Bwana Kahawa

Hi everyone,
I'm currently analysing how our studio communicates and records all future projects coming in to the studio, for a management course that I'm taking.

I was hoping you might be able to give me some input on a few of your working methods.

How do you currently record any projects on the horizon, both short-term and long-term?

Do you record every little job that needs doing (eg. a quick powerpoint presentation, for example), or just large scale projects? If you only record large projects, how have you defined what a large project is?

How do you record 'vague' future projects with no definite start or end date? (perhaps more of an issue for those of you in architecture firms rather than visualisation studios)

I'm aware a few of these have been answered by some of you in another recent thread, but hopefully you'll be able to help with this too (so I can reference it!)

Thanks very much for any input,

Derek

ahmon

I'm in Architecture and the way we do it is:

Every project that comes to our office is given a project number (Example 101)

Before work is started on the project it is numbered 101.99 because it is only in it's proposal stages.

Once work has started the numbering changes

101.00
101.01
101.02
and so on, acording to it's phase.

If you have phase numbers then you can record all projects. The phase number will tell what is going on with it.

Hope this helps.

chiquito

Try having a template folder with the clients name and inside there the project name, inside there you can have some folders that are always the same for every client.
Dont know what you do specifically, but try having a phasing stage, lets say, sketches, design, pre planning, planning submision, development, etc, each with a code and a number ( DPA-001) ex design planning application 001 as you revise this it will change numbers.
time lines, shcedules, costs, etc can be tracked down with this.

Bwana Kahawa

Thanks for the input so far!

Instead of focusing on tracking the progress of current jobs, I was more after methods of how people plan their upcoming workload - a 'to do' list, if you like.

I hear of some people using something like Outlook - do people using digital calendars input every little job (such as printing presentation boards of visuals, etc), or just the larger projects?

What downsides have you found to planning ahead with Outlook calendars?

Any info appreciated!