So here's the truth - I used to suck at project management. But over the years I've determinedly turned myself into a half-decent project manager. Why? What was the driving force?
Project Management Is A Tool For Effecting Change
At the end of the day, I never have and still don't care that much for project management. But what I do care deeply about is effecting change. Driving action and results instead of talk and documentation. You can see my drive for getting things done in this whiteboard friday:
(Note, if you have thoughts about this video you'd do well to read my follow-up comment about the difference between reports and reportings.)
Although there are many ways of affecting change, project management is a crucial part of it. Below I'm going to outline a bunch of tools, tips, and tricks that we've discovered and implemented over the years at Distilled to get better at project management:
Project Collaboration - Trello
Personally I'm not a fan of clutter, either physical or virtual, and so I love technology that gets out of the way while you get on with getting shit done. I've tried lots of different project management solutions, and Trello is the first one I've fallen in love with. For those that saw the whiteboard friday I did with Jamie about a year ago it models the real life post-it note system very well:
I'm going to let Will explain why he likes it so much:
And I'm going to let Paddy break down the details in his blog post Using Trello to Manage SEO Projects.
Project Collaboration - Google Docs
A lot of you will already be familiar with Google Docs. Of course. But only recently have I come to realize the extreme power behind the collaboration elements. I've always hated track changes in Word and finally Google Docs has something better to offer. This video, although cutsey, actually demonstrates the power of real time collaboration:
In particular, two features that are really making me excited are in-line comments (with easy replies and notifications) and revision history (which allows you to see when, how, and who edited a document).
We use Google Docs extensively within Distilled to craft and send around documents even if ultimately we deliver the final report as a .PDF or some other format. After all, some large corporations still like the smell of .PDFs in the morning....
Inbox Zero Methodology
I can't explain how much of a life changing experience the inbox zero methodology is. For the modern day information worker, inbox zero is fundamental to happiness and productivity. If you're not using the inbox zero system then please trust me when I say it'll change your life. Here's Merlin Mann talking about the original system at Google:
When new employees start at Distilled, we coach them in the ancient ways of Inbox Zero. Although it's a personal revelation for many (myself included), the real power comes when you have an entire organization that is GOOD WITH EMAIL. Having seen a peek inside companies that are not so efficient with email the difference is night and day.
Our Consultants Work On-site Where Possible
Life is organized chaos. Sometimes not so organized either. Project management is similar in that it's often more chaos than management. There's only so much you can really and truly work to get things done without being in the thick of it.
So, where possible, our consultants aim to spend some time on-site with our clients. The increase in results is striking. Not only are we better able to communicate our ideas, but we are also better placed to understand how the client's business works - not just the business model and mechanics, but communication, project management, hopes, and fears.
The best substitute for this if you're not able to get face-to-face with the client is to at least communicate often with many different points of contact within the client's organization. This improves the chances that you'll understand the real needs of the client as well as ensure that as many people as possible like you which is important for getting things done!
Communication Solves All Problems
We have various memes within Distilled; you can read more about them in a post I wrote for Dharmesh a little while back called Startup Culture Memes - Do You Have A Duck Of Awesomeness. One of the ones I'm most proud of is the mantra "communication solves all problems". I'm constantly amazed at the ability to solve problems by communicating effectively. Either talking to other members of the team or talking directly with the client - just having some real interaction (face to face or on the phone ideally) and explaining the situation clearly solves 99.9% of all problems.
This mantra has infiltrated all parts of Distilled, but I see two key ways that this affects project management on every project.
At the start of any project, we have a kick-off meeting which has two clear outcomes; the first is a top to bottom understanding of the client's business, and the second is a detailed understanding of what the project is going to look like. Mark wrote up our project kick-off process in a little bit more detail here: How To Kick Start SEO Projects.
Secondly, I drill into people here that it's okay to miss deadlines. Really. It is. Do people really care if you deliver something on Monday morning instead of Friday afternoon? The answer is that yes, they care very much if you don't let them know. If you let them know that you will deliver it Monday instead of Friday, then in 99% of cases, they could care less. Why is this so powerful? Because a single missed deadline without communication tarnishes your perception in the client's eyes. So long as the communication is strong, the actual dates rarely matter.
