This episode is for you if you’re in a digital agency project management role or are aspiring to work in project management in an agency. It’s also for you if you’re an agency leader who is looking to ensure the role of the project manager runs smoothly.
Nadine Schofield is the Founder of Project Management on Demand and she’ll be sharing with us:
* The core (hard and soft) skills you need to be an effective project manager
* Where agencies go wrong with approaching project management
* The differences between an agile, waterfall and wagile way of working
* Differences between the role of the account manager and project manager and how they can work together efficiently
* The downsides of the hybrid role where the project management and account management function are in a combined role
* Some suggestions for how to decide which project management system to use in your agency
* How working from home has affected the project management role in agencies
* How a temporary project manager can be inserted into the agency for one off projects on an ad-hoc basis
* Some of the core processes you need for the project management role in your agency
Transcript:
Jenny
So Nadine, welcome to the show. Would you mind spending a few minutes just talking about you what you do, how you help companies?
Nadine
Thanks for having me. And yeah, Project Management On Demand is a project management consultancy. We work in the digital space. And we work on all sorts of different projects within agencies, ad agencies, but also client side. The type of projects can vary from content management systems to e-learning to augmented reality to apps, so anything online digital displays also some above the line work as well. The four core areas of project management on demand are on demand project management help. So somebody may say we have a project, we’ve got three days a week in the budget to service that project. And then we service it Monday to Friday, nine to five, but within that budget, and then if we don’t use the time, we don’t bill it. Full Time project management, obviously, we also coach and mentor project managers or groups around project managers. So as I said to you previously, sometimes account managers who may be on smaller projects, but need to have an understanding of those fundamentals around running a project successfully. And we also do process consultancy where we come into businesses, and we look at how they currently run and manage their projects with regards to systems, the team, the team structure, processes, type of project, type of clients, and then we can help work with those businesses to create a roadmap to then go in and then help them over time, better run and manage projects. And for me, the core thing about that is a happy team, but also better, bigger margins within the agency.
Jenny
I think it’s fantastic, and such a comprehensive range of services that you offer. And I’m so glad that we found each other. And I’m very grateful to Lucy Snell for introducing us because people do come to me and say, do you do project management training? And or, do you know, any project managers? So I always kind of send them your way. And what would you say is the biggest problem that companies come to you to fix?
Nadine
It’s not always a fix. I mean, sometimes we do get flown into crisis projects. So we just have to dive straight in and rescue which is always fun. But it’s different things. It may be that it’s a smaller agency, and they don’t actually have any project managers. So they might kind of go, we’ve got big projects come in, have you got somebody that can help and just come in and sort of start helping us? And then obviously, the other thing is about process. And I think we can talk about that a bit later, what with everything that’s happened recently, in the last year, people are having to work a bit smarter in different ways, but not in the office kind of going right, I’ll finish that in a minute, I’ll hand it over. So everybody has to be a bit smarter on the systems and processes. So a lot more of that work is coming in these days,
Jenny
I can imagine I know how busy you are. And tell me because I know your background is in project management, obviously, that’s why you’re so skilled and proficient in what you do now. But tell me what you think are the the core skills of a really great project manager?
Nadine
Well obviously to be organised is a fantastic thing. To be a really good communicator, that obviously really helps. And that’s with your internal team, and with all levels within that team. And then obviously client side with stakeholders and senior management people. But also that level of just actually liking people and getting on with people. Because if you’re not that sort of people person, then you’re not going to be able to get the best out of your team when running a project. Good under pressure is obviously you know, a key as well. Negotiation skills that obviously come with, you know, the more years under your belt that you have, and financial acumen as well.
Jenny
It’s a lot. It’s a big ask, actually for this role, isn’t it? Because they are the linchpins of the agency. They’re kind of the engine room, aren’t they? They’re making sure that everything happens. And where do you think I mean, you have agencies approaching you all the time and companies approaching you all the time. Where do you think companies get it wrong with project management? What do you kind of typically see, and you think, oh, here we go again, like what are some of the things?
