Recently in Project Management Category

I wrote a post here advocating greater transparency in the staffing business and someone left the following comment:

"Graphic design is a tough business. That being said, seeing positions posted for a web designer that knows Flash, web design, and print design for the jaw-dropping salary of 35K isn't going to cut it. That is senior-level design knowledge."

I couldn't help but agree with this individual, and not just because recent salary data published by Robert Half puts starting salaries for graphic designers at $36K, with motion graphics specialists commanding salaries starting in the mid-$50Ks.

I thought that we had put the days of kitchen-sink web positions well behind us. Overlooking the significant and long-acknowledged differences between print and web design, a position description like the one above indicates a failure to recognize that certain sub-specialties of web design, as one might consider Flash, for example, have actually become viable career options in their own right.

Interactive design has always been a team sport precisely because it is interactive. The web is undeniably a visual medium, hence the importance of visual design in the creation of websites. But a web site must function in addition to looking pretty and the technical complexity of its functioning demands skills and expertise that are more math than Matisse, if you know what I mean.

The classic division of labor on web projects has always been design AND development. Although most designers will have some technical chops, and developers, on the front-end anyway, will understand design basics, this just means they can communicate and collaborate with each other, not that they are interchangeable. Indeed, they are less interchangeable than ever as the "classic" division of yesteryear has been replaced by today's "baroque" arrangement of sundry strategists and marketing mavens corralling a shifting constellation of user experience specialists, designers, copywriters, Actionscripters, programmers, and analysts, and more.

I know that money is tight and that the web is critical to everyone's efforts. Nevertheless, you don't do yourself or your business any favors by trying to cut costs by hiring one person to do the work of four (or more). Instead, you will be better served by starting with a comprehensive plan for your web efforts, which may in the end be "owned" by one person, and then hiring talented specialists on a project or contract basis to bring the plan to life. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it ALWAYS takes a team to create good web stuff.

Image Courtesy of elvissa.

An old compadre over at the web shop known mysteriously as Silverthreaded, pointed me to this post, "Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game," on an interesting blog called, "Zen Habits."

The gist is this: It's all about freedom, leveraging technology, and, oddly enough, getting less done while being more focused on and engaged in what you do do.

I'm sure it will make you rethink some of your own work habits. The one rule that got me: Don't multi-task -- multi-project and single-task. In this day and age, it's not about multi-tasking; it's about working on multiple projects simultaneously, but focusing on one task at a time.

Image Courtesy of rejflinger.

First of all, if UR are someone who uses "UR," then you can't be TOO old school.

Second of all, I should mention that this question was actually a three-parter, the other two parts being: "How much is schooling vs how much is experience?" and, "Where/how would you access each while you hold down a job?"

Thirdly, and this is where I actually try to answer the question, as I said in in my recent webcast, the two skills that are most critical nowadays are project management and the ability to learn. I'm assuming that if you have been in marketing for a while, you probably already have basic project management skills. It's very important to remember that these skills are transferable and, frankly, far from going out of fashion.

On the learning front, I do see this as more a question of experience than schooling. The best way to learn is to get in there and play around with the new media. Join online communities. Set-up a Facebook account, a Flickr account, or even a MySpace page. Explore. Experiment. But all the time be thinking, "How could I apply this to the job I'm being asked to do today?"

That last question is the key to your last question. The way you learn about this stuff while trying to hold down a job is by incorporating it gradually into your current job. It might not be entirely within your power to incorporate a product review function on your website or to start a blog, but regularly visiting sites that review products in your industry or leaving comments on relevant blogs is fairly simple. Even more simple, is setting up Google Alerts for terms that matter to you, your product, or your company. It's a small step, but definitely a good way to start tapping into the potential of the new media.

Beyond this, I would just encourage you to engage with folks who are active in the new world of marketing. A good place to start would be a site like MarketingProfs. They tend to focus on the flash-point where the fundamentals meet the cutting edge and their Daily Fix blog offers you access to a very lively community of intelligent and responsive folks. Read what they write, comment, ask questions - you'll find that a big part of this education is just showing up.

To put it another way, the key to all this isn't learning technology X or application Y; the key is getting involved.

Another marketing careers webcast related question. Actually, in its entirety, the question went like this: "Given the downturn in the economy, combined with the marketing dept. being the 1st to be cut/reduced, do you expect an increase in project-based opportunities?"

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do believe that marketers will see an increase in project-based opportunities and here's why.

First of all, it appeals to the organizations that hire marketers. Certainly, parsing tasks into clearly defined projects can help with budgeting and cost-control, but even more importantly it represents a more efficient and effective way of actually doing marketing.

"Operationalizing" marketing, as I discussed, involves separating planning from execution. With the advent of increased automation on the execution side, the planning component, a marketing plan for a new product, for example, becomes a discrete input that can be generated by someone who then moves on to do something else.

At the same time, project-based work should appeal to marketers as well. On the one hand, it offers flexibility so that you can focus on doing the things you want to do without getting locked into a particular role or stagnating within a particular organization.

On the other hand, it allows you to consciously construct your career path around targeted learning experiences involving new markets, new companies, and new technologies.

One downside to this trend is job instability, because you have to spend more time thinking about your next gig. The other downside is, paradoxically, missed learning opportunities. In the course of a project-based career, you might get to try a lot of new things, but you may not have the chance to see a plan through to fruition and thus discover what worked best and what doesn't work at all.

Scott Berkun may not have written THE book on project management, but he did write a best seller on the subject back in 2005, The Art of Project Management, which has now been updated and reissued under the title, Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management. More recently, Scott published a rather thought-provoking book entitled, The Myths of Innovation.

I contacted Scott and asked him a couple questions about interviewing, hiring, and working with project managers. Here are my questions and his responses:

When interviewing project managers, what should the hiring manager be asking and what kind of answers should s/he be looking for?

Hiring project managers is tricky because there's no single skill set that matters most. You have to sort through what combination of abilities matters in your organization and build an interview that gives candidates a chance to demonstrate them.

Broadly speaking, you are usually looking for someone with a passion for the job, the right attitude, and strong people skills, You are also looking for someone well versed in decision-making, crisis management, and conflict resolution. How much weight to place on any of these skills varies with the project and the company.

In the interview, the best bet is to talk about situations - get the candidate talking about their toughest situations and what they learned, or describe the toughest situations you've been in and let the candidate walk you through what they'd do.

When do their eyes light up? When do they get excited? Passionate? What mistakes do they confess? What is their thought process? In an interview I want to do everything I can to learn about the person and get the best possible sense of how they'll behave on the job.