the critical path to project management bliss best practices for event professionals

The Ultimate Critical Path to Project Management Nirvana

Best Practices for Event Professionals

by danberger

I Believe…

• Good planning makes for great experiences.

• Every experience is an opportunity for…

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to fight for a cause to connect people to market a brand

About Me

1990’s 2000’s 2010’s

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About Social Tables

Diagrams Guest Lists Seating Charts

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About Social Tables

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Learning Objective #1: Understand Project Management

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Learning Objective #2: Save You Time

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Learning Objective #3: Get You Excited

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Agenda

1. Hear From You

2. Project Management Overview

3. Getting Things Done

4. Technology Solutions

5. Advanced Lessons

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Before We Start…

What do you want me to cover?

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Project Management vs Product Management

Project Management

The discipline of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals.

Examples:

– Planning an event

– Fundraising toward a goal

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Product Management

The lifecycle that deals with the planning, forecasting, or marketing of a product

Examples:

– Launching the iPad mini

– Adding another package line

Project Management Makes You Look Good.Looking Good Leads to Repeat Business and Increased Trust.

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Project Management Makes Your Organized So You Can Sleep at Night

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My Rules for Getting Things Done, inspired by David Allen

• Set weekly goals and communicate them to your team.

• Create a daily to do list.

• Do it NOW if it takes less than 2 minutes.

• Get it on paper to get it OFF your mind.

• Six “levels of focus”

– From Runway to 50k

• Delegate (more on that later)

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The Project Definition Document

• Project Overview

– Why are we even doing this?

• Objectives

– What are we trying to do?

• Scope

– What does this project entail? What does it NOT entail?

• Assumptions and risks

– What events are you taking for granted?

– What are you concerned about?

• Approach

– How are you attacking the project?

• Organization

– Who are the stakeholders and what are their roles?

• Signature page

• Initial effort, cost, and duration estimates

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The Gantt Chart

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TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS THAT HELP

Introducing….

Lifecycle Overview

Relationship Management

Qualification

Proposal

Project Management

Schedule

Contracts

Task Management

Outsource

Communication

Time Tracking

H.R.

Follow-up

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Relationship Management: Salesforce

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Completely customizeablebut expensive

Helps you track activities

Project Management: FreeCRM

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Free, web-based contact relationship management

Qualification: Google Docs Checklist

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Use Google Docs – a collaborative app to create a checklist for qualifying your prospects

Completely customizeablebut expensive

Helps you track activities

Proposal: BidSketch

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Upload Word and PDF proposals, send them to customers, and track when they view it

Project Management: Streak

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Create folders for your emails and processes within those folders to track progress.

Project Management: Smartsheet

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Web-based software to help you create ganttcharts and map out parallel workflows

Schedule: Google Calendar

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Web-based calendars make it easy to view your teammates appointments

Pro: Connects to Google Tasks

Project Management: Asana

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FREE social task management makes it easy to assign tasks to people involved in a project

Task Management: Google Tasks

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Tasks right inside your gmail.

Ideal for linking emails to tasks.

Time Tracking: Harvest

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Mobile and web time tracking for your vendors, contractors, part-time staff, etc.

Time Tracking: RescueTime

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Quietly monitors what you’re working on (down to the website) and gives you a weekly productivity report

Contracts: LegalZoom

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Very affordable boilerplate documents for all of your legal needs

Contracts: DocuSign

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Makes digital signatures a breeze to end the days of scanning and back-and-forth emails

Outsource: Elance

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Place job posts for any work that you might need to get done.

Some projects are $20. 100% safe with many American contractors.

Communication: Dropbox

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Virtual share drive makes sending back and forth emails very easy.

Communication: Evernote

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Cloud-based solution that let’s you take notes from any device.

Keeps you organized and easy to learn.

HR: 15-Five

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Your direct reports spend 15 minutes writing a weekly report and you spend 5 minutes reviewing it.

Great content for your one-on-one meetings

Follow-up: MailChimp

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Stay in touch with your stakeholders regularly by sending them email updates

Delegating

• Strive to be a jack of all trades and a master of nothing

• Hire people smarter than you (AKA specialists)

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1 • Place a monetary value on your time.

2 • Ask “is it possible to delegate part or all of this task?”

3 • Train others to do your work (ongoing)

4 • Outsource to virtual assistants/interns

5 • Set expectations, priorities and deadlines

6 • Accept that delegating is a two-way street

7 • Take responsibility for the outcomes. The buck stops with you.

8 • Give them ownership and accept the fact there’s a risk

9 • Explain the importance of the task to get buy-in

10 • Regularly check-in to motivate and ensure it meets your expectations

Agile

1. Work gets delivered on a regular schedule (e.g. weekly).

– This helps prioritize and split tasks up, so that nothing is "half finished" at the end of a week.

2. Delivering projects regularly encourages getting feedback quickly and improving quality.

– This also makes clients feel important and not have “buyer’s remorse”

3. Agile teams are self-organized

– Each member of the team has a role and helps decide who does what.

4. Agile teams are able to handle personnel change

– There is little risk for lost knowledge when people collaborate

5. Agile teams are self-improving

– They hold regular "retrospectives" to determine how they can improve their process.

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Agile Product Management: PivotalTracker

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PivotalTracker assigns points to tasks and tracks a project’s velocity.

Completed tasks are placed for review by managers.

The three columns represent the schedule. From left to right: immediate, horizon, future

Staying In Touch

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danberger

dan@socialtables.com

(917) 359-7757

(877) 9-SEAT-ME

http://www.linkedin.com/in/danberger