer or developer having to wrestle with the project planning tool!) They’ll also take into account other projects and competing needs, which is crucial in an agency environment.

What if a designer is working across multiple projects? How frustrating would it be for another project to lose their design time because the designer has to answer emails, deal with constant queries or create a project plan. Good project planning means just that—planning! And planning needs time dedicated to it, ideally by someone whose primary role it is to do this.

Having a central point of contact

So, should a project manager just sit on the sidelines of a project, performing the administrative tasks? Not in my opinion.

A project manager gets to know the client, not to mention the designers and developers working on the project. They learn how best to deal with a client, and what a particular client responds to, what’s important to them, and what their needs and requirements are.

A designer or developer put in charge of the communication with the client for just part of the project won’t have enough time for this. The project manager instead should act as the central point for the client across the project, and can facilitate and coordinate the different teams involved.

Being on the sidelines of a project and performing admin tasks isn’t the best use of a good project manager’s skills and time. A project manager is good at communication; that’s partly why we are hired!

Why the project manager isn’t redundant… just yet!

Run in the right way, it is much better for the project manager to organise the project. Instead of letting the designer lead the project from the start, then hand over to the developer and so on, the project manager can facilitate the whole project from start to finish. The key benefits for this are pretty clear:

• Consistency for the client: they don’t feel like they are being pushed from one person to another.
• Consistency for the internal team: having a consistent facilitator of the project is much more effective in terms of communication.
• The project manager can immerse themselves in the project from beginning to end and really understand it—managing timings, budget and scope definition.
• The project manager can coordinate the project; managing all the different parts of the overall process and leaving the people best placed to deliver the client’s requirements to focus their time and energies on doing just that!

So what should the project manager do then?

How do you, as a project manager, ensure that a designer or developer is involved enough in the project, but that their time is not wasted on tasks better managed by yourself?

• Involve the designers and developers early on (see my previous article on effectively managing involvement).
• Ensure all timings and assumptions are checked with the relevant members of the team first.
• Don’t shield your internal project team from the client. Get them involved in key conversations, meetings and presentations.
• The project manager doesn’t need to deal with the client directly at all times. It’s a waste of time being a middle-man for a key discussion about design. Be involved but don’t filter all the messages through yourself!
• Collate feedback from the client before giving to your designer or developer. It’s easier to go through things at once rather than in bits, therefore saving their time in the long run.
• Finally—sell yourself to the internal team. Actually show them how you can make their lives easier and what the benefit is to have you managing the project!

Summary

Andy hits the nail on the head when he says: “Relieve your teammates of distraction, but not responsibility”.

It’s sometimes easy to shield your designers from all communication with clients, so they’re not getting as involved in the project—and this can create a bit of distance between them and the client and/or project.

Get them involved in the discussions, the client calls, the presentations. It’s not necessary to keep all communication with the client to yourself. They just don’t need to be as heavily involved in the day-to-day ins and outs of the project, otherwise they won’t have time to do what they do best—design.

*Massive caveat
Different solutions work in different contexts. A small start-up that has a developer and designer does not necessarily need (or have the resources) to have a project manager involved, and they will have to manage the client and projects between them. However, in an agency environment where there are multiple projects running at once, I don’t believe what Andy proposes is workable in the long term—unless you want your designers having to make the choice between answering that client call, or actually designing!

I’ve chosen to support The MS Society, a charity that impacts me personally. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological condition which affects around 100,000 people in the UK, and The MS Society offers support to those living with MS and also funds research into developing treatments for the condition.

To help this cause all you need to do is post a Tweet containing my Twitter username (@suzehaworth) along with the hashtag #seasonstweetings. You need to do this by 23 December 2011!.

To make it even easier to support this cause I’ve made a small Tweet button (below) to do all of this for you. You can review the tweet before it gets sent (or even choose not to send it at all) after you click the button.

Tweet

So, what are you waiting for? Give it a click and help improve peoples’ lives this Christmas!

