Transforming chaos to managed teamwork: A Project Management guide to executing a successful campaign
We have all been in a situation where you may have faced chaos out of nowhere in your professional life. Several people trying to communicate with you and each other to try and find a resolution for activities you may have not anticipated. You’re bound to feel strained & pressurized in the ability to accomplish the tasks & objectives you have set forth in front of you.
As Petyr Baelish from Game of Thrones had once remarkably said, “Chaos is a ladder”. It could be one, but only if it’s channelized through the right techniques and methodologies.
This article is about how we as a team tackled some of the major obstacles which were anticipated.
Being a digital eCommerce platform in the MENA region with more than 150 employees it’s important for our organization Al Tayer Digital to achieve the organizational objectives of not just completing targets, but creating a sense of accomplishment among other eCommerce giants in the region.
The period from November-December is important for any eCommerce company considering major events like Single’s Day, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, Christmas and lastly New Years in which various eCommerce websites bring in crazy deals to bring more conversion and traffic to the platform.
All the above however, comes with added complexities during execution with factors such as team size, lack of channelizing requests and making sure mistakes are not being repeating twice. By applying the methodologies and strategies mentioned below this is how we solved it as a team executing one of the most successful campaigns within our organization.
Phase 1:
a. Pre-Planning for the campaign
Essentially a meeting consisting of leads across all the stakeholders. Focusing mainly on the functional requirements for execution and communicating timelines for the campaign dates. This could involve leads of business functions along with Product team and Project team members.
Outcome of the meeting:
1. A well-documented email thread consisting of the discussion post meeting. Providing visibility to the members on the key focus points of execution for each department. This in turn provides visibility to the members on the key focus points of execution that pertain to each department involved in the plan of execution.
2. Open points/questions from the meeting to be clarified and reverted.
b. Defining overview of tasks carried out by each team department
A list format consisting of an overview of what each function’s responsibility is in terms of execution. This could be dependent on tasks from any other departmental function.
Example: A marketing team would need design from the artwork team for them to execute their operations.
Phase 2: The high-level planning
a. Gantt Chart
Assists in keeping primary focus on key activities for each department from the overview of tasks to be performed by each department. It also helps in understanding visually if there are dependencies for tasks to complete.
In a Gantt Chart, there can be several types of dependencies
· Finish to Start (FS) — Predecessor must finish before Successor can start
· Start to Start (SS) — Predecessor must start before Successor can start
· Finish to Finish (FF) — Predecessor must finish before Successor can finish
· Start to Finish (SF) — Predecessor must start before Successor can finish — this rarely occurs
In the above example we’re using Wrike which allows us to publicly display and communicate Gantt charts for visibility. Wrike is free to use for team upto 5 members. You can alternatively use Project Management tools such as Trello, Monday or Microsoft Project.
If you wish to build one using Google Sheets, here is a free to duplicate template by TeamGantt.
b. Defining RACI matrix
Responsible — Does the work to complete the task.
Accountable — Delegates work and is last one to review the task before it is completed.
Consulted — Provides input based on how the upcoming project could be impacted.
Informed — Needs to be kept in loop of the project progress.
RACI shows how we were clear on every stakeholder knowing what they need to execute on the communicated timelines. RACI matrix provides visibility for every task or project that needs to be completed and helps avoid duplication of tasks.
If you wish to create a RACI matrix, feel free to duplicate this template.
Phase 3: Understanding operational model and common problems
For any organization, it is vital to understand the operational strategies as it provides vision for resource availability at the peak time. In our organization, we tried to structure it down as follows.
a. Escalation Page
We created a page on Atlassian — Confluence which provided information of individuals from every department to contact if issues escalate. It’s a good practice to have 2 individuals as “Level 1” and “Level 2” if incase one is unavailable.
b. Do it yourself (DIY) Page
Rather than being dependent on individuals for common bugs and support, it’s easy if the team can navigate to the most common bugs or issues and have a way of solving themselves. This usually comes with previous experience and the team members from several departments know a solution of any commonly asked question. This is very similar to the FAQ pages you usually find on websites and can also can be created on Atlassian — Confluence
c. Ensuring system stability
Marketing tools can end up bringing a lot of traffic to the system. Testing out the system stability can be through doing unit and automation tests on the system which in turn can derive results in order to ascertain on improving upon the infrastructure and scaling up in order to be able to take more load or keeping it as is.
Phase 4: Execution and Monitoring
Execution phase may vary on business requirements and the size of the project. This could mean either execution could be at a variable duration. Some project execution phases could last for days or some of them could be only for a couple of hours.
Following strategies can be used to ensure within the departments for easier understanding of requirements.
a. Building a checklist between departments for execution.
This is a simple yet powerful technique to ensure processes are validated. The checklist could start of as a title. Followed by dates as a subtitle. A checkbox and a text written on the action points that need to be taken by a department or a member.
Checklist can be formed from a meeting discussion between two or more functional departments, it can focus execution processes in-depth.
Owners of the checklist activity could tick when it’s done to ensure visibility.
b. Labeling any tasks on tickets
Helps ensure if any task is executed it helps back-tracking when using filters. This helps monitoring if any tasks are pending for execution.
c. Monitoring Execution
It does not end here, one of the most vital steps post-execution is to monitor the changes. This could be done in order to observe closely if the planned activity is stable
This can be to ensure that the tasks and subtasks have been marked as completed, monitoring stability post completion and ensuring if there are any team members raising any flags.
d. Organizing a retrospective
Retrospectives can be a very useful tool for understanding outcome for the overall processes with the team and providing valuable input which should be considered for future campaigns. A great tool is funretro.io which allows interactive modules in the section that can be shared with the entire team. This can highlight several instances for scoping action points across various departments.
Approach from the above covered points may vary upon the size, structure, complexity and involvement. But it is vital to always plan as much as possible, look for potential risks and plan out mitigation strategies to ensure no blockers arise before executing.
Ensuring team spirit is maintained while executing the processes and executing through the right channels ends chaos right at the root.
Good luck! May the force be with you.
Thanks Anik Chatterjee & Zeynep for the additions in the article 😊