Nadine
Well, some some bad scoping. I mean bad scoping is an absolute typical one. I think it always circles background to what is your process? What’s your process so if you’re going in to, if you have a requirement in and they say we need this, you will probably, should do discovery phase to understand exactly what this is before we then go into your full scoping. Because there’s always going to be things coming up that you’re understanding the clients understanding might be different that could be out of the blue, or what we thought you were doing the copywriting, and you know, you think we’re doing the copywriting. So scoping is fundamental. Not being firm with your clients can also cause you a bit of a cropper, of course, you have to be fair and build that relationship. And that’s where we’ll talk about later about how the project management and the account manager can work nicely together. And change control management. So having the experience to understand where your team is, where the project is, going back to your statement of work, which says this is what we’re doing, to then say to the client, this is out of scope, now we can do it for you, but we need to make addendums to that document, and then we need to charge you more money. So that’s really key, I think a lot of the time, that’s about confidence as well, because the client might say we’ve got fixed budget. So, okay, so we’ve costed it to this, say we might have some contingency in it. So I think it’s really key to, I mean, obviously, you have to have the experience to do that. And you have to have the competence to do that. But that’s one of the really key things that needs to be kept on top as a project manager, but you would, and you should work very closely with your account manager on that.
Jenny
You said one of the key things is process. And I’m sure, like myself, you work with all different types of agencies, for example, from small just starting up to big established, and everything in between. I think process, like you say is really key, isn’t it? What do you advise smaller agencies that are perhaps, you know, 2,3,4,5,6 people that are just on that growth trajectory? And they are looking to establish process like how important, is it? And maybe I’m putting you on the spot a little bit here. But if they’re looking for recommendations for a good project management system, do you have like, go to systems that you say, this one,
Nadine
So, a couple of questions there. So with regards to process, every agency has a process, no matter how small or how large you are, it’s just at the beginning stages, when you’re 5,6,7 you might not physically written it down. But you’re such a tight team, that you all know what’s going on and who’s doing what, when even whether you may not have a project plan or you know, but you will, you will know how you work. The key thing about process and implementing it is when that team is going to grow larger, also, because then there’s too many people to just kind of say, right, I finished that, and then I send it over, I’ll be ready for the next bit. But the other thing is that also, as you grow larger, you’ll be taking people in who’ve been in other work environments and agencies, and they all have their way of doing it. So they’ll kind of think that their way is the right way, or the way that it should be done. So that can then cause problems. So if you can then have you know, your playbook as such, for when people join the agency today, this is how we work. This is what we do. This is our culture, this is our process, these are the systems, then you’re on the way to being able to manage projects in a more successful way without things falling down somewhat.
Jenny
Yeah.
Nadine
Regards systems, it’s, the thing is, there’s so many systems out there, I got asked by a client, I think she emailed, she always emails me at the weekends, and she said, you know, we’re thinking about monday.com what you think? And so we’ve had conflicting comments that monday.com some say it’s brilliant, some say it’s not so brilliant. And the same with all of the other programmes and systems that are out there. And it really is. I advised her to take three projects, trial that system for a month, have one key person who was going to, you know, look after that and lead it, to actually upload the information you need, start pulling reports and then to manage the team around that. And then after a month, you know, sit down what’s good, what’s not good, what worked, what didn’t work, and then move on to the next one to see. Because different people in different agencies want different types of reports and they want different things. They want to forecast differently. They want to project differently, they want different project information out of those systems. So we do go into businesses and work with them on the how are we working, what’s good, what’s bad, what do you need, and then we can like help, you know, identify a system that will work. Of course then a lot of people go off and try and create their own system sometimes which is, because then they can tailor it exactly to what they want.
