When it comes to creative potential within project management, one of the main challenges that a project team faces is making sure that there is enough leeway to remain creative whilst not falling into a state of creative chaos. Fortunately there are many solutions that can help you find the perfect balance for creative projects. However, if you want to choose the best ones you really need to know what you should be looking for and why.
What is creative project management?
Creative project management is the processes involved in the overseeing, facilitating and coordination of any projects that fall in the “creative” business area. They usually result in the creation of visual or textual content. The team involved in this may include artists, designers, copywriters or marketers and they are usually led by a creative project manager. They will be involved in things like task management and resource allocation and all the other tasks associated with the role, as you might learn during a project manager course. Where their role might vary is that they will probably focus on the creative potential of the project and use a design studio to do much of their work, whilst ensuring that all of the administrative tasks associated with the project are completed.
Phases of creative project management
Many of the principles of traditional project management can be used for creative project management as well, and can be broken down into the following four categories:
- Project initiation
- Project planning
- Project execution
- Project sign-off
There are some essential steps that creatives should take with their project management that will help to streamline all of the phases of the project yet still unleash their creative potential:
- Delegating tasks – one of a project manager’s core responsibilities is making sure that all the project tasks are completed on time. The right software will help you keep on track of this. When it comes to creative projects, you may want to organise your teams through different boards but keep everything under the umbrella of the project.
- Manage the creative process – knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your team is essential to creating a healthy creative project, and this is something that can take time to build up. It can be a good idea to ensure that the company invests in creative project management tools that will help with resource planning and agency time tracking.
- Keep an eye on the financials – whilst managing your creative team is very important, keeping an eye on your budget is essential. Again, good software will help you keep track of this.
- Optimise your planning – whilst the most significant part of the project may be the sign-off phase you should also concentrate on planning.
Creative project management software
With direct correlations between software for project management and successful projects it’s important to make sure you have the right software. For creative projects you may want to decide between cloud-based solutions, on-premise solutions and hybrid solutions.
The key things to compare are:
- Interface
- Features – think about the minimum that you will require
- Pricing – it isn’t always easy to compare one product to another if they have very different features but it is worth noting prices will really vary. If there are products that offer a free trial it may be worth looking into as this will give you a better understanding of what it can do.