PPT Pitches
PPT? As a project management tool? Well yes. Let me explain - there are broadly speaking three types of work that you do when you're consulting and there are three different tools you use for these tasks as follows:
| Activity | Tool |
|---|---|
| Research and analysis | Excel |
| Deliverables and specifications | Word |
| Pitching ideas and strategy | PowerPoint |
Although this seems like a no-brainer, it's actually a very powerful mental model. Want to take a guess where setting the project vision and goals comes in? Yep - PPT. Although you won't keep track of a project in PowerPoint, you should be crafting and creating the vision and goals for the project in PPT. Without strong vision and goals, projects will fail.
So persuading a consultant to put together PPTs at the start of projects is a powerful tool to ensure we have a clear idea of where we're going, and importantly, the client is on board.
What Works For You?
It's important to note that what works for us may not work for you. Hopefully this has been helpful for you to take a peek at how we manage projects and communication. I'd love to hear what you guys have to offer in the comments!
Further Reading
If you loved this psot and want to explore the subject further take a look at these:
- https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/project-management-for-seo/
- https://moz.com/blog/project-management-for-seo
- https://www.slideshare.net/SarahCarling/seo-project-management
- https://searchengineland.com/why-is-project-management-undervalued-in-seo-65750
- https://seogadget.com/seo-management-good-seo-managers/
I think getting consultants on-site every once and a while is important. You want to make sure everyone knows exactly what is going on and how they fit into the overall picture of the poject. It also helps foster a stronger team when everyone gets to meet face to face.
Hello Tom, excellent post as usual, great resources and ideas, thanks for sharing!
There is definitely a need to start taking into consideration project management best practices to define, manage and measuring SEO processes effectively. I have seen situations where just by following a few best practices and very fundamental and flexible methodology (like lean, agile methodologies) have generated real changes towards effectiveness in the processes (one of the reasons I'm going to speak about this in MozCon).
Unfortunately sometimes we focus on just delivering the results we have agreed without thinking too much how we can organize and control our activities and resources to achieve them in the most cost-effective way and end-up investing much more time and work, with an unhappy client.
I have also seen situations where project management was seen as just a "software solution" that could be used to document the process and enhance collaboration between teams, not as a set of good practices and working models to help us manage our resources to achieve our goals. And also, just defining the project goals should be taken more seriously, by validating requirements and constraints, as I wrote sometime ago in this post.
I think this is also part of the "professionalization" of our work and should be a must if we work with many or complex SEO processes.
Some other PM tools that might help, for small projects: Teambox, for larger ones: Confluence, if you want open source and have a server to install: Redmine.
Cheers!
Thanks for writing this detailed post as an open letter :) I would be curious to know about what sort of feedback you receive from your clients when you send them "Monthly Industry Updates"? Do they come up with their concerns for their website?
Also, you might want to correct the typo in the last section "Further Reading". (If you loved this psot (post)...)
I'd be curious to know what client's response to the newsletters are as well.
I consistently find these "nuts and bolts of agency issues" more useful to me personally than much of the SEO content that I read. Would love to see more of it from Distilled and from any other agencies.
Very useful tips, hints and tools!I will take a closer look at Trello and enforce me to use Google Docs more often.
Your "Monthly Industry Update" example is not showing up - can you check the link again?
Some good tips here Will, many of them we use where I work.
Another good tip for email management is to turn off the notifications of new emails in Outlook and then set aside a dedicated amount of time each day twice to check emails and do replies can be 30 minutes and 10am and 30minutes at 4pm for example.
Very much agreed! Achieving awesomeness includes having a great sense of organization.
We recently switched to Podio for project management. It's Facebook-like interface has meant less training for our clients who can join in on the conversation and improve the overall workflow.
Communication is the key! Thanks for giving me the idea to send a summary of SEO and industry news to my clients. They are going to tell me Nice!
Communication with clients is indeed most important. To ask about the well being of their dog is sometimes more important than their ranking reports. Nonetheless is Project management important. But in my opinion SEO is not a project, but an ongoing process of improvements. A tool that supports that process very good is Swydo .
Great post about the importance of tools that sometimes get overlooked. I especially like the industry update. That's something I'm trying to get implemented at my new company.
Thanks!
Great stuff, my wall looked just like yours with all those post it's and I hated being away from them because I would get so lost while on the road! Trello is amazing!
We used to use Trello however use ProTasker now. It's a bit more structured which works for my agency. Great tips here - Thanks!
This is a great and helpful post. Thanks Tom. I sent this to my collegues.
Really project managenent is one of the most vital part, for managing several projects a better management is very much essential. This post is really inspiring, thanks a lot for sharing.