Jenny
I can imagine that it’s sort of, you know, it’s dependent on the agency itself and how they want to work exactly. I mean, you mentioned as well…
Nadine
I mean, because, you know, for smaller agency, it’s just six, an Excel spreadsheet’s going to be fine for you, you know, but then if you want to scale and then there’s 50 of you, there’s no way that’s going to work. So it’s, it’s all the different variables.
Jenny
Well, that’s interesting that you can offer advice in that area. I mean, you mentioned monday.com, I’ve heard monday.com sort of bandied around a lot. What are the other kind of top three systems that you hear a lot, that agencies tend to use, particularly ones that are thinking about scaling fast, and they want to set themselves up from the beginning for success?
Nadine
I’d like so there’s so many I wouldn’t want to just say, I mean, a lot of my clients, they use JIRA, workflowmax. Asana, obviously, loads of people who work in a bit more of an agile fashion are using Trello. There’s just so many out there that it’s just it’s, I wouldn’t recommend one over the other, because they fit differently to each business.
Jenny
You’re right, actually, I mean, even as a consultant myself, I started off using Asana, and couldn’t quite really get the hang of it. But we’ve moved over to Trello and I’m running it really easy. So, I suppose it’s down to the individual as well. And you mentioned before about the difference between the am and the pm role, I’d love to kind of dive in to this with you, because it’s something that I’ve been reflecting on a lot recently, because I have a lot of account managers coming through my training programmes, most of whom actually work in that hybrid role. They’re trying to manage projects and grow accounts as the traditional account management role. And I think there’s upsides and downsides for both. So I’d love to kind of get your perspective on maybe differences, similarities, what’s the overlap? How do they work together? You know, what, what’s your experience Nadine?
Nadine
I mean, I think over the years, working in, you know, ad agencies over the years and digital agencies, I think there’s, there’s always a big trend of, let’s get rid of all project managers, we just have account managers now, then and then it’s, let’s get rid of all the account managers and let’s have project managers now, oh let’s try the two together. So and it’s a, it’s a trend over the years that we tend to see, isn’t it? For me, I feel that an account manager and a project manager should really work together. And they should have a really good partnership together, because the account manager doesn’t want to be getting involved in all the nitty gritty of the project. But at the same time, they’re there to, you know, stroke the client be, you know, upsell with the client. Instead, they need, they do need to have that project understanding, but it’s, it doesn’t, I’ve seen it before, it doesn’t work. And I think a client knows as well, if an account manager and project manager don’t get on. And they fundamentally should be partnering up on on working on an account. Likewise, as I said earlier, you know, a good project manager should be able to with their team, be able to look at a project, maybe a developer would go crumbs, we could do that. That’d be amazing. I’m the project manager, if you’ve got a good relationship with the client could go back and go through all of this, you know, what do you think? Or, depending on how its structured, go back to the account manager with a bit of a brief and kind of a look, with all of this, you know, can you take it to the client? So, all round, it’s about giving a really good client service. But it’s definitely, definitely for me about working hand in hand together.
Jenny
And from what you’ve said, like the skill set, you’re kind of assuming that those roles are different, you know, the project manager role and the account manager role, which I agree is the ideal scenario. It’s just that still I find agencies have this account manager that’s expected to do both. And, you know, I don’t know about you, but I found that you either have a leaning towards one skill set or another.
Nadine
Yes.
Jenny
You know, but I haven’t fully formed my views on this, but I’m starting to feel quite strongly about it. And I’m quite, it’s difficult when I’m training account managers that also have to do the day to day delivery, and all of that, that entails. I’m teaching them a skill to, you know, ways to understand the client’s business more, to you know, see where the opportunities is to add more value. But that feels like an extra thing for them to do because quite frankly, they’re just in the fire, in the weeds of projects. It’s not always the case, but it can be that kind of fact.
