I'm halfway through Ashley Friedlein Web Production Management. At last a book which addresses my application of project management.

However I still feel left out. Neither Jessica Burdman in her book nor Ashley mention my position of a Web Production Manager amongst a long list of titles in the industry.

So it leads me to ask the question - how do other web development companies running scores of simultaneous projects co-ordinate the pressure on staff resources, and develop, implement and improve the processes necessary for the web development cycle to be undertaken efficiently. How do they ensure that projects that run into problems are attended to in a timely fashion. How do they ensure that the 3 days allocated for QA is not eroded..

If I could get these answers I will then do what I really love and go back to being an information architect.

I, too, am reading your new book, which I find is excellent. Again, I am in a similar situation to Neil, and am wrestling with my role (exactly!?) as a production director and what I can expect from my project managers, i.e. what is reasonable. I must make recommendations to my employer about growing the department and what team members to add, such as a "planning/ scheduling" manager/department. I am intrigued by the role of "Producer" in your reply to Neil and how that person would interact with a Project Manager (what would the division of labour be?).

I started out with a degree in TV and have a "creative" background on which to draw. Forever the dilema for me is which model to follow: advertising agencies, software companies, TV production companies (independent style - or- network). What is the best, most efficient way to set up this business? A big question I know, and I think many managers everywhere are making it up as they go--likely dependent on their previous experience in another industry.

On 15:29:59 27 November 2000 ashley wrote:
>I'm sorry that you feel left out Neil - I'll make sure
>that 'Web Production Manager' is in there as a role if it
>comes to a reprint.
>
>It was quite hard to try and write a book that was as
>general as possible so as to be applicable to a range of
>people versus ensuring that it contained content that was
>specific enough to be of real use in peoples' professional
>lives.
>
>Your point does, however, raise an interesting challenge
>that many web agencies and companies are facing concerning
>the exact nature of roles and responsibilities on web
>projects. At pres.co / Foresight the size of the projects
>we are now working on means that we have actually split
>out 3 distinct roles:
>
>1. Planning - a team that sits centrally and whose role it
>is to co-ordinate internal resourcing across a wide range
>of projects
>
>2. Project Managers - their focus is on ensuring that
>project plans, critical paths, milestones, costs etc. are
>properly created and monitored. The Project Managers also
>work with the Planning department to ensure the correct
>resources are deployed on projects as required. The
>Project Managers essentially own the responsibility for
>ensuring the quality of the project management is as good
>as possible.
>
>3. Producers - they focus on working with the designers,
>programmers etc. to create the end solution including
>creating and giving briefs, collating content, testing and
>such 'hands on' work. The Producers own the responsibility
>of ensuring that the quality of the end solution is
>optimised.
>
>Of course (as you imply) things don't always run perfectly
>smoothly so there has to be some flexibility in
>resourcing, roles and responsibilities. By the sounds of
>things you are doing all 3 roles when, as you say, your
>specialist skill is in information architecture? We are
>fortunate in that we are large enough to have people that
>are dedicated to doing just this.

Glad you’re enjoying the book. I notice it is ‘Temporarily out of stock’ on the Amazon.co.uk web site which I think must be a good sign – a few more Christmas stockings with a square bulge… ;)

Your message poses quite a challenge and I agree that many managers are tackling it by making it up as they go. This isn’t really a web specific thing, I believe, more a management issue: how do you successfully grow and build a company and team of people in an immature industry where there are a lot of opportunities but few precedents or standards and not a huge pool of experienced talent to draw on?

I too started out in TV and so come from the ‘creative’ background. This teaches you a lot about being resourceful and ‘making it happen’ even in the face of great adversity. It may teach you about being organised but it doesn’t necessarily teach you much about process management or the tools and techniques of project management in the same way that software project managers are used to. I have lived through the growth of pres.co (now called Wheel, by the way) from a web and multimedia agency of 50 people 3 years ago to an integrated digital communications organisation of almost 400 now. All of which is to say that we too have often grappled with precisely the same challenges as you mention.

I think the key things to look at are:

1. Your company’s commercial strategy / business model. Depending on how you are funded and who is driving the business, you may be aiming to expand extremely fast on the back of funding with an IPO or trade sale in mind or you might be trying to grow organically and profitably. The change in the markets means that the latter is currently increasingly popular, which at least gives you a little more time in ensuring you get the right people.

2. Your business proposition. This is probably the most important thing to consider. How is your business proposition different from any other companies? Why do they choose you and not someone else? How are you going to evolve this over time? If your clients buy into you because of your creative talents then you are likely to tend towards more of an advertising agency / TV production company model. If they buy into you because of your technical and project management capabilities then perhaps you should structure your team more around a software company model. Maybe you claim to do both and this is the strength of your proposition? Increasingly, I would say that this is a difficult proposition to uphold in the market unless a) you get to scale fast i.e. you are a big fish in the big pond b) you are already a big player with an all round proposition c) the local market you operate in is still relatively immature d) you are targeting small to medium size companies who really want a ‘one stop shop’ solution off one supplier.

3. Type of clients / Industry sector / Types of project. This will tend to be a result of points 1 and 2 above, I guess. Depending on the kind of work you do and who you do it for, you will need different degrees of depth of skill in your team. For example, I have worked mostly in the media and financial services sectors. Not surprisingly, the clients’ process and project management skill requirements from you in the FS arena are much greater than in the media sector where creativity. marketing and content are paramount.

You should try and make sure you employ and keep experienced people at a senior level who represent the best of each of the worlds of advertising, TV and software (or other industries as appropriate for your proposition) and who have also had web experience. Each has something very important to bring, but speak very different languages. Despite my creative background, I would actually spend my money on top quality technical people who can also think creatively than the other way round. Most advertising agencies that I can think of that have tried to do ‘new media’ have failed painfully. Most now have entirely separate business units to provide digital production capabilities.

As far as Producers vs. Project Managers go, I would make the point that Project Managers are a relatively recent specialist skill addition to our company, the reality being that until your projects reach a certain complexity and budget it is hard to justify (to the client and internally) having a person dedicated to helping manage the project. A few years ago the Producer would also be the project manager. By introducing the Project Manager to take care of more of the administrative elements of project management (critical paths, budgets, status reports, running meetings etc.), this has freed up the Producers to spend more time with the designers, programmers and content creators crafting a superior end product.

There is, as you imply, some crossover between the Producer and Project Manager roles, particularly in the following areas:

· Initial project definition and initiation
· Resource planning and allocation
· Defining and monitoring risks, issues, assumptions
· Change control and impact assessment

These are key areas where collaboration is vital to ensuring that everyone is communicating properly and working towards a joint vision and solution.

So, no simple answer I’m afraid, but one thing is certain: even if you don’t or cannot employ skilled and experienced project managers you should definitely invest in training your existing team in project management skills – ‘creative’ types have to come to terms with the fact that this is also an IS project and ‘technical’ types have to realise that this is also a marketing and brand project. Employ people who recognise this and respect others in the team for their specialist skills. Such a multi-disciplinary team can then work together to create the best solutions within the guiding framework of a clear project management process.