This is a great and helpful post. Thanks Tom. I sent this to my collegues.
Great post! SEO and your blog is very useful. The whole site is very good I like about this post. I also get a good blog. It is your saitai about SEO. So I sign in and operating system chooser. We hope you'll enjoy it. Was tagged with praise. Thank you very much available!
This will definitely help me get a handle on my reporting as well as recommendations for my clients. It's easy to get carried away with send them info that they don't care about!
Great post and tips Tom. I love the section on communication. In my experience communication is an ongoing challenge in most agencies. We usually go on site at the beginning of an engagement and then the on site visits vary. How often on average do your consultants go on site with clients during an engagement?
Very timely, Thanks. I had been looking for some software to manage web projects in an agile & collaborative way - trello is just what I have been looking for.
Bit late with my comment, however, wanted to drop in and say thanks for the tip about Trello. I read this post a few weeks ago, but really started using it last night for a new project. Love the simplicity and features, the checklists are a real bonus and helped me break a couple of cards down into actionable steps for other team members to tackle.
Is it me, or is it a shame we can't make connections between cards, or have inter-card dependencies? For example - "don't action this card til this card is complete" or something. I know you could achieve it with colour but I've already started using the colours for other labels.
Still, Trello is one of the most intuitive project management tools I've used, will be adopting it for our ongoing projects in due course now I'm giving it a go with this one. Also really found benefit from the Inbox Zero video, and will certainly be encouraging my team members to work that way.
Yep, Trello looks good...thanks very much
Nice tips...
Joined seomoz today and feeling glad to be a member of this community.
If you are looking for an SEO Project Plan, then I believe that Chart Gantt has developed a 60 day seo planner.
Hey Tom amazing post. Glad that you tackled the details of project management. It's amazing how project management isn't given enough focus by agencies when running any type of campaign.
I used to go with zoho before but when I say trello, I shifted everything to them. Trello is hands down the best project management tool.
Great post, Tom! I just wrote the first article in a series with a similar topic. This one is on Discovery Phase of SEO projects. And for those that look for cool tools in this area, I'm using RealtimeBoard to show how you can integrate things into your work process with the team. Thanks again!
Wow excellent post really needed that kind of informations thanks alot!
Great post as always Tom! Will definitely have to check out Trello : )
Thanks for sharing all those tips, hints and tools! I already use a couple but I really need to invest myself in actually implementing inbox zero. I think it would probably do wonders for me.
Nice Post!
Google Docs and Dropbox are life savers! Just remember not to use them for any kind of sensitive infonmation and you should be safe. Gmail is also one of my favorite tools as I can have all my emails in there and use the alises feature to ensure that I always reply from the right address.
Due to the vast majority of tasks that I have to cover as a SEO Manager I've found this post very timely. I plan to work closely with other project managers
wow thats great and systmatic work flow of hadling projects. Thanks for it. One more extra tool, information added to my skill thank you thanks so much.
This is a very cool post, some very good tips + Trello discovery! Thanks
thanks for publishing this stuff.. i love the content distilled creates and the progect management tips are invaluable
Great info. I've tried to incorporate client's into my project management, giving them full access to what I"m doing, when I'm clocked in, and what atsks I've completed per day. In reality, the clients really just want results and don't have the time, or don't care, to look at how I get those results.
These are great resources, though. I'll have to check them out.
agreed
Solid advise Tom.
I have been using Trello for a while and love it.
I hadn't come accross Merlin's Inbox Zero talk, thanks for sharing it.
whole stuff is so usefull. I was wondering it few days back and there you made it. I will implement it @ my new job. thanks a lot for such a useful share.
Great to see Trello in there have been using that for Project Management for a while now. Does a great job at it too!
Thanks for your share. I will pay more attention to the Trello.
Awesome, will be sure to check out Trello in more detail. Thanks for the heads up!
Hey Tom,
Thanks for including some great resources with this one.
I'm sure the Google Docs tip will be great for most, but I have an aversion born of bad experience.
As the only one in our company with a serious attachment to error-free text, there is nothing that scares me more than giving other people editing privileges for documents I'm working on :(
... and so I'll add the following: Please spare a thought for others and make an effort to at least try paying attention to spelling and typos when using Google Docs for collaboration :)
Sha
Hey Sha - you know that you can give someone "comment only" rights on your gdoc right? Does wonders for allowing people to feedback on specific portions without being able to insert typos :)
Hmmm... perhaps I don't see that because I am never the one to put my stuff into gdocs?!!?
