Keeping Internal Projects on Track

One of the hard­est things for a com­pany to do is a project for itself. Whether it be a web site, blog, or print col­lat­eral the project typ­i­cally ends up poorly man­aged and gets done “whenever there is time”. How does one pre­vent a inter­nal project from going down the drain or not get­ting enough atten­tion? This is some­thing we have strug­gled with at Mar­ble­head while devel­op­ing our own projects and inter­nal processes.  We’ve made all these mis­takes and have real­ized that they are some of the keys to suc­cess­ful inter­nal projects. While we are a small com­pany I think these meth­ods can scale pretty well. If you think dif­fer­ently or have any other meth­ods or tips for inter­nal projects let us know in the comments.

Treat yourself as a client, follow your process.

This seems obvi­ous but it is the most impor­tant thing to remem­ber about your own projects. Have a direc­tors meet­ing, do IA, make comps, or what­ever you do. Follow your whole process end to end and don’t skip any­thing. If you apply the same process and prin­ci­ples as you do to your client projects to your own things work much more smoothly.

Have milestones and a deadline.

This could prob­a­bly be con­sid­ered a part of the process dis­cus­sion but it is crit­i­cal to a well run inter­nal project. Mile­stones and dead­lines are really the only way to keep things on track and get things done. Be care­ful and make sure you stick to the mile­stones you cre­ated, push­ing back a dead­line should be your last option. This is where fol­low­ing your process really helps.

Have a decision maker.

If you don’t have a deci­sion maker things are going to get out of hand quick. Make sure that the deci­sion maker has a clear idea of where the project is going and where it should end up.

Set aside time.

Having a large time blocked out for your inter­nal projects is a big help. This allows people to focus with­out having to jump in and out of client work. More stuff will get done and spend­ing that time now will save you time in the end. At Mar­ble­head when we have active inter­nal projects we try and ded­i­cate one day out of the week to work on those projects.