To check progress head over to Numiko’s special Season’s Tweetings app.

Thanks so much, and Merry Christmas,
Suze

Ideally you’d get a team to work exclusively on one project for its entirety; a dedicated UX guy, the project’s own designer and a developer at your beck and call. The team can then work collaboratively for the lifetime of the project.

But, we live in the real world, and unless you have mega-rich clients and the team can work on just one project at a time, this isn’t going to happen (and possibly not even then!). So, how do you deal with getting the maximum involvement you can from your team without blowing the budget?

Internal project kick-off meeting

One of the most simple things you can do to maximise your team’s involvement in the project is to get everyone together early on; get in a room and discuss the objectives, the core users of the site and their needs, the business requirements.

This is commonly known as the kick-off meeting, and is a great way to get everyone on the same page, and for the team to bounce ideas off each other. Everyone should also get a good grounding in the project without taking up huge amounts of their time.

Weekly status report

Creating a status report with an overview of project progress and future actions once a week will not only helps keep the client on track, but also is a useful tool to keep up your internal team’s involvement in the project.

It will help keep your team aware of decisions that are being made without eating up lots of their time, and keeps all relevant information in one central location that is devoid of Chinese whispers and misinterpretation. See my previous article on status reports for a more in-depth overview.

Handovers between stages of a project

Like a lot of ideas, the most simple ones are the most powerful. Something as simple as getting people together across subsequent stages of the project (for example, between the initial research period and then design iterations) is crucial.

Although the team should have an overview of what’s happening on the project already, it gives them the chance to specifically find out why decisions have been made, what are the visions for the project, how they see the functionality working and so on. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy presentation or discussion, just a brief summary of the key decisions or ideas that have come out of that stage, and where they are going.

Review points

An easy way to get your team involved across the extent of a project is to have review points. Has the developer seen the design, has the designer reviewed the build…? Make sure you plan these reviews in so that the team does get enough involvement at different stages. It’s important to enable collaboration between the team. Also, don’t forget to put these in the project plan and costs, so that they are budgeted for early on.

Bite-sized reviews at more regular points in the project process can also be more time-effective than a larger review at the end—I learnt this the hard way recently where a technical review came late in the project and highlighted some key issues which then had to be dealt with last minute. Smaller reviews earlier on would have likely circumvented this and made everyone’s life a little easier.

Share key decisions

It’s crucial to keep the main members of your team involved in important decisions; if there is a decision to make which affects the project, don’t just decide it between a smaller part of the team!

With any major decision you need to make sure all leads on the project know about it because that last-minute decision could cause major headaches for future development. It should avoid any big surprises and save time in the long run.

Summary

So, to summarise:

• Try not to see the team as isolated parts, and keep up involvement from the key members throughout.
• Plan involvement in smaller chunks to save on resource and budget; involve people little and often.
• Plan the team’s review points and handovers early on to secure the timings and budget.
• Update your project team on the project’s status regularly; give everyone the same information at the same time.

If anyone else has any useful tips let me know!

A while ago I searched for a status report template online to find out what other project managers saw as important items to cover. Trawling through the first page of companies trying to sell expensive software made me give up quickly… Whilst some might not see the status report as essential to a project (since you’re obviously speaking to your client regularly), even on the smallest project they can really help keep scope, timings and budget on track. Sam Barnes has written a great article extolling the virtues of the status report on his site and as such I don’t want to cover old ground, so I’ve just written a brief summary on a few key points.

Key benefits

Focus

When you’re managing a large project with multiple stakeholders, status reports are a useful tool to focus everyone on the same issues every week. You can highlight actions for specific stakeholders in one central place and give everyone on the project sight of this.

Clarity

If there are any slippages in terms of timings, or issues that will affect the budget, the status report is a great place to highlight them and draw them to the attention of the stakeholders. Although never use them to give bad news! It’s also a way to make sure that you, as the PM, are regularly checking the current status against the original quote or plan.

Record

Summarising key decisions, progress and future actions every week of your project, means that there is a record of what, and when, things have happened throughout. As a PM we often are the central point in a project, so probably know the most in terms of what is happening overall. If you are off sick, out of the office or on holiday, other people can pick up the project much easier if they have a reference point to check.

The bigger picture

Leading on from the last point—the status report is also useful to highlight the status of the project to your internal team by sending it to them, or at least by pointing them in the right direction of where it is stored. That way, they don’t just focus on their specific part of the project (be that design, front-end development, or UX for example) but have sight and knowledge of the project as a whole.

So what constitutes a good status report? It needs to address:

• The current status of a project (obvious, I know).
• The recent progress.
• Key decisions that have been made.
• Actions to be taken.
• What the effects of the above are on the overall project.

On recent projects, I set up a status report template for my clients:

Download example status report template

So I’d be really interested in getting other people’s opinions. Does it cover the main points or need more? Or do you think it could be cut down? Leave a comment and let me know!

Within the web industry there are loads of places for designers and developers to learn, share and discuss their skills, but there seem to be far fewer resources like this for project managers. With this in mind, I’m going to start publishing articles sharing tips, documents, stories and more all related to the dark art of Project Management.

Hopefully my posts will be of use to existing and upcoming PMs as well as designers and developers who need to head up their own small teams, right through to freelancers who need to wear many hats at once.

Subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter to hear about new posts, and please discuss, critique, and build upon anything you might read here.

Thanks,
Suze x

It was an early start, which was a little tough on a Sunday, but we were hoping to get some nice light in the morning. Unfortunately, it was a bit on the cloudy side. Typical. Still, we walked up to the top and along for quite a distance, and there were some lovely views. And despite my freezing hands, it was really interesting to see how different people composed shots, and also differing post-production styles. A great day overall!

Also take a look at Si Wiffen’s and Rick Harrison’s photos of the day.

The kebabs

Ingredients

The kebabs take quite a lot of separate ingredients in small quantities, but once you’ve bought them they last ages meaning you can make kebabs for a long time to come!

• 500g lamb mince
• Fresh coriander, chopped
• 1 lemon
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 green chillies, chopped and deseeded
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 2tsp grated ginger
• 1tsp cumin
• ½tsp black pepper
• 1tsp salt
• ½tsp turmeric
• ½tsp garam masala

Preparation and cooking

The preparation is surprisingly simple…

1. Squeeze half of the lemon over the mince.
2. Mix together the oil, garlic, ginger, chillies, salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, garam masala, and the rest of the lemon juice.
3. Pour this onto the meat and fold together, adding the chopped coriander.
4. Leave to marinade for as long as you like (the longer, the better).
5. Form into small, fat sausage-like kebabs.
6. Place under a medium grill for 20 minutes.

The chilli sauce

This chilli sauce is great, it’s really hot and serves loads!

Ingredients

This recipe makes use of some pretty standard household ingredients.

• 100ml malt vinegar
• 100ml tomato ketchup
• 100g sugar
• 1tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 3 finely chopped birds-eye chillies

Preparation and cooking

This sauce cooks really quickly and easily…

1. Put the vinegar and sugar in a pan together and bring to the boil over a medium heat.
2. Add the chillies and simmer for 5 minutes to reduce the liquid.
3. Add the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.
4. Simmer and stir until the sauce becomes dark and thick.

Serving

Slice the kebabs and serve in hot pittas with onion, cabbage, cucumber and lettuce. Drizzle your hot chilli sauce over the top and enjoy!

The previous version of SuzannaHaworth.com went live some time ago and was focussed mainly around my photographical adventures, however, I’ve not had as much time as I’d have liked for photography of late…

With this in mind, Harry decided he’d give it a little redesign to allow it to be used for a wider variety of blogging, and also just so it looked a lot nicer.

So, here it is! Please bear in mind that it’s had a pretty drastic overhaul, so a lot of older posts might not look quite right. But have a browse of the archives and why not follow me on Twitter?