To understand what Projectplace does and what added value it has for us (and thus can have for your organization), it is good to first give a small glimpse into our editorial kitchen. WINMAG Pro is published by Clipboard Publishing, a publisher of consumer and trade magazines with its own editorial team. This editorial team therefore works not only on this magazine but also produces a management magazine, a photo magazine, and coordinates the editorial work of several other titles. All of this includes associated websites.
There is plenty to do, with multiple projects running simultaneously. Our tasks? Creating schedules, producing articles, conducting interviews, making reports, 'assigning' stories to freelance authors, editing incoming articles, providing images, brainstorming topics, maintaining contact with the reader, and so on. This applies to both the magazines and their associated websites.
My task as editor-in-chief is to manage all of this effectively, both in terms of planning and journalism. To achieve this, we previously worked in shared spreadsheets and planning lists, using Google Docs.
On its own, a decent system, but the many lists make it confusing, labor-intensive, and difficult to maintain an overview. At the 'article level', the status can still be tracked in a spreadsheet, but on a personal level, it is hardly feasible. Because who is working on which article? Who is busy with what? Moreover, with multiple titles and associated websites, the number of 'lists' to keep track of becomes enormous. And we haven't even mentioned the general lists for example, the available test materials.
And then Projectplace came along.
Projectplace was not presented to us with a promise that everything would now be 100 percent transparent and orderly. We were allowed to test it for a few months to see if it was a suitable tool for us. Projectplace is a generic solution: it offers teams of various kinds a potentially powerful tool for project management. This means that you will always have to see how it can be best utilized for your way of working and for your business operations. Sometimes you may need to use a function slightly differently than it was originally intended.
The main function is creating projects, within which you can assign tasks. For us, this means creating a project for each edition. We translate articles within that edition into tasks within that project, one task per article. These tasks can be 'assigned' to others, so in our case to freelancers and editors. They can be notified via the iPhone app if desired.
In the 'work plan', you can see the status of tasks within a project at a glance.
Projectplace can do more than we use it for. For example, we do not use the central chat channel, just to name one (we use Yammer for that, which works across all departments. We only use Projectplace in the editorial office).
Also, the budgets and cost estimates for freelancers are not tracked in Projectplace, as the system is based on hourly costs. We base our costs on per word, per article, or per photo.
The advantage? All information about status and progress is no longer in separate sheets, but in one, well-secured system. Thanks to a clear display of 'milestones', deadlines are visible to everyone, which creates a sense of awareness. At a glance, I can see through status graphs how far articles and productions have progressed. And the ultimate added value: I can see per person what someone is working on, across all projects. That is exactly the information I found difficult to extract from separate Docs sheets.
