How do you manage work that matters? Coming up with a solid system for project management is vital for church communicators. A recent #cmschat on Twitter covered project management, and we pulled out some of the best ideas.
In general, effective project management should help us work smarter, not harder.
Project Management Tips:
- Use online forms for communication requests. Don’t let people stop you in the hallway—that’s a good way for things to get lost. Point them to an online communication request form. Here are a few examples:
- St. Peter’s Church and World Outreach Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.
- West Ridge Church in Dallas, Ga.
- Steve Fogg collected several examples of these request forms.
- How soon can I get this? If projects are always needed last-minute or with a very short lead time, that’s a good sign you need to set up a process. It might be a good idea to share your standard delivery times so ministries can plan accordingly.
- Ask standard questions: What’s the goal? Who’s the audience? What’s the deadline? What absolutely must be communicated? What value does this program/event/project/whatever offer?
- Staff buy-in: Get your team on board with a process by explaining why it will help them, not just you.
- Tools: Find the right tool to track and manage all your projects and deadlines. Asana, Teamwork, Basecamp, Trello, TeamGantt, Slack and Adobe art boards are just a few of the tools that can help.
- The juggling act: How do you decide what takes priority? For some churches it’s reach and impact, for others it’s timing and capacity. Sometimes it comes down to budget or what the senior pastor wants.
- Quality control: Ask ministries for a written sign-off on completed projects—this encourages them to take responsibility and look at it closely. Use Frame.io for video and image approvals. Always proofread.
A5: Always Spillchick, Spoolchock, spellcheck before sending off to the printer #cmschat
— Steven Fogg (@Stevefogg) September 23, 2016
Thanks to everyone who joined the #cmschat and shared their ideas. You can join the #cmschat every week on Twitter.
More:
- Read the full transcript for more.
- Lots of church communicators struggle with project management. Check out our ‘Week in the Life’ series to hear from other communicators and how they juggle projects.
- Learn more about how to manage content.
Joe Chiappetta
November 2, 2016
This is a great starter list for managing church projects using mostly volunteer workers. In fact, it is really thorough. We are doing a training for our leaders on project management in our group and the only thing I might add to your list is to “Confirm alignment with organizational mission.” I realize that this in implied in a number of your points, but with volunteers, I believe the topic needs to be covered head-on.