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:
Implementation of software, like Hubspot. 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 , being: 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
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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 👇
Explore the use cases for running projects in Coda: