Day 67 — Creative PM series 1/7: “Creative PM: What/Why/How”
From “feeling-stuck” to “seeing-growth”
As a designer, have you ever felt that you’re stuck in your career? Did you feel like there’s something you need to acquire, to breach the ceiling to get to the next level, but you’re not sure what that is? In this Creative PM series, I’d like to share my experience with you, with the hope that it can benefit you whether you’re in different development level of the design career:
- For junior designers: learn what’s important in a project
- For senior designers: identify areas to learn & grow
- For design lead: know what’s important but people don’t talk about
- For senior lead: think about strategy beyond client & projects
Creative PM Series
In order to properly introduce different important areas a designer needs to be aware of, and master it throughout career, in this “Creative PM” series, I’m breaking it down into the following topics:
- General Knowledge of Creative PM (this article)
- Quality Enhancement (May 7)
- Effort Evaluation (May 8)
- Timeline Adjustment (May 9)
- Morale Elevation (May 10)
- Scope Management (May 11)
- Risk Assessment (May 12)
By the end of this series (Sunday, May 12), I can share with you a holistic view of the Creative PM skills and tasks. For today’s introductory article, I’m going to cover the general knowledge of Creative PM in the following structure:
- What is Creative PM
- The value of Creative PM
- How to kick start
What is Creative PM
Creative PM is the skill set to fill the gap between designers and the rest of the product/dev team; it could be used by the design lead, associated director, or even director. You might ask, “isn’t that a project managers job? or should a product owner take on it?”. It’s great to have a good product/project manager/ owner, however the truth is, they are not trained as designers and sometimes they don’t know what designers know/want; to be more specific:
- Designers/Creative: how designers work? how to manage designers’ energy/ creativity?
- Engagement Model: what’s their process?(Double Diamond?, Lean UX?)
- Logistics: how long each design task/activity will take? who should be involved in the workshop? what designers need in order to deliver?
Therefore, whether the title is UX Lead or Design Lead, when designers grow senior, they tend to start taking responsibilities of handling UX specific project management tasks. For example, choosing the right design framework (e.g. Lean UX or Design Sprint), plan for separate tasks based on project needs, communicate the required time and effort to complete the tasks, etc. By doing so, the rest of the design team can focus on the craft part (as figure below) without worrying “why client don’t understand what we’re doing.”
When design leads grow to associated director or director level, their views are now beyond project level. They’re responsible for design organization and company UX strategy. For example, what’s our performance goal this year, compared to last year? What about next year? What is our short/mid term plan, or even long term plan? How are we doing compared to the industry standard? Do we need to grow certain types of talents? There are many things to consider when it comes to organization level of UX strategy, and it’s no longer just handling client and managing designers.
The Value of Creative PM
Not only Creative PM helps fill the gap between traditional project management and designers’ need, it also creates the following benefit:
- Advocate for value of design: When the company UX maturity is on the lower side, it could be hard for designers to do their work because the rest of the team don’t see the value of investing time/effort in design activities. It’s creative PM’s job to advocate the value in order to get buy-in.
- Educate non-designers: In a longer run, in order to elevate the company UX maturity, design education for non-designers is required so that people can slowly but surely learn why to invest in design.
- Foster a design/creativity friendly culture: Creativity is a team work; in order to make design team fully effective, a design friendly culture is required. Designers should not be treated like exotic creatures, instead, designers are professional facilitators with visualizing skills and open mindset.
- Build design community: To fully support designers’ needs, a strong design community is a scalable solution that make designers feel supported, and can seek help from within.
- Identify gaps and conceive UX strategy: When it comes to longer term solution in elevating design impact, a properly crafted UX strategy is imperative. A gap analysis alongside with thoughtful solutions help business leader to understand why and how to invest in longer term UX strategy.
How to kick start
The best way to start adopting Creative PM skills is to first identify your personality type and the existing needs from the project/team you’re working on; therefore you can map between the two, and find out what types of specific Creative PM skills suits you best, and can be most effective in help your project/team.
Personality
Depending on what types of personality or characteristics you possess, you might choose the skills you feel most comfortable to start with first. For example, if you’re more inclined to the amiable quadrant, perhaps you’re already working on building design culture and community. You can either continue hone in that types of skills, or learn from the opposite side: the Driver. Drivers tend to want things concise and efficient, and focus more on “getting things done” compared to the interest in “connecting people”. Therefore, some communication skills like “Bottom Line on Top (BLOT)”, or “how to create concise presentations” could be a useful skills to learn.
Project/Team Needs
The easiest way to understand what project/team needs is to start asking people what they want and how you can help them. You might be surprised by the answers; it could be personal conflict that bothers them, or work schedule, or not getting enough attention, or not feeling that they are growing the skill set or career. A good creative PM will know what individuals are trying to achieve, not only in the project level, but career level. By carefully assigning proper tasks, and more importantly, providing timely side-line support, is the only sustainable way to keep the team together and deliver good quality results.
Conclusion
- Creative PM skills are valuable in all level of creative career, they are meant to bridge the gap between designers’ needs and the rest of the product/dev team.
- The value of Creative PM lies in both project level and organization level; Design education and culture improvement are key to design organization success.
- To effectively adopt Creative PM skills, first identify your personality and find out what the team needs most, then pair them to find the best matching skills to learn.
What are some challenges you encountered when stepping in in the Creative PM role? What have you learned? I’m curious about your thoughts.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
To see more
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not represent current or previous client or employer views.
