As freelance designers one of the many hats we wear is that of being a project manager. Not only do we concern ourselves with being creative but we must have some way of organizing a project that is seamless. There are several tools you can use to keep a project organized. Using these tools on a consistent basis will help you develop the habit of good organizational skills therefore increasing your worth as a freelance designer. I’m still trying to improve my own project management skills but this is an overview of some of the things that can be implemented on every project that I’ve found useful.
Some sort of contact management tool such as an address book is a must. It’s a good idea to keep all of your clients and potential clients in a database for current and future reference. This makes finding their contact information a breeze should you need to contact them for any reason.
This seems like a no-brainer but an email client is your second tool for organization. I like to use Mail.app instead of say, Gmail, because that way I have a copy of all conversation right on my computer. It’s inevitable that Internet connections will be lost and if you store all of your emails in webmail, should you need some information, you won’t be able to access it.
It’s still a habit I haven’t fully embraced myself but I swear I’m trying to get better about it and that’s using a calendar of some sort. There’s nothing worse than having project deadlines missed because you forgot the date it was due or forgot about it altogether. Clients don’t like that sort of thing and neither should you.
Something I learned from a friend of mine was keeping a project binder. You know those old things often referred to as 3-ring binders? Get yourself some and keep hard copies of your project notes, contracts, wireframes, sketches and concept designs. If you have a face to face meeting with a client you can bring it along to show just how organized you really are. They also make for great reference material for later projects.
There are, I’m sure, several project management tools out there but I’d venture to guess the biggie is Basecamp from the folks at 37signals. You can set-up a project within the application and assign a unique username and password to each person working on the project. Instead of trying to maintain and manage multiple project emails, you can do it all within Basecamp. It also allows for To-Do Lists, Project Milestones, File Storage, etc. A nice thing about this type of tool is that you can notify anyone involved with the project via email when something new has been added. Basecamp is a fee-based solution for Project Management but there is an Open-Source solution available and it’s called ActiveCollab. It’s still in beta but offers many of the same things Basecamp does. The only thing I’ve noticed it doesn’t have so far that Basecamp does is a Writeboard and a Calendar.
One of the things that helps keep me organized is folder structure. I took a tip from the folks over at Lifeclever about organizing folders on my desktop. I have and utilize the following folders for project management:
My most used folder is “3. current projects,” which I have sub-folders set-up inside to further organize what I’m working on.
Example Folder Structure for 3. current projects:
As you can see this really keeps things consistent and organized. No matter the client, I always know where to look for what. Plus, once a project is completed it’s quite easy to create a CD or Zip file to give the client at the end of their project.
Just make sure part of your digital project management includes archiving your client files. Whether you back them up on an external hard drive or burn a CD/DVD make sure you have some form of the work outside your computer. If you back your files up to CDs/DVDs get yourself another 3-ring binder to store them in and label them with the client name and project date.
Do you have some tips you utilize in your own project management workflow? Do you think they would be useful to others? Let us know and leave a comment.
My name’s Jen; I’m a cynical, sarcastic, ex-drummer who is fond of dark humor. I've held way too many factory & retail jobs but finally found my calling one Christmas holiday in a dark, musty basement. I am now a CSS & XHTML web standards looney and can be found daily—when I’m not at my Mac—at the local fair-trade coffee shop buying an iced-soy mocha no matter the temperature.
I am also the owner of Pop Stalin Design specializing in CSS & XHTML web design as well as custom WordPress themes.
[…] Jen at Pop Stalin also gave some good advice on organizing projects. […]
I like some of your ideas, specially the bit about “It’s not all digital”. For more examples on different approaches to project folder structures, have a look at How to create a folder structure for your project documentation.
Project management is the key problem for lots of small companies.