Managing Projects for your Chicago Business
Sunday, 2 May 2010 by Mark Cramer
Strategic Project Management Plan
You might be curious how your marketing project might be handled at Beyond Big Marketing? That’s a good question and probably one your customers are wondering about too. Here are some of the tools and tasks we used to manage our website relaunch…
Outlined below is the strategic planning and management tasks for the Beyond Big Marketing Phase II website launch. Above you will see the chart for success to accomplish these goals. There are 5 phases this plan and they need to be adhered to accomplish the goals of the strategic plan.
Discovery Phase will look at competition and goals of the business plan. This will happen even before we proceed into planning. The discovery will be based on developing a deep understanding of the client’s needs and objectives.
The competitive analysis is based on providing a business decision that affects the roll out of design and development. I will take 5 of my top competitors and analyze the home page, site navigation, site organization Links and Labels, Search and Search results, readability, performance, and graphics.
Planning Phase involve establishing prototypes for functionality, developing an information architecture plan, identify keywords and competitive search phrases and build a wireframe to visualize the structured execution plan.
Organizing Phase involves developing a schedule including a Gantt chart (see above) and adhering to the schedule and deliverables. Content Development and Website development are established on a series of milestones.
The content is created in an excel sheet with Title Tags, Metadata, H1 tags Copy and targeted keywords. These are checked for reading ease, content density and conversion. The website structure is based on a site map, flow charts, mad wire frames. These are married to a home page Look and Feel plus a subsequent page design for approval.
Influencing Phase Once the designs are approved, it’s time to get the team on the same page. The time lines, deliverables and goals of the website are all discussed in an open format. All of the pieces of the puzzle are out on the table. This is the time that all need to provide input and suggestions, all possible problems and issues need to be addressed. He key to this phase being executed well is in communication. As a manager I will need to ensure that everyone is set to achieve a more efficient level of operation.
Controlling Phase The complexities of managing this project in different locations and with and skill sets. All information will be available online for the entire team so each can measure their internal performance against the team. Each member can measure the team performance against the organizations stated performance goals.
Closely adhering and monitoring the schedule allows us to attain the stated goals.
Having a clear plan that is transparent to the team and the client, improves morale, increases productivity and provides a quality product.
The chart above only outlines the Phase II website plan. The new business plan will also include a plan to generate new business. But the website needs to be in place before we start driving new customers to it. More on this project later.
