Jeff Wright, owner and operator of LineWeight mobile digital agency, wrote this customer story
LineWeight is a web and mobile design company that also offers copywriting, marketing, and photography. We needed a project management software that could handle all of our project types, as well as seamlessly allow them to interact. It should be clear for our clients, our clients, and our external resources. LineWeight website project
LineWeight was established in 2017 with a brand, website, and identity. As the year went by, it became apparent that we needed to improve everything we did for the long-term. This meant a new logo, messaging, website, copy, and photography. We had to take responsibility for everything LineWeight does. We needed to act quickly. We started by brainstorming about each of these needs, their overlaps, potential dependencies, and what our challenges would be. We started to write the tasks on post-it notes, and filled up a whiteboard. This allowed us to discuss the tasks and consolidate or expand as needed. It gave us a great insight into the dependencies and the order in which the work would need completed. It also showed us how much work we needed to complete in a short time. We then transferred the post-it notes to ActiveCollab and assigned each task to a team member. Now, the project looks like this. We moved the immediate needs into “In Progress” and began working. As tasks were moved further, it became apparent that not all tasks were being distributed among our team members. There were bottlenecks around some of the early needs. Too much was dependent on a few people. ActiveCollab makes it easy to see who is assigned to what task. This helped us to realize that we needed to re-think some of our early dependencies and re-assign them. It’s amazing how clear it is to see that things A, B, C, and D don’t have to be done before the other. ActiveCollab also allowed us to identify underutilized team members who ultimately helped in unexpected ways.
Our organization principle is focused on managing projects rather than departments. Each project may include elements of UX, visual design, front end development, content, photography and marketing. As such, they are organized using a modified Kanban approach. Every task is divided into one of three categories: To Do, In Progress, or Done. Each task is assigned to a team member who will oversee its completion. This is usually based on the type and deadline of the task. Each task is given a title, brief success criteria, and all details necessary to complete the job. Although we prefer to keep things short, ActiveCollab allows for lots of discussion, detail, and history about a task. Each task is assigned a label. Some of the labels we use include “Pending”, “Ready to Work”, “Questions Abound”, and “Waiting for Feedback”. These labels give color to tasks within any of the categories and allow us to see the status of any task at any given time. Each team member assigns a task to a task and moves it from “To Do” to “In Progress”. They then manage the labels. Each week, we do a walk-through of all the progress and each member uses the “My Work” list extensively. Labels help as well. Tasks in Done are not marked complete until they are no longer needed to be visible to those working on the project. Although it is a simple structure with a simple flow, it allows for excellent clarity internally as well as external clients and partners who might not be familiar.