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Futureheads top five tips to ensure on time delivery of Digital Projects
One of the biggest challenges digital PMs face is balancing the quality of the output with the time and budget given. Quality and budget are the main factors that have an impact to the speed of the delivery and whether it meets the client’s deadline.
I found this interesting article on 10 reasons for al project dig delivery, http://bit.ly/clTHX7, partnered with insight from the PMs we work with, I have put together five top tips to help make the delivery smoother, on time, without compromising quality.
1. Balancing Design and Development
We work with a number of PMs and Producers who have experienced this compromising scenario. Design is all about the art and we have heard from many Creative teams that excellent ideas and art takes time. The impact that this often has on a project is less time for development which is imperative to functionality. As a result this can often push back a deadline for a project.
It is important from the get go both the design and development teams to work collaboratively and have a full comprehension of the deadline and the constraints between two teams. Although both teams may have some excellent ideas, ultimately the work delivered is for the client and there is a reason for the deadline. The client must take priority and with working more collaboratively can create innovative solutions within the time frame.
2. Understanding the client’s business objectives and requirements
A full comprehension of the client’s business objectives and requirements are essential for planning and fleshing out the project. Accurate planning of a project increases the likelihood of on time delivery as it incorporates any risk or issues and bottleneck removal time.
It is critically important PMs have all requirements needed and the business objectives have been taken into account before the project kicks off. If there any grey areas of a project, they must be addressed asap or this risks cropping up in critical stages of the project and consequently have a huge impact on delivery time.
3. Allow time for testing
Unfortunately, project/product testing can often be overlooked in delivery. This is very risky, especially as for the more User Experience lead projects it is very unlikely that a project will be delivered successfully first time round with no testing.
You should allow enough time for a few rounds of testing. Remember, after the first round of testing it will take time to amend the project and then more time to test again. More complex projects may require several rounds of testing, and leaving the testing until last minute and then finding out that amendments are needed can have disastrous effects on delivery time.
4. Have room for contingency and make a plan B
Contingency minimises risk, so to minimise risk enough time must be allowed to look at alternative options and assess all possible outcomes of a project. A good PM can identify where to add contingency and how much contingency to add to each part of the project. A project with no contingency is likely to run into trouble. A project that runs into trouble is highly likely to have a late delivery.
5. Relevant experience and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
A great PM often has expertise on the type of project delivery. It is important that an experienced PM is allocated that has grounding in the nature of the project. If the project does run into any trouble, an experienced PM will have the know how to apply a solution and get the project back on track.
Experienced PMs in the project field will often use templates and platforms that they know will work for the nature of the project. This cuts out the time it takes to build new platforms and processes which removes the impact on the delivery time.
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