Nadine
It depends on the agency doesn’t it and it depends on the size. And also it depends, all of a sudden if a project comes in and the project manager hasn’t got capacity, somebody’s got to run it. So maybe if it’s a small one, then the account manager can run it. But sometimes, where that then becomes a problem is with an account manager is looking after that relationship, and the project manager is looking after that project, they can, you know, if a problem happens within the project, and the account manager is managing it and got to sort of flag that, and then trying to, you know, keep that relationship, brilliant, the two can butt slightly. So this is a tricky one, it is a tricky one. I mean, we do work with some agencies where we work with account managers to just give them a bit of sort of project management background and sort of training and mentoring just so they can fit in with the agency and do what they need to do properly. But, they are two different skill sets. And they are two different hats. And so I don’t think all account managers even want to be project managers.
Jenny
Have you seen any trends? Like when when you said earlier, I was laughing to myself, because you’re right, like there are these different trends? I was approached by an agency in the last few months saying that they didn’t agree with account managers. And, they they used to have these brilliant accounts, but they kind of over time lost them. And the two things, you know, and so they were looking at reinstating account management, again, as a function. So I just do think that there are trends and ebbs and flows. And do we really need these people on what really, what’s the value that they’re bringing? So I mean, I know that’s a big topic in itself. But it’s really interesting to hear your thoughts on this just another question, because a lot of the account managers are starting to separate the role. So what advice would you give to an account manager that might feel a little bit threatened by the fact that well, I’ve always owned the client relationship. And now I’ve got a project manager that’s come on the scene, because we’re splitting the roles, you know, yay, for me, but actually, I feel a bit threatened by the fact that are we both going to contact the client, how does that kind of work?
Nadine
No, and again, that needs to be defined. And that should be good job descriptions, and all of that kind of thing. But I think an account manager needs to understand that, number one, a project manager will be moved from account to account to account to account, probably on working on all sorts of different projects with different clients, and unless you’re in a massive ad agency, and you know, you’re assigned to that account, and that’s who you work with. But the roles and responsibilities are very different. You know, the project manager is managing the risks log, managing a schedule, managing resourcing, doing progress reports, and, you know, creating a statement of work. So in all of those things an account manager wouldn’t want to do and has no interest in doing, a project manager doesn’t take client out for lunch, the account manager does!
Jenny
We get to do the great stuff. I think it’s a really big topic. And and I’m going to be speaking to a few people on the podcast about this. And I’ve just, it is a great topic for me just through observing, you know, the struggles, the fors, the against of this hybrid versus separation. And I don’t know whether, you know, the separation is more, it was more traditional in digital agencies anyway. But the more traditional sort of offline agencies that are now fully digital, it’s they’re making that transition. And that’s why they’re suddenly separating the two.
Nadine
A panel would be good, you could do a panel of account managers and see that and see where, get the opinions from both sides and sort of have a bit of a debate about it.
Jenny
That’s a really good idea. Thank you. And I’d like to talk to you about the way agencies work. So I know Agile, Waterfall, you know, people there’s a lot of debate about which one’s better. And then Wagile, which is something that I didn’t sort of I didn’t even know that was a term, but I got you know, I can see what that means. But can you talk me through maybe the fors and against for each of those kinds of ways of working.
Nadine
So Agile, you know, software development, intuitive. Solutions evolve as you go on. It’s really good. I mean, it works really well on product based projects. Very much the ideal is that you have a pot of money, and you’re working towards products, you have your team and you just keep iterating, iterating to make this thing better, and then you can release and then come back, release and then come back. Waterfall is a bit more I suppose, old fashioned, whereas you have to do each stage at a time and you can’t start one stage until you finish the next stage. I’m a bit old fashioned, but you know, all the more younger, trendy people in my team are way over in the Agile sort of camp. Wagile is where you do some of the stages of the project in a step order. So you might do your discovery phase, if say if it’s a website you might do discovery phase first, where you do your initial wireframes, and then your design and then a tech spec, and then a functional spec. And then once all of those you’ve got, the client can sign all of those off and say, yes, that is what I want, you can then move into an Agile fashion for your field development and new testing, you know, pushing design in there doing two week sprints, or whatever it may be. I think a lot of agencies have have taken elements of it. So they’ll do daily stand ups, they will have the boards where they move things along, they’ll do it in two week sprints. So I think a lot of agencies have taken elements that suit them and suit their projects, which I think is the right way to go. The one thing sometimes is that clients don’t understand how to work in an Agile fashion. So it may be that you work in an Agile fashion internally, but not outwardly to the clients. And also, a lot of the time, a client has got a fixed budget, fixed deadline and a fixed idea of what it is that they want. So you can work development and testing within your Agile phase and that really suits teams and you know, I think it’s great. But at the end of the day, you’ve got that fixed thing that needs to be delivered. So hence Wagile.
