Managing projects can be difficult, depending on your workload, the details of the project and the people that are working with you on the project. Having dealt with smaller and large scale projects, we’ve put together a list of some helpful tips to manage projects in the future.

Set Realistic Expectations to Manage Projects

Setting realistic expectations for us as a digital marketing agency means making sure we can deliver on a project with a client. For us, we specialize in web development and online marketing, so before a client even signs a contract with us, we have to do a little digging to find out if we can meet the client’s demands. This is particularly true for larger projects, like some of the shopping cart websites we’ve developed. We try to look at every business’s website as an individual experience. This means that a potential client gives us the scope of what their business goals and needs are. Seeing what they want to achieve we ask ourselves, do the clients’ needs match our capabilities as a web development and marketing team?

Organize the Project Details

The first step is to organize all the details of the project. This first step is the most important because all of the details will be identified from the beginning so you and your team aren’t caught off guard by any unnecessary problems. For us, as a Digital Marketing Agency, the projects that we deal with are primarily based on developing websites for our clients. Once a client signs a contract with us for web development, we organize all of the variables that we need to consider before doing any development.

This helps our writer and developer figure out how to write and build the pages that we are going to create. Knowing from the beginning what our client’s needs help us when choosing a layout that is specific to their goals. Since we deal with countless industries and businesses, it’s crucial for us to be as organized as possible with a project from the beginning.

Delegate the Project Properly

Use the details of the project to guide your decision making when it comes to choosing the right people on your team to be given the appropriate task. Understanding what strengths and weaknesses your team has, you’ll be able to find tasks that you can delegate to your team, without worrying about whether or not the tasks can be completed. According to Life Hack “make sure each team member is clear on what is expected from them and when.

Encourage them to ask questions to clarify anything that may be uncertain, and to come to you whenever something seems to be out of place or going awry. Clear and open communication is mission-critical.” As the project manager, communication is imperative throughout the project. Checking in on your team from time to time, to see where they are and any problems that they need help with, can also help push a project along.

Create Proper Deadlines to Manage Projects

A project can fall apart at the seams if proper deadlines aren’t put into place. For us, we find that flexible deadlines work best when putting together a website. Since we work closely with clients, asking them to approve the content that we write and the website that we build, we know that oftentimes clients can hold us up. Earlier this year we had a client keep the content for months before doing anything with it. That means that although we had done a photoshoot, wrote the content and even started building a layout, with the content approved, their website would’ve been finished in a matter of a few days.

So although we had a deadline in mind, sometimes clients can hold us up from moving to the next phase of a project. But as a team, we try to make sure that we’re at least on the same page with where we want to be by certain deadlines, even if we are flexible enough to change those deadlines.

With realistic expectations, organization, delegating tasks and creating proper deadlines to finish the project, you’ll be able to successfully complete any type of project. Just follow our tips closely for the best results. Interested in seeing some of the projects we’ve tackled so far, check out our Portfolio.