Hi,

I wonder if anyone could enlighten me on the difference between a Web Producer and a Web Project Manager?

Thanks
Nathalie

Hi Natalie

I work in this field, and have attached a brief outline of both roles that I developed for a client a few months back...

Producer

Producers tend to sit within the creative studio. They have coding and design skills, so a hands-on understanding of creative and development, plus actually ‘produce’ site maps and wireframes. They also co-ordinate customer research and user testing. In addition, they:

• Have a working knowledge of HTML, programming languages, Photoshop etc, but technical aspects of the project will be done by a developer/programmer and design elements will be undertaken by a designer
• Understand the implications of design/development requests with the ability to set accurate production timelines
• Understand usability/accessibility/IA issues and in some instances create sitemaps and wireframes to illustrate site structure
• Understand the latest industry best practice of website and form-based interfaces
• Manage small teams
• Co-ordinate the quality control process
• Co-ordinate budgets
• Develop process and best practice between teams (development/design)
• Strong understanding of Technical & functionality
• Manage Design & production in terms of quality and alignment with project specifications

Producers can be client facing, although not always, and tend to sit within the studio environment. Where there is client contact, they also manage client expectations.

Project Manager

Project managers sit between account managers and the project team and have a comprehensive understanding of the web development cycle.

They are fanatical organisers, have a full overview of the project and are responsible for all key elements of it; leadership, risk management and working progress/tracking; always with an eye on commercial requirements/restraints:

• Identify project objectives and success criteria and communicate clearly to internal teams and client contacts
• Lead the project team to define scope of the project and continuously keep teams updated on change requests and implications
• Produce standard project documentation; project plans, scoping and specification documents/reporting tools
• Liase with the client to obtain sign-off of all key project elements; specifications, concepts, prototypes etc
• Track objectives and provide regular status reports (client and internal)
• Highlight risks at every stage of the project and identify solutions as appropriate
• Manage accurate costing process and budgets
• Plan resource requirements and recruit multi-disciplinary resources as required throughout the project lifecycle
• Implement process control, project management methodology (eg Prince2, Agile) and best practice
• Understand the technical project elements
• Manage the quality control process

Hope that helps!

Sarah

On 14:37:34 10 February 2008 NathalieVu-Van-Toan wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I wonder if anyone could enlighten me on the
>difference between a Web Producer and a Web Project
>Manager?
>
>Thanks
>
>Nathalie

Hi Sarah,

Thanks that was really helpful! I am actually recruting (hence the question) and I am now really stuck because I'm looking to filling a position for both profiles!

Yes I figured that out (went on your website). Will do and thanks for your contact details.

Thanks again Sarah

On 09:18:52 11 February 2008 Munch wrote:
>No problem ...glad it helped.
>
>I'm actually a recruiter (but not the pushy type) so if I
>can help at all do shout. |
>www.aquent.com
>
>Sarah