Project Management Best Practices

Prof. Lorelei Blackburn Laura Kastner Feb. 19, 2014 Wise editors know that project management is an elaborate, delicate process. You cant just jump into a projectwith clients, employees or team members, and even stakeholders involved without careful strategy and proper execution of that strategy. Three keys to document quality as stated by Carolyn D. Rude and Angela Eaton in chapter 23 of their book Technical Editing include Expert editorial decisions Good management Good process of document development

Recognizing that project management is a process that deserves gradual and constant refinement is a great mental step in putting the best practices to use. Start with the head knowledge, and then execute accordingly. Its crucial to keep in mind three variables that managing a publication project requires: time, resources, and the scope or quality of the finished product. Then it is up to you, the editor, to decide which variables are fixed and which are flexible. This is an important decision in every single publication project that you will take part in. Once youve set general standards on these three variables, its important to decide what are your key management features. Rude and Eaton express their six key features of management as planning, record keeping, estimating, scheduling, tracking, and evaluation. Its up to you to determine whether these specifics are important to your management style, but I think these are perfectly great starting points to a well-organized publication project. Planning, Record Keeping, and Estimating The best way to plan is to be specific and intentional. This includes setting realistic goals, priorities, and deadlines. Your team members will be thrilled to meet and discuss goals and expectations periodically throughout the project once they see how effectively it keeps everyone in the loop. This area of the document development process has the best interest of everyone in mind. Before you think about pleasing the client, remember who you are working with, and manage with the aim to keep them happy and hardworking. The simplest way to reaching that goal is through expert planning. Give your team a statement of the project goals in which you identify the projects full range of tasks to be accomplished, including a breakdown of milestones along the way. Devise a tentative but realistic schedule for timely completion and make sure that all members are compliant. Create accurate and intuitive time estimates, being mindful of the responsibilities that are expected to be

completed. A good project manager knows how to effectively communicate needs, expectations, and goals with immediacy and ensures that her team members are always working toward the same objective. Another critical aspect to great planning involves giving team members a clear sense of expectations. Both clients and coworkers should understand the work they will be given and time requirements attached to their work. Written agreements of expectations might be worth putting into practice in your project management style because they are tangible and professional modes of accountability. You can write up an agreement, discuss it with team members, and send copies to everyone involved in the project. Yet another tip to the best planning is to make time for team meetings, negotiations, reviews, status reports, and record keeping. While these shouldnt take up much time, they may be necessary during the course of your project, and setting flexible time aside for these instances is a characteristic of great planning. Also keep in mind the tendency of project creep because projects often become much bigger than their original expectations. As you manage, you should keep records and time logs of each project and estimate the time it will take to complete a project based on samplingedit a couple sample pages and estimate the entire editing job based on the time it takes you to edit that sample. This will help greatly in setting clear expectations and practicing excellent time management. Scheduling Always keep in mind that you will need to create a schedule for all people involved in the project. Establish a thorough and realistic schedule at the very start of the project development cycle. Include periodic due dates (or milestones) in addition to a final deadline to ensure that team members have an idea of their job at every stage of production and check in on the project status often. Its also essential when scheduling and tracking a project to create a plan that will distribute responsibility evenly to all collaborators. Be careful not to disproportionately assign tasks to anyone on the board. This important practice should become easier the more familiar you are with your team, their skills, and their work styles. Tracking To help the management process, it is beneficial to create a systematic way to track the documents progress throughout production. This could be as simple as attaching a tracking sheet to hard copy documents that various members of the editorial board can sign off on and date. Scheduling and managing software is also available and may be a good investment depending on the nature of the project. This kind of software may allow you to keep a file on the whole project that shows progress and records changes made to the document by each team member. This also helps with locating any missing documents or steps along the way, as this sometimes happens in production.

Considerably the most crucial part of tracking is establishing version control. As a document is passed around in a production team, it is sure to exist in several versions by the end of it. You will need to strategically control document versions so that team members are always working on the most recent version. You may practice version control through configuration management software, the save version feature available on word processing software, or establishing naming conventions that the whole team is exercising. Whatever route works for you and your production team should be implemented strongly and consistently to avoid counterproductivity and possible coworker meltdowns. Evaluation Constant feedback and assessment in a project production keeps all collaborators moving as a cohesive unit. The more you communicate with coworkers about the status of their work, the more room you make for positive workplace culture. This method of facilitating open, honest, and often communication can be as simple as scheduling evaluation meetings and encouraging questions or concerns. Checking-in periodically and communicating expectations to your team is of utmost importance in guaranteeing a happy and healthy development process. Final Thoughts Project management is not easyit takes precious time and careful strategy to perfect. And even so, you may not ever get it down to a perfect science. However, using these practices will help you greatly in your efforts to lead an efficient production team and will ultimately land you multiple future projects.