A creative team seldom runs short of inspiration. It runs short on time. When one campaign is finished by a designer on Tuesday, there are already three new briefs lined up for Wednesday. As the deadline approaches, a writer ends up juggling two rounds of client edits at once. Effective resource management improves communication between teams and helps prevent potential conflicts. This guide describes how to manage people’s time and effort properly in order to work efficiently and create something special.
Where Resource Planning Goes Wrong in Creative Teams
Overbooked designers and hidden workloads
Give the same brief to a group of designers, and you’ll get different results from each one, but only a few will truly stand out. Senior designers often carry 50 hours of assigned work in a 40-hour week, as they’re the ones who deliver high-quality work. Nobody sees the full pile. Quality slips first. Deadlines follow.
Overlapping client work
Agencies and studios deal with numerous clients simultaneously. Every client has its own timeline that seems manageable by itself. But when they are placed close together, issues arise: three different presentations are due the same week, and the same video editor is assigned to all of them. Excel spreadsheets and Slack conversations hardly reveal such issues until the damage is done.
Deadlines with no room for revision
Any creative process involving two parties is cyclical. The first draft is produced, and feedback is obtained; the feedback defines the second draft. A timeline that involves only the first stage means that there are no iterations, so the team has to work extra hours.
Seeing the problem on a timeline
The visual plan solves many of these issues from the ground up. When assignments are laid out on a timeline, it becomes clear who needs to do which task at which time. An online Gantt chart maker for managing projects allows users to change dates and assign tasks to other people with a few clicks. Resolving a scheduling conflict at a meeting costs much less than sending last-minute texts on Thursday night.
Lay the Groundwork Before You Assign Anyone
Map skills, not just job titles
The term “designer” is vague. One person might be adept at developing a brand identity, another one might specialize in motion design, and a third might focus on packaging layouts. List the strengths of each type of designer and what else they are capable of. The skill map indicates what can be assigned to a certain specialist or which designer might need some help completing a project.
Calculate real capacity
A full-time hire does not equal 40 hours of actual work. Meetings, emails, and reviews take much of the week. Plan for 70-80% of the paid hours; then, subtract holiday and vacation time from this number.
Plan the Work in Layers
Split projects into phases
First, establish the general stages: idea, creation, evaluation, delivery. This helps you estimate the hours of copywriting, design, and project management for each stage. Estimates for cost and time are usually imprecise because specific details are missing. Only once you have decided on the direction of the project can you break down the stages into tasks.
Connect dependencies
Creative tasks are interconnected and influence each other. The designer must wait for relevant copy in order to start designing layouts, and the developer needs to wait for the final assets. Therefore, these tasks should be linked, and it must be noted that if one task is delayed, it will impact all successive ones.
Build revision rounds into estimates
The revision process should be considered as part of the workflow. If the contract allows for two revisions, add those to your schedule along with the respective time needed for each. Start looking back at the previous projects to answer the question about how long feedback revisions usually take. It might be interesting to notice that for the majority of teams, the feedback period is longer than the creative process, because so many stakeholders need a few days to respond. Add these waiting days to your schedule.
Keep a buffer
Reserve a portion of your project time, about 10-15%, to accommodate unforeseen incidents such as sick days, an unhappy client, or surprises from the client’s CEO. The buffer should be incorporated into the center of your plan, rather than at the end.
Keep the Plan Alive During Delivery
Hold a short weekly capacity check
Ask yourself a couple of questions each week. For example, which members of your team are constantly working overtime? Doing this exercise for a few weeks will let you figure out how you should assign hours to everyone, i.e., according to their work capacity. Spotting overworked employees shouldn’t be that hard; they may seem tired, frustrated, or less engaged. Check in with your team members from time to time.
Rebalance early
When you notice someone is overloaded with work, do something on the same day. Reassign a task to someone else, delay a non-urgent task, or hire a freelancer for this job. Having a task assigned three weeks before the deadline just requires a quick chat with everyone involved. If you decide to reassign it a day before the deadline, it is sure to have quality issues.
Handle scope changes in the open
A good creative project is bound to have numerous changes. Your designer may change their approach, but the client may add something or change the theme a little. These are everyday occurrences in a creative organization. Make sure you let clients know about the potential changes in budget and about the time constraints related to the project. Most clients will make a decision quickly after seeing the cost of the changes on a timeline.
Learn From Every Project
Compare estimates with actual hours
After finishing a project, compare expected to actual hours for each step of the project. Look for trends in the data. If your concept stage runs over budget by about 30% on a regular basis, you will be able to adjust accordingly. If your production phase has a tendency to finish early, you will know you have some extra resources. Use data from several projects, and your estimates will be more precise than any recommended ones.
Review utilization by role
Next, try to get a rough estimate (which would be quite easy to determine if you can “see” your employees’ hours on a digital timeline) of how much everyone had to work during a certain period. If, for example, your designer is working at 110% capacity throughout the quarter, this is a clear sign that you need to employ more personnel or have serious problems with your processes. If an employee is working at 50% capacity, this may indicate that you have room to take on more work or assign them additional tasks that match their skills.
Final Thoughts
A good resource plan clearly shows who is responsible for each task and helps you spot problems or gaps as the project moves forward. Remember to monitor the difference between the planned and actual amount of time spent on a particular task. This will be particularly helpful for future projects.