the critical path to project management bliss best practices for event professionals
TRANSCRIPT
The Ultimate Critical Path to Project Management Nirvana
Best Practices for Event Professionals
by danberger
I Believe…
• Good planning makes for great experiences.
• Every experience is an opportunity for…
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to fight for a cause to connect people to market a brand
About Me
1990’s 2000’s 2010’s
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About Social Tables
Diagrams Guest Lists Seating Charts
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About Social Tables
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Learning Objective #1: Understand Project Management
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Learning Objective #2: Save You Time
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Learning Objective #3: Get You Excited
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Agenda
1. Hear From You
2. Project Management Overview
3. Getting Things Done
4. Technology Solutions
5. Advanced Lessons
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Before We Start…
What do you want me to cover?
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Project Management vs Product Management
Project Management
The discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals.
Examples:
– Planning an event
– Fundraising toward a goal
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Product Management
The lifecycle that deals with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product
Examples:
– Launching the iPad mini
– Adding another package line
Project Management Makes You Look Good.Looking Good Leads to Repeat Business and Increased Trust.
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Project Management Makes Your Organized So You Can Sleep at Night
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My Rules for Getting Things Done, inspired by David Allen
• Set weekly goals and communicate them to your team.
• Create a daily to do list.
• Do it NOW if it takes less than 2 minutes.
• Get it on paper to get it OFF your mind.
• Six “levels of focus”
– From Runway to 50k
• Delegate (more on that later)
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The Project Definition Document
• Project Overview
– Why are we even doing this?
• Objectives
– What are we trying to do?
• Scope
– What does this project entail? What does it NOT entail?
• Assumptions and risks
– What events are you taking for granted?
– What are you concerned about?
• Approach
– How are you attacking the project?
• Organization
– Who are the stakeholders and what are their roles?
• Signature page
• Initial effort, cost, and duration estimates
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The Gantt Chart
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TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS THAT HELP
Introducing….
Lifecycle Overview
Relationship Management
Qualification
Proposal
Project Management
Schedule
Contracts
Task Management
Outsource
Communication
Time Tracking
H.R.
Follow-up
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Relationship Management: Salesforce
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Completely customizeablebut expensive
Helps you track activities
Project Management: FreeCRM
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Free, web-based contact relationship management
Qualification: Google Docs Checklist
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Use Google Docs – a collaborative app to create a checklist for qualifying your prospects
Completely customizeablebut expensive
Helps you track activities
Proposal: BidSketch
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Upload Word and PDF proposals, send them to customers, and track when they view it
Project Management: Streak
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Create folders for your emails and processes within those folders to track progress.
Project Management: Smartsheet
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Web-based software to help you create ganttcharts and map out parallel workflows
Schedule: Google Calendar
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Web-based calendars make it easy to view your teammates appointments
Pro: Connects to Google Tasks
Project Management: Asana
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FREE social task management makes it easy to assign tasks to people involved in a project
Task Management: Google Tasks
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Tasks right inside your gmail.
Ideal for linking emails to tasks.
Time Tracking: Harvest
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Mobile and web time tracking for your vendors, contractors, part-time staff, etc.
Time Tracking: RescueTime
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Quietly monitors what you’re working on (down to the website) and gives you a weekly productivity report
Contracts: LegalZoom
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Very affordable boilerplate documents for all of your legal needs
Contracts: DocuSign
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Makes digital signatures a breeze to end the days of scanning and back-and-forth emails
Outsource: Elance
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Place job posts for any work that you might need to get done.
Some projects are $20. 100% safe with many American contractors.
Communication: Dropbox
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Virtual share drive makes sending back and forth emails very easy.
Communication: Evernote
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Cloud-based solution that let’s you take notes from any device.
Keeps you organized and easy to learn.
HR: 15-Five
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Your direct reports spend 15 minutes writing a weekly report and you spend 5 minutes reviewing it.
Great content for your one-on-one meetings
Follow-up: MailChimp
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Stay in touch with your stakeholders regularly by sending them email updates
Delegating
• Strive to be a jack of all trades and a master of nothing
• Hire people smarter than you (AKA specialists)
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1 • Place a monetary value on your time.
2 • Ask “is it possible to delegate part or all of this task?”
3 • Train others to do your work (ongoing)
4 • Outsource to virtual assistants/interns
5 • Set expectations, priorities and deadlines
6 • Accept that delegating is a two-way street
7 • Take responsibility for the outcomes. The buck stops with you.
8 • Give them ownership and accept the fact there’s a risk
9 • Explain the importance of the task to get buy-in
10 • Regularly check-in to motivate and ensure it meets your expectations
Agile
1. Work gets delivered on a regular schedule (e.g. weekly).
– This helps prioritize and split tasks up, so that nothing is "half finished" at the end of a week.
2. Delivering projects regularly encourages getting feedback quickly and improving quality.
– This also makes clients feel important and not have “buyer’s remorse”
3. Agile teams are self-organized
– Each member of the team has a role and helps decide who does what.
4. Agile teams are able to handle personnel change
– There is little risk for lost knowledge when people collaborate
5. Agile teams are self-improving
– They hold regular "retrospectives" to determine how they can improve their process.
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Agile Product Management: PivotalTracker
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PivotalTracker assigns points to tasks and tracks a project’s velocity.
Completed tasks are placed for review by managers.
The three columns represent the schedule. From left to right: immediate, horizon, future
Staying In Touch
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danberger
(917) 359-7757
(877) 9-SEAT-ME
http://www.linkedin.com/in/danberger