Do you have one? If you don’t, your life as a designer most likely looked like mine did 2 years ago. I work full-time for a giant religion-based non-profit in Oklahoma City. My project manager and I didn’t have a system with which to funnel the jobs we were getting, from all different directions, at all different times of the day, from all different types of folks. It was a disorganized, broken system of folks making requests of us which then led to paper fumbling and evasion techniques. Not good news if your goal is to gain respect for what you do within the organization. None of our internal clients respected our time or our work which made us feel even further underwater. Our current “system” added a lot of unneeded stress and frustration to our day.
Does this sound familiar? Recognizing we had a problem, we scheduled a meeting (treating ourselves like one of our internal clients). We asked ourselves, “What would we love to know before starting on a project?” Then, we made a wish list of info that would add clarity, alleviate stress and channel the work. Doing so would make the work easier to plan and complete, on time and under budget. This, in turn, would gain us the respect we needed as professionals that would allow us to feel good about the work we do, improving the end result of that work and making ecstatic internal clients. A process and form that gathers the raw information we need to what we are paid to do for our employer would, at the same time, educate our internal clients to our needs before a project begins. After working with us, they would be able to more accurately target, plan and budget for the marketing materials they needed to promote their particular event. I’ve attached a PDF of the result of our meeting. We’ve been using it for every project big and small that comes to my project managers desk. We use the form during our internal client project meetings and fill it out as we walk thought the questions the form asks. The clarity it has provided is incredible. It solved all of the challenges we would face as we worked to get a project out the door. If you don’t have a process, please learn from our mistake. Download the dynamic PDF and modify it to suit your specific needs. You’ll breathe easier, produce better work and sleep a lot better.
Does this sound familiar? Recognizing we had a problem, we scheduled a meeting (treating ourselves like one of our internal clients). We asked ourselves, “What would we love to know before starting on a project?” Then, we made a wish list of info that would add clarity, alleviate stress and channel the work. Doing so would make the work easier to plan and complete, on time and under budget. This, in turn, would gain us the respect we needed as professionals that would allow us to feel good about the work we do, improving the end result of that work and making ecstatic internal clients. A process and form that gathers the raw information we need to what we are paid to do for our employer would, at the same time, educate our internal clients to our needs before a project begins. After working with us, they would be able to more accurately target, plan and budget for the marketing materials they needed to promote their particular event. I’ve attached a PDF of the result of our meeting. We’ve been using it for every project big and small that comes to my project managers desk. We use the form during our internal client project meetings and fill it out as we walk thought the questions the form asks. The clarity it has provided is incredible. It solved all of the challenges we would face as we worked to get a project out the door. If you don’t have a process, please learn from our mistake. Download the dynamic PDF and modify it to suit your specific needs. You’ll breathe easier, produce better work and sleep a lot better.
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