Just over 6 months ago there were redundancies at my work. In the shake up I was dealt the responsibilities of the axed Studio Manager. Here are a few of the things I have done.the whiteboard
My first move was to dust off the whiteboard which had been sitting in a corner behind a pile of books for over a year – our previous Studio Manager didn’t believe the whiteboard for communicating. My vision was for the jobs whiteboard to become a living entity, with three columns: Now, Upcoming, Pending. It was to serve as an at-a-glance view of what is happening in the studio, and the key dates for everyone to look out for. It has evolved into a slightly different shape via the involvement of other managers, and is more focused on peoples’ specific tasks but the 2 days and into the future structure is still core to it and it is working well.
an everything in the studio list
I found I inherited an out of date jobs spreadsheet, with no granularity. I rewrote the studio list and broke jobs down to an hierarchical list of tasks. I spent a fair amount of time looking for a good hierarchical list editor, hoping to find something cross platform, and that allowed easy entry of tasks without using the mouse. Surprisingly there is not much out there that met my ideal, so I settled for ToDoList by Abstract Spoon, which is Windows only freeware. If I were on a Mac at work, OmniOutliner would have been my preference, and worth the cash.projects site
I like the idea of a central place to refer to all project information -from a quick overview to a detailed list of all the tasks and the history of projects with documents, versions, briefs, notes… We had experimented with Trac in the past, but the technical overhead to it meant no one used it. I discovered Redmine, and set up a local server with Ruby on Rails for it. It has a good issue tracker, allows multiple projects, and assigning people to tasks. It also has a news system, a wiki and emails notifications. We use it, but old habits die hard, and most tasks and communication and reference still goes through email only, or verbally. I have enthusiastic buy-in from one of our account managers, and most in the studio like the idea, so hopefully in time…every day hello
I’ve taken to the habit of daily chats with the designers and developers in the digital team. It’s the first thing I do every morning, and it sets the jobs running for the day before the distractions of football news, facebook or rss feeds set in. I check where they are on the tasks they have been working on the previous day, where there are problems, what’s new, and what’s left to be done. I write it down. Face to face is the only way to do it. They like the attention.eliminate vagueness
It’s a small team and all things going well I can my morning checks done in 20 minutes and get back to my Technical Lead and development tasks. But sometimes my morning chats involve being an iterative messenger between the desks of makers and managers until the real set of tasks to be done is finalised or all the required assets and information is supplied. I do not give up until it is absolutely clear what is to be delivered, in what format and when. I have learned that people are conservative with the truth when it comes to communicating their understanding, and detail needs to be drawn out. They prefer to keep quiet or remain vague when they aren’t sure what is going on. Not sure if they feel stupid about not knowing, and feel they should work it out. Sometimes it extends my morning of scheduling to a couple of hours.keep up to date
At best things change daily, but often more frequently. I need to prompt account managers for their upcoming changes and requirements, and check with them again at the start of the next day what is new, and the end of each day that they have everything they need.meet about something else
Everyone is pretty good at getting on with their job tasks, but sometimes we need to all just get together and talk about work related stuff other than of the specific jobs we are hitting our heads against. I try to arrange bi-weekly meetings where we can all catchup on events we’ve been to, training we’ve had, or insights into our processes.debriefs
Some projects go better than others. I have started to get all the people who worked on the troublesome jobs together a week or two after we finally deliver to the client to discuss. Account managers, designers, brand specialists, creative directors, developers, and me. Everyone gets a chance to have their say uninterrupted. Where it is most interesting is when it a cross discipline job involving the print designers as well. We all have things to learn from each other.And things start running smoother…
It feels like the studio has been more productive since I took on these responsibilities and set up these things. My perspective as a technologist and my knowledge of the implementation of the tasks has helped with the planning, whereas my predecessor had no hands on technical knowledge. The ability to set up things like a projects site also helped. I feel the continual contact with the team has also helped me in my role as Technical Lead, and the responsibilities of Studio Manager can fit well there.I have not had much time at work for actual code and development since these changes – much of my job time has been taken up by specification level stuff anyway. And although I sometimes miss the feeling one gets from making things that click, I have found that apart from the lack of time, the programming head space is somewhat contrary to the requirements of a Studio Manager to be communicative and ready to change mode and direction at the flash of an email alert. It’s difficult to extract myself from that utter concentration to discussing a brief. Maybe as these processes settle down, and I get used to them, I will find the time to tinker and create some nice things, and switch more rapidly from Technical Lead to Developer to Studio Manager.