You Need a Digital PM!
What’s Special about a Digital PM?
To explain the value of a Digital Project Manager, we want to understand a digital project. These can be websites, landing pages, online stores, applications, social media presence and depending on where you draw the line, digital advertising. The variety of project types means different technology frameworks and related expertise to deliver a quality final product.
Digital projects often have a high degree of complexity requiring a comprehensive project plan, detailed estimating, risk management and proficiency in communication. A Digital PM has a critical role in ensuring a project is properly planned, estimated and kept on schedule with a tight accountability to scope and risks.
Project Planning
Digital PMs often take the lead in scoping projects and developing the plan because of the intricacies of digital work. There is a level of experience required to identify the various project requirements and highlight assumptions to ensure scopes are tight and protect the business.
We can use building a website as an example. On the surface, this can seem like a straightforward project, but quickly you discover layers of work that all add to costs and complexity.
What technology or CMS will be used?
Is there existing content or new material required?
Are there vital conversion points we are optimizing towards?
Do we have hosting, URLs, and security certificates in mind?
Is there a critical deployment date we are aiming for?
Who will be producing the design? Who is approving it?
Are there any apps to integrate or custom requirements?
Is legal involved for any compliance or accessibility requirements?
Who is managing it going forward and what expertise is needed?
This is not even a complete list, but you can start to see just how complex a digital project can become. A Digital Project Manager is there to help build out your requirements list and document the timelines for each work package.
Project Estimating
Whether the project is being done internally or externally, there is a cost. Many organizations lack the skills to deliver a digital project with existing talent, so they often work with external partners and sometimes even multiple agencies at once. Your PM is there to talk through each potential vendor and help track the costs associated.
Expert Advice: PMs and PessimismA good Digital Project Manager is there to highlight challenges and costs, even if comes across like bad news. This is often met with frustration because it sounds negative, but the PM is there to give you clarity, not obscure it.
In my experience, scoping and estimating digital projects is a place where account teams struggle most. Yes, creative projects have a great deal of uncertainty in the effort required to deliver, but the unknowns of digital have proven to be far more costly. Because Digital PMs have gone through work from start to finish, they’ve experienced these challenges and know to flag them in scoping.
Risk Management
The risks with a digital project are different then with integrated advertising work. Both can have severe consequences, but in different ways. An improper advertising spend can cost thousands in misplaced budget. A digital project poorly executed can result in thousands of dollars in correction costs and misplaced resources.
Most Common Risks in Digital
Scope Creep
To summarize, any change in a project plan has the potential for scope creep. New project asks, timeline changes, plan alterations; all of these introduce costs and risk a digital project meeting its timeline. Technology is notorious for scope creep, as a stakeholder can easily imagine features and additions that would be improvements, and sometimes these aren’t known until the project is underway.
Technology Integration
A new website or application can look straight forward on a project plan, but it often has to connect with existing systems. Failure to plan and scope this integration can lead to a work being entirely abandoned. Other systems can have custom costs, be controlled by other teams, be outdated or pose other major obstacles. Someone experience in digital will work ahead of these challenges to ensure they don’t derail an entire project.
Creative Delays
Technology is often built after the design is approved. Creative has a notorious habit of taking longer than planned, but the project deadline can’t be moved! Believe me when I say, digital work is often the last element to move, and gets its timelines shrunk to accommodate delays. A strong project manager is there to recognize these delays and plan to accommodate, or have a realistic conversation on impact to timelines.
Communication Proficiency
Now, communication isn't unique to digital PMs, its core to any project manager. Where I’ve found digital to be different is the need to work with highly technical teams and be a liaison with a broad set of stakeholders. In solving for the risks and challenges brought in this article, being able to effectively discuss, understand and communicate them to a variety of people is a unique challenge.
This doesn’t always mean a digital project manager is an expert in every technical element, but they have the patience to work with everyone who is to understand what needs to be done.Highly technical individuals often love project managers because they want to know the details and honestly convey the work required.
Digital vs. Integrated Marketing
What separates digital from integrated project managers is experience and proficiency in their craft. Throw one into the other’s space, and they’ll be able to grasp the fundamentals, but they will likely miss some details.
Having worked at large integrated and digital agencies, I can speak to strengths of both individuals. You won’t truly understand the value they can provide until you’ve gone through a project without that has bitten you, and gone through a greatly managed project that profited you.