Jenny
Thank you for explaining that you’ve explained it so, so well. I was just thinking about like costing and your right that just as you were talking, I was thinking the client usually wants to know, right, I’ve got this in my budget that I’ve got approved from my C suite. And that’s what I’ve got. And I was just wondering, how do you even cost Agile? Or, you know, how do you cost it up and, in your experience, if you found that one is kind of easier to kind of predict what the profitability is going to be on a certain project? Have you got any kind of view on that?
Nadine
If you do a discovery phase beforehand, and you get all of those deliverables, so when it goes from sales into production, and you do you know, your wireframes safe, we just take a website, for the ease of it, of wireframes, your initial sort of design might do three designs, cut it down to one to two routes, then into one, then do your tech spec and func spec. You know, for the end of that, you should have a full idea of exactly what it is you’re going to deliver. And then the basis of that when you then move into production, you do another statement of work. And then you can cost out, we know based on this design, on these amount of pages and on building those we know development wise, we’re going to need this amount of time. And then there’s a ratio that you then say, the amount of development days we’ve got here, we can do a percentage on testing and then we can put this sensitive project management. So it should be a bit clearer. I spoke to a new client the other day, I think he’s probably about my age as well. So we were having exactly this conversation. And he said I keep going around and thinking is it because I’m old fashioned. It’s just and I said what I just don’t think that works for your agency for the projects you’re running. So again, and that’s why we go into places and do the process consultancy, because it’s not one fits all it is based on who the people are within the agency. And if you’ve got a very development led agency, they will definitely want to work in a different way to a very design led agency. So it really can can change. No way’s right.
Jenny
No and just as you’re talking there, I’m thinking that’s a really good investment of time, isn’t it? To get someone like yourself that can see the bigger picture that’s experienced enough to see how it’s worked in different agencies and different because as you say, every agency has a different nature of the types of projects they’re running, different preferences, different sort of traditions in how they run. So that sounds like a no brainer to me. That’s a really good use of time I would have thought. You mentioned you touched on this earlier Nadine about remote working. And funnily enough, I was going to tell you, I’ve got very good friend that is a project manager and freelance project manager. And I remember like we were quite close, we talked quite a lot. And she often said to me, because I say ‘Oh, someone wants some work done. Are you free?’ And inevitably she wasn’t because she’s so popular. But the distance from her was like she’s in North London and it was in South London. And the agency said no, she’s too far away. And this was only like, I don’t know, obviously before last year, but now things have so changed because everyone’s doing you know work remotely. So what have you seen in the world of project management in terms of everyone working remotely? What have been some of the advantages and challenges?
Nadine
I know everybody’s happy to not be spending the money on the train fare. And home at eight o’clock at night because we live in Brighton, but I think I mean, a lot of agencies are actually, you know, they were there anyway. So they’d have that hybrid of not everybody having to be in the office every day. So I think that was it was coming anyway. But what it did was it just slammed everybody into it, didn’t it? I’ve been on another panel and talked about this, it’s so difficult. Some people, me included, I’m really sociable, I love being in an office, I love to be with people, I love to go to the pub on a Friday afternoon, you know, all of that social interactions, really, you know, I love and yet I spoken to a lot of other people saying, I just love it, I don’t want to go anywhere, you know, I’m really happy with this. So I think there’s going to be a hybrid of a bit of both. And I think that’s great. I think what’s really come out of this and we’ve got busy, thankfully, because of it, is because it’s been realised that you really need to be solid on your communications within your team, you really need to have systems and processes really set up and everybody needs to understand them because you’re not together. So people just could be doing randomly different things without even knowing that the other person doesn’t know that or should be doing that. So I think that’s what’s really come out of it is the need for really solid communication and a re-look in some in agencies, things to look at the processes and systems that they have and do what they did have, does that now work? Because it’s not in all cases now.
