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Digital Agency Playbook
A playbook for agencies
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A project is a set body of work with a start and end date with a goal that you're hoping to achieve. For digital agencies, this often comes in the form of designing, developing, and promoting a website.
Some other common projects:
New client onboarding.
Implementation of software, like Hubspot.
Building an app.
Running a multi-channel, time-sensitive campaign.

The unique thing about running projects as a digital agency is that the success is split between an internal and an external company. It's a partnership between two ーpotentially very different ーorganizations, which means that it's harder to align your people, processes, and technology.
For example, who is leading the project? Well, the answer is both sides, often a Project Manager on the agency side and the a client point of contact / champion on the other. Who's project management tool do you use? Maybe you've been invite into the client's Jira instance, maybe you try to build a bridge in-between your two teams, perhaps you track internally and send project updates over email.
While the high-level flow of projects is outlined in
Workflows
⁠
, being:
💜 Potential
🖋 In Proposal
🔖 Soft Book
🚜 Active
✋ On Hold
🚀 Complete
⁠
⁠
Each project, in the 🚜 Active status, goes through a series of steps to make it a success. Depending on the size of the project and your verbiage, some call these tasks or milestones. In generally looks something like this.
Project Template Timeline
1
Kickoff
Research
Design
Development
QA Testing
Launch Communication
Set Live!
Post-mortum
Apr 2024
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May 2024
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Jun 2024
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Jul 2024
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Aug 2024
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Sep 2024
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Oct 2024
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Nov 2024
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Month
TodayFit
⁠

Project Template List
1
Title
Description
Start
End
1
Kickoff
Align on who's involved, what's involved. Write a project brief.
5/3/2020
5/14/2020
2
Research
Dig into the user problems, needs, and jobs to be done that they are trying to achieve.
5/8/2020
5/14/2020
3
Design
Understand the user flows and start designing wireframes and mockups of what the product will look like. If you're prototyping, there may be user testing in this phase.
5/13/2020
5/18/2020
4
Development
Take the designs (may come with front end code already) and begin writing the logic and process of the product. Spinning up any infrastructure that's needed.
5/11/2020
5/22/2020
5
QA Testing
Ensure that things are running as they should be testing common user scenarios as well as running scripts to make sure the code is working well.
5/19/2020
5/25/2020
6
Launch Communication
Work with the client to decide the communication plan to their customer base and the world.
5/20/2020
5/31/2020
7
Set Live!
Press the button 🔘 to launch it!
5/28/2020
6/3/2020
8
Post-mortum
Circle up with both sides to see what went well and what can improve (hopefully) next time.
6/2/2020
6/9/2020
There are no rows in this table
⁠
This is a pretty "waterfall" that aligns more with a System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) way of going about building digital products. Many agencies have switched to an agile/ scrum/ kanban methodology of development. In that method, agencies work in iterative chunks. Development doesn't wait for months to get the work, they prototype often and early.
This type of work is visualized a bit differently 👇
Kanban Board
Pending
2
In Progress
1
On Hold
0
Completed
2
Product Marketing
Assignee
Elly Chao
Due Date
Nov 11, 2019
Quality Assurance
Assignee
Mallika Ranjan
Due Date
Nov 20, 2019
Engineering Development
Assignee
Adam Ginzberg
Due Date
Sep 16, 2019
Design
Assignee
JS
John Scrugham
Due Date
Sep 12, 2019
Research
Assignee
JS
John Scrugham
Due Date
Sep 1, 2019
⁠


Explore the use cases for running projects in Coda:

⁠
Project Reviews
Weekly status roundup at Four Kitchens
⁠
⁠
⁠
Design Research
Huge's client research bible
⁠
⁠
⁠
Client Collab Doc
Meeting notes and shared to dos
⁠
⁠








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