Question

Topic: Strategy

Project Tracking For 5-person In-house Agency

Posted by Anonymous on 9/29/2009 at 4:17 PM ET 50 Points
I manage a 5-person in-house marketing agency for a tech company. We are responsible for a variety of marketing communications programs, including PR, direct mail, advertising, events, e-marketing, and web.

Currently on staff we have a web manager, marcom specialist, graphic designer, marketing database manager, and myself as the department head. We do not currently use a project tracking tool, nor do we have a dedicated resource that can act as a traffic/production coordinator or help us administer various project task lists.

Without these things in place, I'm finding that things are slipping through the cracks and quality is, in some cases, being jeopardized. There are just so many small details within all the tasks and subtasks and most of us keep everything in our heads. We do meet once a week to discuss projects, status reports, etc.

I wanted to find out if anyone had ideas on how effective project tracking & administration can occur in a 5-person team -- with many projects going on at once -- without any type of production/traffic manager to help. Are there some software tools out there that are suitable for a group my size? Do we just need to get more serious about using project checklists so we don't miss things?(with output so high, we're hardly finding time to stop and create actual checklists). Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 9/29/2009 at 4:33 PM Member
    Try this out:
    https://www.creativemanagerpro.com/

    We used it for a little while, but eventually we developed something in-house.
  • Posted by mktgcbb on 9/29/2009 at 4:46 PM Member
    I feel your pain. I think part of the confusion also stems from owning so many different aspects of the marketing function--it's not like you just own the graphics department or the web department. We are in a similar situation. I didn't have any budget to spend on such a tool, here's how we manage it.

    As much as I hate to create paperwork for anyone, we require everyone to fill out a brief. This ensures that they've thought the project through. We review it, ask for clarification and accept or reject it. Then a job ticket is created and it is put on our job tracking sheet. This sheet is just an excel spreadsheet that lists the projects and descriptions, job owner, date received and key deliverables, person the job is assigned to, estimated time to complete, notes, etc. Whatever we need to track -- the actual spreadsheet evolved for some time before it got to its current state. Each week the team meets to go over outstanding projects. We discuss what is on time, what is in jeopardy and any issues. We color code all jobs (needs materials, in approval, at the printer, etc). It's not perfect but it has helped us stay on track and doesn't cost us anything.
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