Jenny
And maybe did you, have you found that some agencies were relying too heavily on having people in the same room talking to each other and realise suddenly, gosh, you know, that the communication isn’t as fluid and therefore, oops, the system’s just falling down in some way?
Nadine
Massively. Yes. I mean, I listened to a talk yesterday, and it was exactly about this. And there was a creative guy on there and he said, we just miss going into that room with all those post it notes and sticking things up and bouncing ideas off each other. And he said, they have found that difficult, so they will go back in to do those things. But I think also a lot of people have a lot of people have downsized on their office, because they realise they just don’t need that space now. So it’s a yeah, it’s a great big topic of conversation, I find it really interesting how everything’s gone at the moment. But definitely, there’s a definite need to be really solid on on how projects run from project management perspective because if you’re on your own and you’re not communicating properly, things can quickly move out of control.
Jenny
It has that kind of knock on effect about you know, availability as well, doesn’t it? You know, at the beginning, I think some cultures, some agency cultures where there wasn’t a high level of trust, maybe, or maybe the senior managers have never worked with people working from home all the time and it’s so strange. It’s like, well, how am I going to know they’re working? Or, you know, and how am I going to know that you’re available? And that there’s all of that has had to be established hasn’t it? And I think there’s been a bit of a mindset change from a senior leadership point of view, that’s what I’ve seen, is that my gosh, you know, we’ve actually made this work. And it’s absolutely fine. I remember reading a book called Drive by Dan Pink years ago, have you ever read that book, don’t know if you’ve heard of it? And at the time of reading, it was all about this new way of working, where you give the person the task and say, ‘look, I don’t care, where you work from, or how you get it done, it’s just got to be done by this time’, and someone just does it in their own time. And I remember thinking at the time, that’s so future thinking, but actually, it’s becoming more of a reality, I think. And talking about kind of the future of where it’s going, what do you see changing or changes coming up for the world of project management?
Nadine
I see us continuing on, to be honest with you. I mean, we’ve been going for 12 years now. The reason we’re called Project Management On Demand is because initially, it was just me. I think, from a traditional standpoint, everybody used to think you need a project manager, you need one full time, but actually, hence the ‘on demand’, you don’t always need a project manager full time. So from a cost effective way that’s really good. And I think that could be said the same for account managers working in that way. And it’s definitely the same for, say a designer because they may create a design it’s then delivered and then the client has to review it for five days. So they’ve got five days free, if they’re not, you know, within an agency, so they’ll work on different things. So I think definitely flexibility. I think also, I think what a lot of this done, as well as made people realise that, you know, I know a lot of parents now that I like, I travelled all the time, every day, and I didn’t see my kids and I didn’t eat dinner with my wife, or, you know, my husband, whatever it may be. So I think there’s a lot more flexibility and wanting of not just full on work, work, work work, you know. So I think that’s, that’s a really positive thing.
Jenny
I agree with you, just as you were saying that, it struck me that when I was working full time, like I’ve been in the industry since the early 90s, I know you’re a bit younger than me, I don’t know if you’ve been anywhere, but lots of years. But I remember watching because I don’t have kids, but I used to see some of my peers and my friends leaving the industry because they had children, and not being able to get back into the industry because it just wasn’t acceptable to work part time, from home at all, and no flexibility. And I, I used to think how sad that was, because really experienced very, very good people were leaving the industry in droves, just because they’d hit that, you know, moment in time where they were gonna have a family. So I think that’s a real positive.
