Marketing in the Age of Agile has become an interconnected, data-driven and cross-collaborational environment that would be wholly unrecognizable to either the real or fictional founders of the profession. That doesn’t mean, however, that it has lost any of the swagger that made it such a cool club during its golden age, except now its dynamism is measured by how effortlessly and effectively marketing projects are managed, rather than how many martinis can be downed at lunchtime.
So, what’s the secret to knowing how to manage marketing projects like a boss? Well, just follow us and we’ll show you.
Putting the pieces together
Marketing projects are more like random picture generators than static exhibitions, and so, if you were to try and complete a jig-saw of one, it would involve constantly picking, changing and adapting the pieces to suit the puzzle in front of you rather than having a fixed notion of where each piece should be. This is the beauty of the agile philosophy, giving multi-discipline teams the platform to combine and collaborate, creating alternate possibilities at will.
Of course, to power this properly, you need the right technology. Trying to do everything on one table will just create a mess, and inevitably some pieces will fall into cracks. Marketing project managers can get a lot out of project management solutions that provide specific workspaces where teams can assemble and collaborate without anything descending into chaos.
Make project knowledge constant and complete
Marketing is a knowledge-driven field, which is why it has been such a massive hit with the data masters of this world. The more data the better, they say, but handling constant 360-degree knowledge of a project can be overwhelming if it’s not done the right way.
Using project management software to create a single source of truth, monitor project progress and organize documentation reduces the need for productivity killers such as requesting and producing status updates or “Do you have…” emails.
Standardize workflows but iterate towards improvement
Having standardized workflows means that anyone from inside or outside of the organization should be able to step into a team and pick up what they’re doing within a short space of time. They also make your teams and department scalable, but they should never become set in stone. Instead, harnessing the knowledge and experience of previous implementations, iteration and innovation should be the focus, looking to improve how you do things in your marketing projects as well as your bottom line.
You can with Kanban
Simplifying processes is a win-win for the whole team: you’ll have to explain less as a manager, and the rest of the team can listen less. Using visual systems like Kanban boards for task management is one way to do that, especially if it’s laid out cleanly and clearly within a dedicated program. Tasks on Kanban boards can be moved and adjusted to quickly identify where a task is in its lifecycle and what everyone’s doing inside of it.
Maintain flexible resources
One secret of how to manage marketing projects like a boss is keeping on top of your resource management game. How you get your resources performing will ultimately define success or failure, so making sure not to overstretch them or underutilize them is essential.
Technology has changed the marketing game massively and allowed management to take their skills to previously unknown levels. Setting dashboards, automated reports and resource monitoring all allow marketing managers to take the most valuable lessons out the project management playbook. To see Planview AdaptiveWork’s solutions in action, schedule a live demo today.