OMG!! Eureka moment!
Generally it goes like this ... I send out the doc for review & someone else then throws it into gdocs. I get an email to say it has been shared and break into a cold sweat... ;)
Tom, I think you just put 20 years back on my life!
Thank you so much.
I owe you a drink at Mozcon!
Thanks for sharing this wonderful information. I will surely review this tools and query you if any doubts.
I was looking for a tool like Trello - thanks for sharing it!
Some great actionable points in this post, particularly the Inbox Zero Methodology. Love it!
I come back on SEOmoz after long time due to search of Project management. Internal task management tools and follow up system can give us solid push in performance. Now a day, we're happy to use Google drive to share our SEO documents to team member under one Sign In. Now, we can use MS-OFFICE power with Google technology. What you think about it?
No doubt, project management is one of the most challenging and demanding tasks and it takes time for SEO and technical experts to get into this human resouse oriented field. Though you have organised andpresented all those things in a much more effectiveand convincing manner.
Thanks for offering this wonderful piece of information!
Hi Tom,
Your communication part is awesome. It’s always great to be transparent. If you have missed your deadline by a single day, I have never seen a case that client has given divorce to you. If you stay transparent and tell them we are going to deliver next morning then they will say ok. But at the same time if you have missed the deadline, do 10% more and solid work. That is the key to retain the clients and get appreciation from them. Project management is not something that can be done by separately. Its integrated part of whole project.
Thanks for sharing your thought!!!
I just returned from visiting Trello and I signed up. It appears to be the answer I have been looking for. I'm not sure how I missed it but now I owe you one.
I would like to second your thoughts about using Docs because of it collaborative capabilities. Being a small concern working with other small concerns its has become a very productive tool for us.
+1 Some great tips and tools for project management. I've used Trello in the past. VERY COOL
Very nice resources, great to see some confirmation on the fact that SEO success is dependent on social values than just having the right linknetwork or doing the right optimization techniques.
Anyone still use Basecamp to manage their SEO projects? Not the new version but the Classic.
I've just written a much more detailed version on Paddy Moogans blog article linked at the top of this post, but to summarise for me it has it all: lists, messaging and collaboration, file and asset management, calendars, API, and TEMPLATES.
Brilliant and inspiring article. Will be spending more time with Google Docs tomorrow now...
We use basecamp (the classic version) + google docs to manage projects, has worked well for us. I haven't tried the newer bc version yet but will do soon.
Great article but i feel project management is very personal to your business and management style.
I love BASECAMP : ] it even connects to raven tools which I am sure allot of us use already.
We use Basecamp too (and have for a while now). Great tool. I was looking into Raven tools as well as other tools like Trello, wasn't aware that it connects with BC. Will have to have a look in to this!
We often forget how important management is. Beeing focused and well organized increases the productivity so much.
Another good tool that might work for SEO scenarios is postfrenzy.com. You can have a bunch of workspaces organize your work however you wish. To get consultants up to speed once in a while as Nick mentioned is effortless since you can quickly create a pass to share with them that expires after a certain amount of time.
Great post Tom, thanks!
I will join Aleyda as a Teambox lover, have to say that love goes passion with v4, somehow never felt comfy with older ones... On the other hand, I found a helpful hand in Gantt Project, despite my experience with this tool comes from my days as IT Ops, it may help SEO people as well for sure (and costs nada :)
I love the idea of using PPT as part of continuing projects. We have just started implementing 6-12 month timelines for every account, and I like the idea of using Power Point to keep everyone on track. Thanks for the great post!
Tom,
Thanks for the insight. We all appreciate the time you bloggers take to keep us up to speed. Specifically, your Project Management video is solid in focusing on the importance of processes. Things don't get done as quickly or nimbly if there isn't a goal with clear steps. In SEO, this is especially easy to fall victim to. I'm helping my company stitch these types of things up. I'll be following your posts.
Regards,
Kyle at SpokeHQ
Great post! We are currently using Asana for our project/task management which I would recommend. Trello looks really cool - have to check it out. The major benefit for me personally is not just having a single location to overlook all current projects but to share my team's current workflow with other management. I no longer dig through my inbox before a meeting, I simply pull up our current dashboard to share.
Well that's just brilliant really... certainly need to take a day out this month to rethink how i'm managing SEO projects and plan them better for the rest of 2012
Nice and informative post. Thanks for sharing.
Awesome pOst