Nadine
Obviously, I set the business up because I had a child. So I was working in London in an ad agency, and I couldn’t go back. So it’s exactly that. And then today, I’ve got a lot of mums who don’t want to work full time because, you know, looking after the house, they’ve got the school run, some of them have got, I’ve got some dads as well. So and then I’ve also got, I’ve got people who will really be quite entrepreneurial, so they’re setting up their own businesses and they need two or three days a week to do that yet, they’ll kind of say, ‘Well, I need a bit of a plugin’. So then I’ll say, ‘Okay, well, I’ve got this on demand on and you could do that three days over the course of the week but still give you the time and flexibility to set up your business’, or to only work part time but earn a reasonable rate, because a lot of those people like saying they’ve got all that experience. Yet they don’t want to go into an office every day for full hours, it’s just the whole thing is changing. And I love it. And I it’s right.
Jenny
I think so too. And I’m quite excited by the prospect because funnily enough, like at the end of last year I was setting my whole business up to run remotely, because I have a vision for me working three months of the year somewhere else. But there was always that doubt in the back of my mind that people were going to accept doing training remotely. You know, I know I’ve been using Zoom for years, and I’ve seen that you have that real intimacy, with what I do in the coaching and stuff. But there’s always that thing about do you actually need someone in the room training everybody, you know, physically? So I had that doubt but this pandemic is just proof, as you said, we’ve just accelerated forward 10 years. So it can be done. And it has been done.
Nadine
I think one of the people on this panel yesterday was talking, they were in a co-working, they own the co-working space in Brighton. And I know a lot of the agencies that we work with have let go of their offices, and they’re using some of the co-working spaces, because they can either just have a smaller space in there, or they can, you know, meet in there for meetings and meet their clients in there. Well the co-working space is so good these days. So yeah, I’ll just say the whole landscape’s changed. And it’s, it’s exciting I think.
Jenny
It is the flexibility and as you said earlier on about the overhead, you know, if you were investing in an office building, that now in the future doesn’t have to be the case, you know, you can actually reduce your overhead. So, yeah, I know it’s been tough, and it’s still tough, but there are a lot of upsides.
Nadine
It was a massive key about, you know, getting everybody together, being face to face, you know, working as a team, you know, there’s nothing that can replace that.
Jenny
Yeah, people have missed that and we’ve all done in certain ways. I know that a lot of agencies that are listening to this have, you know, micro businesses, they’re very small businesses, as I said before about looking to scale. At what point in the agency’s growth, do you think it’s essential to have a project manager?
Nadine
Again, I was thinking about this question. It depends on the makeup of the agency. And it also depends on the type of the projects. Social agencies, you know, the guys that run those projects they sell, they self run and self manage. So you might not necessarily even need a project manager but for me in a sort of a smaller agency, anywhere between six to eight people that might be the pull point to start having a project manager in because you think you know, there could be five projects ongoing in an agency at that point of about 30K each, say, for example, and that’s quite a lot for the team to run, if that person is also doing the design or doing the operations in the business, so it just gets to that stretch point where the other guy’s are over capacity and they need that help they need that assistance.
Jenny
I can imagine once you get a good project manager in place, it really makes a difference to everything, doesn’t it? And actually, that’s where your services step in, really, isn’t it? Because if you are on that growth point, and as you said before, most agencies run by project by project basis, the agency of record is kind of diminishing more and more. So, you do have the ability to have someone on a interim basis to see how things go, what a difference it makes to everybody else, so that they can focus on what they do well, and then take it from there.
