The critical path to project management bliss best practices for event professionals
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This document provides an overview of project management best practices for event professionals. It discusses the importance of good planning and using every experience as an opportunity. The author believes in fighting for causes, connecting people, and marketing brands through event planning. The document then provides information about the author and Social Tables, an event planning technology company. It outlines three learning objectives: understanding project management, saving time, and getting excited. The rest of the document discusses project management tools, templates, and strategies like creating a project definition document, using a Gantt chart, delegating tasks, and using Agile project management. Technology solutions are presented for each stage of project management.
The critical path to project management bliss best practices for event professionals
- 1. The Ultimate Critical Path to Project Management Nirvana Best Practices for Event Professionals by danberger
- 2. I Believe… • Good planning makes for great experiences. • Every experience is an opportunity for… to fight for a cause to connect people to market a brand 2
- 3. About Me 1990’s 2000’s 2010’s 3
- 4. About Social Tables Diagrams Guest Lists Seating Charts 4
- 5. About Social Tables 5
- 6. Learning Objective #1: Understand Project Management 6
- 7. Learning Objective #2: Save You Time 7
- 8. Learning Objective #3: Get You Excited 8
- 9. Agenda 1. Hear From You 2. Project Management Overview 3. Getting Things Done 4. Technology Solutions 5. Advanced Lessons 9
- 10. Before We Start… What do you want me to cover? 10
- 11. Project Management vs Product Management Project Management Product Management The discipline of planning, The lifecycle that deals with the organizing, motivating, and planning, forecasting, or marketing controlling resources to achieve of a product specific goals. Examples: Examples: – Launching the iPad mini – Planning an event – Adding another package line – Fundraising toward a goal 11
- 12. Project Management Makes You Look Good. Looking Good Leads to Repeat Business and Increased Trust. 12
- 13. Project Management Makes Your Organized So You Can Sleep at Night 13
- 14. My Rules for Getting Things Done, inspired by David Allen • Set weekly goals and communicate them to your team. • Create a daily to do list. • Do it NOW if it takes less than 2 minutes. • Get it on paper to get it OFF your mind. • Six “levels of focus” – From Runway to 50k • Delegate (more on that later) 14
- 15. The Project Definition Document • Project Overview – Why are we even doing this? • Objectives – What are we trying to do? • Scope – What does this project entail? What does it NOT entail? • Assumptions and risks – What events are you taking for granted? – What are you concerned about? • Approach – How are you attacking the project? • Organization – Who are the stakeholders and what are their roles? • Signature page • Initial effort, cost, and duration estimates 15
- 16. The Gantt Chart 16
- 18. Lifecycle Overview Relationship Management Follow-up Qualification H.R. Proposal Project Time Tracking Management Communication Schedule Outsource Contracts Task Management 18
- 19. Relationship Management: Salesforce Completely customizeable but expensive Helps you track activities 19
- 20. Project Management: FreeCRM Free, web-based contact relationship management 20
- 21. Qualification: Google Docs Checklist Use Google Docs – a Completely customizeable collaborative app to but expensive create a checklist for qualifying your prospects Helps you track activities 21
- 22. Proposal: BidSketch Upload Word and PDF proposals, send them to customers, and track when they view it 22
- 23. Project Management: Streak Create folders for your emails and processes within those folders to track progress. 23
- 24. Project Management: Smartsheet Web-based software to help you create gantt charts and map out parallel workflows 24
- 25. Schedule: Google Calendar Web-based calendars make it easy to view your teammates appointments Pro: Connects to Google Tasks 25
- 26. Project Management: Asana FREE social task management makes it easy to assign tasks to people involved in a project 26
- 27. Task Management: Google Tasks Tasks right inside your gmail. Ideal for linking emails to tasks. 27
- 28. Time Tracking: Harvest Mobile and web time tracking for your vendors, contractors, part-time staff, etc. 28
- 29. Time Tracking: RescueTime Quietly monitors what you’re working on (down to the website) and gives you a weekly productivity report 29
- 30. Contracts: LegalZoom Very affordable boilerplate documents for all of your legal needs 30
- 31. Contracts: DocuSign Makes digital signatures a breeze to end the days of scanning and back-and- forth emails 31
- 32. Outsource: Elance Place job posts for any work that you might need to get done. Some projects are $20. 100% safe with many American contractors. 32
- 33. Communication: Dropbox Virtual share drive makes sending back and forth emails very easy. 33
- 34. Communication: Evernote Cloud-based solution that let’s you take notes from any device. Keeps you organized and easy to learn. 34
- 35. HR: 15-Five Your direct reports spend 15 minutes writing a weekly report and you spend 5 minutes reviewing it. Great content for your one-on-one meetings 35
- 36. Follow-up: MailChimp Stay in touch with your stakeholders regularly by sending them email updates 36
- 37. Delegating 1 • Place a monetary value on your time. 2 • Ask “is it possible to delegate part or all of this task?” 3 • Train others to do your work (ongoing) 4 • Outsource to virtual assistants/interns 5 • Set expectations, priorities and deadlines 6 • Accept that delegating is a two-way street 7 • Take responsibility for the outcomes. The buck stops with you. 8 • Give them ownership and accept the fact there’s a risk 9 • Explain the importance of the task to get buy-in 10 • Regularly check-in to motivate and ensure it meets your expectations • Strive to be a jack of all trades and a master of nothing • Hire people smarter than you (AKA specialists) 37
- 38. Agile 1. Work gets delivered on a regular schedule (e.g. weekly). – This helps prioritize and split tasks up, so that nothing is "half finished" at the end of a week. 2. Delivering projects regularly encourages getting feedback quickly and improving quality. – This also makes clients feel important and not have “buyer’s remorse” 3. Agile teams are self-organized – Each member of the team has a role and helps decide who does what. 4. Agile teams are able to handle personnel change – There is little risk for lost knowledge when people collaborate 5. Agile teams are self-improving – They hold regular "retrospectives" to determine how they can improve their process. 38
- 39. Agile Product Management: PivotalTracker PivotalTracker assigns points to tasks and tracks a project’s velocity. Completed tasks are placed for review by managers. The three columns represent the schedule. From left to right: immediate, horizon, future 39
- 40. Staying In Touch danberger dan@socialtables.com (917) 359-7757 (877) 9-SEAT-ME http://www.linkedin.com/in/danberger 40