The Way I Manage My Projects with brightpod
Soup to nuts. We handle everything associated with a company's presence. Advertising, social media, print design... everything. I've found that design isn't singular anymore. You can't JUST design a post card, or JUST a website, or JUST a trade show booth... every little thing that a company or brand does is interconnected. It all works together like one massive rolling ball, so everything has to be considered and related. If a client wants a website, then we also create the social media presence and pair it with printed pieces that refer back to the digital aspects. We want everything to be reciprocal. We're creating a universe for each individual client and figuring out the best way to invite their perfect customers into that place and have their experience be the best it can be so they convert — that's the goal.
LOL. There is no "average". Every day is different — which I actually love. But an "ideal" day...
Come in, turn on the Keurig, put on some great jazz, go over the emails, assign work to my team, add notes and files into each pod as necessary and triage their day by putting their tasks in order. We have a morning meeting at 10am with the staff and then we all get to work. We re-group after lunch, address any concerns or sticking points... get to do more work... talk about the next days' work and go home to a clean house, folded laundry and dinner on the table. ;)
Routinely I don't have a routine. If I'm going to see a client, I usually have a quick "what's app" conversation with my team. If I'm in the office, I go over the day with them and start working. I make sure to look at my agenda and prepare for any meetings or calls or address any emails that need answering. Brightpod is a huge part of this process.
1. Make sure to keep my pods up to date.
2. Keep all passwords and login information in our passpack account.
3. COMMUNICATION! Having a daily meeting to go over what is expected and if anyone is struggling with anything.
I have 5 team members in Brightpod and 2 clients. I'm just dipping my virtual toe into the benefits of clients having access to pods. So far, so good. We manage everything in pods. There is a pod for small tasks, and then everything else has it's own pod. I think there are currently 30 open jobs right now.
I've used every tool known to man. Trello (which we loved), Accelo, Basecamp, Evernote and more.
I really didn't like that the focus for most of these seemed to be financial more than project organizational. As a visual person who manages a visual team, I need to be able to see at the projects built out in a very visual way. Brightpod takes what we loved about Trello and put it on steroids. And I love the option to view in a list or in the boxes. Some of our developers couldn't stand the boxes. Their brains are much more attuned to a list-type of format. So that works much better for them. The versatility is great.
I have never successfully put a client into our system before. Now we have clients using Brightpod almost like a ticketing system. We can see the requests they put in and they can see where in the process the request is at any time they like. It has cut down on all the back and forth emails.
Not really. Being that we've used so many project management systems before, the learning curve was very small. I think most of my team was expecting it to be a lot harder than it is.
The task arrangement feature is fabulous. It helps us set up our days and know what task needs our attention next.
Terrible. Brightpod has replaced every other project management program we've tried so to have to take a step back and use one of those would be a huge bummer.
I do wish you could tag someone in a comment rather than sending them an email... so they would get a notification instead. Closing pods is also a bit confusing. And of course... the mobile app would be great as well as Chrome extensions to add email info to a pod from gmail instead of having to copy, paste or email it into the pod.
Signup for a free account, follow @brightpodapp or casually read our blog for tips, tricks and working smart.
If you are a Brightpod customer and would like to get featured please drop us a note at help@brightpod.com