Nadine
So yeah, I mean, 10 years ago, I worked for a really cool agency they were an augmented reality agency, and I didn’t know anything about augmented reality 10/11 years ago. And so they needed help. So I went into start working on the projects. And then naturally, that was, well, you haven’t got a document for this, we can’t run this without having that. And then that came to to well, we need to record this and we need a process for this, and we need a system for this. So I worked with them about three days a week over the course of the week and started running the projects, implementing the process. And then it was very obvious that they really liked having a project manager. So then I did a job ad for them, interviewed the first tranche of project managers for them, then said, this one is a good one, you know, you meet them now. And then the project manager started and then I handed over and I rolled myself out. And then if they were ever overcapacity, I’d go in and run the odd project here or there. But yeah, so it’s a nice way of doing it because you, if you haven’t taken on a project management before, you might not understand exactly what that role is, and how it’s gonna benefit you. But if you can try it out, you know, that’s the best way and then there’s no risk to the business as such.
Jenny
Fantastic. Honestly, I just think that’s an absolute no brainer. Can you think of anything that we haven’t covered Nadine that would be useful for anyone to know, like any tips or advice to help agencies run their projects more smoothly?
Nadine
But for any of those smaller agencies? You know, I’m happy to have a chat with anybody anyway. But for any of those smaller agencies, who may not be doing documentation as they should be to cover them, then, you know, that is something really to consider. So the statement of work – What is the project? Why I’m doing it? Who are the stakeholders? What’s the cost? What are the risks? Progress reporting? I always bang on about that. I think it’s really important. You know, what did we do last week? What are we doing this week? What are any blockers, what are any risks? I worked in an agency once and the client was a lawyer in a law firm, we’re building a new website for them. And the chap in the law firm, was a bit of a junior, and I could see that he’s struggling. And I kept saying to him, you know, I think we need to take this high, I think need help. And then in the end, it looked like everything had fallen down. And of course, it’s my fault, isn’t it as the project manager. So the account manager came knocking on the door? So I said, No. And they said, what’s going on with this project. So I zipped up 20 weeks worth or 16 weeks worth of progress reports and said, this is what’s going on. So that’s why I’m an advocate for that and just fully, you know, need that time sheeting. Some agencies don’t do it these days, I advocate that you should, how do you know whether you’re hitting the budget we’ve put to it? How do you know how big your margin is? You know, where did you go wrong in that costing? And what could you do better next time, because the main key is you want to make a margin to make a profit, to be able to go on some nice holidays. So there’s all of that. So we’ve also got a whole set of documentation. So all of those documents, we’ve got risk logs, and all of those kind of things, that for small agencies, it’s not a system, you know, it’s not a great big monday.com but it’s a Word template, or it’s an Excel spreadsheet. So if anybody wanted any of those, then I’m more than happy to send those over.
Jenny
Brilliant. I think that’s a fantastic offer. And I can imagine that’s lots of agencies listening, thinking, oh, yeah, we really need that.
Nadine
So even if they if they have one, you know, you could just take the statement of work and compare one to the other. And we’re going to put that in because that’s really important.
Jenny
So, yes, the wording on some of this is really useful, isn’t it? So let’s compare what we’ve got and see if we’ve ticked all the boxes. Brilliant, Nadine. Well, thank you so much. Where can people get hold of you? How can people contact you and who are the best people to contact you?
Nadine
So people reach me on my email, which is nadine@projectmanagementod.co.uk. And the website is Project Management OD.co.uk. I’m on LinkedIn, obviously, as Nadine Schofield. The people who should contact? We work with, well, yesterday, I met with a chief technical officer because he needed a programme manager. So you know, he got in contact with me. Business owners, head of project management head of PMO. Project managers in general, I’m always looking for really good project managers. So I’m really keen if anybody wants to come on board, or if their circumstances change where they don’t want to work full time, and then want to work on demand, and I’m always looking for good people as well. So the other end of it as well. Absolutely. And that includes Project Coordinators as well.
Jenny
Great. Okay, well, we’ll put all of those links in the show notes so that people can get hold of you quite quickly and easily. Honestly, Nadine, this has been absolutely fantastic. Thank you for sharing so many tips and advice for other agencies. And yeah, it’s been an absolute pleasure. So thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
