Episode #135 - Project Management Big And Small, with Dee Teal - a podcast by WordPress business specialist Troy Dean featuring Seth Godin, Michael Gerber, Guy Kawasaki, Joe Pulizzi, Andrew Warner, James Schramko, Brian Clark, Ed Dale, Dan Norris and many more.
from 2017-08-17T01:58
Watch the video of this podcast here.
Dee’s been in the web world since the early 2000s and has done everything from web development, community organization, training, blogging, and even running her own freelance business. She truly is the Web Princess!
She joined Human Made recently and made the transition from independent business owner to project manager on their team. A lot of her friends worked at Human Made before she joined their ranks, and she’s happy to have done so. On today’s show she explains why she made the transition and how it’s been a good fit for her.
She also tells Cath about a big project she and her Human Made team are currently working on. Right now they are creating a new CMS and newsroom management workflow based on WordPress for a big newspaper publishing company. It incorporates the client’s different workflows, so it is unique to this company. There is a massive amount of customization, so much so it'll nearly be unrecognizable from WordPress at the end.
It’s such a large project that Human Made will spend nearly a year on it. They started last October in 2016) and the site will go live in August of 2017.
Since she’s working on such a large project right now, Cath and Dee segued into the keys to project management (whether the project is big or small). Dee explains one key is to remember you are always starting from nothing and creating from there, whether your project is small or large or in-between.
But when you’re working on a large-scale project there are some things that are different. For example, you have to remember you are coding for performance ( you may have to code for a particular web host that allows some types of code and not others).
You also must have really strong revision control and processes so no one is tripping each other up and breaking things that have already been coded.
But the advantage in large-scale project management is you can build in teams and multiple people will be working on the same pieces; it's a much more agile and flexible process than if one person was building a web site by themselves.
At about the 15 minute mark Dee gives 3 pieces of advice based on her own personal experience:
1. Stop being scared of the client.
An important piece of any working relationship is transparency, be transparent with your client while staying in consistent, regular but not constant contact with client.
2. At the top of the project analyze what you are doing.
See the big picture and the parts that are needed to create that big picture. Then have conversations with clients around those pieces explaining what you're doing and why.
get to the bottom of what the project is that you are building and doing so in consultation with the client and the people using the project. If you do, you'll build what they want, rather than what you think they need.
3. Do the stuff that is going to help build their business value first.
You're winning yourself over to the client in many ways when you do. Even with a standard WordPress project you can break down all the parts you need.
So when creating a project make a backlog (which is just a list of all the things that are needed), and then use other tools to organize that backlog. You always want to be working towards something you can show the clients that is working so you create easy wins and valuable milestones, and you're partnering with your client rather than creating an adversary who "gets in the way".
Cath and Dee finish up with tools Dee recommends, including the one you can start with now, and Dee's takeaway on the most important thing necessary for good project management. Join us for that and more on this edition of WP Elevation!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Further episodes of WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast