The world of technology keeps advancing and changing each and every day. And with this change, it is affecting the world around it. Most of the time, this is a good change. Technology helps us deal with the daily tasks, whether they are as redundant as doing our shopping, or as complicated as dealing with our workload. The latter is especially significant for some types of businesses – like digital agencies, whose main field is within the digital world.
But when things happen that shake up the whole planet – like COVID-19 did – what’s important is the ability to change, adapt, and succeed. Among many jobs that were impacted, digital agency project management became tricky as well. Many people had to move to remote work and learn how to deal with it. How you learned to deal with it, however, will decide the future of your projects and business in the upcoming months.
So, keeping up with the trends in project management will help you move forward after the pandemic. Today, we take a look at the shape of project management and some of its trends to get a better understanding of how to keep your business running during this time.
Editor’s note:
Find more COVID-19 project management updates here:
- How Project Managers Are Reacting to Remote Work
- Project Managers Anticipate A Bumpy Road Ahead As The Uk Starts To Reopen For Business
- Startup Genome Research Report: The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Startup Ecosystems
Check-in with your revenue streams to keep your business stable
One of the biggest impacts this whole situation had was on finance in the business world. COVID-19 has shown us just how quickly things can crumble – even in systems that we once believed were meant to last. And so, moving forward, the first thing to reexamine should be the revenue streams of your business. Particularly, you should never rely on just one revenue stream. You can easily end up without it, and thus, without any money to support yourself, your team, or your business.
Instead, you should aim to diversify your revenue sources as much as you can. Good project management skills come in handy here. Instead of focusing solely on one project, your main goal should be to work on multiple projects concurrently. Building a strong project portfolio will help you create revenue streams that will support even the toughest global crisis.
For a better effect, try branching out your sources
A popular project management trend that has popped up amidst the COVID-19 crisis is the way in which you create and pick these new revenue sources. Instead of trying to divide up all your incomes into a handful of sources, you can still focus on having one main income source. From it, though, you should try and branch into smaller things.
These can be some short-term or long-term projects that will not bring the same amount of money but will collectively be able to make their contribution. This way, if one of them fails it will be “insignificant” enough for you not to be hurt too much by it. Similarly, if the main source fails, your small projects will work together to help you set up a new revenue source from which you will get most of your resources.
Do not be afraid to rely on your team
If the COVID-19 crisis has taught us something, it is that we should always try to rely on one another. Only through working collectively can we hope to be able to stand on our own feet after everything passes. A good team is another thing that your digital agency cannot really work without, let alone thrive in the digital world.
And so, you will want to focus on your team, and try to help them as much as they are helping you both during and after the crisis. Remember, this is a stressful time for everyone, not just you. A lot of people around the world have lost their jobs, and even more are worried about their incomes and positions. When you add to this the stress of making the shift to working online full-time, you can get quite a headache.
This is why it is important to be a part of the team during this time. Keep in mind that people will need an adjustment period where their efficiency will probably drop – but once they figure everything out, they will be back to working full-speed in no time. What’s more, if you are there to support them during this tough time, they might even work with more effort and achieve more productivity.
Use this time for setting up a strong workflow
As a project manager, it is your duty to help set up a new workflow for your remote team. One of the biggest trends after COVID-19 is shifting the whole workplace online, but this requires a completely new way of approaching things like collaboration and communication, even in digital agencies.
By doing this, though, you will empower your team and create a strong mechanism that can tackle any project – both offline and online. After the crisis, your team will be efficient in both “worlds” and you will be able to adapt the processes that work better from both into a new, mixed workflow.
Before that, though, you will need to set up your online workflow. The best way for this is through weekly team meetings. There, you can discuss both about the previous week as well as the upcoming one.
First, address any concerns and difficulties your team had and work on surpassing them. These are called bottlenecks and can create huge problems in team efficiency but working on them will give your team a huge boost. Secondly, you can talk about your and shareholders’ expectations for the team and the project, and plan ahead on how you will tackle different tasks. You can greatly empower your team this way, by relying on them to deal with the project without your micromanagement. However, keep in mind that it is your task, as a project manager, to overlook the whole thing and take care of the end results.
Pay attention to your resources
Another thing that faced difficulties due to COVID-19 was the way we handle our resources. This is why this is the second thing – the first one being your team – that you will need to carefully examine for better project management in 2020.
Due to the crisis, it is likely that your company goals have changed. You might have had to postpone some projects or completely cancel them, and your plans might have greatly suffered because of that. Along with them, the resources you allocated to these projects might have been left untouched or in a weird limbo – so what should you do with them?
Instead of falling into despair, a smart project manager will use this time to reevaluate the way they handle the resources and find the best way to reallocate them in the right way. Basically, you want to think about the way in which you can better grow your business while using fewer resources.
Many experts suggest assuming the worst-case scenario. Once you set up the budget and resources for it, they will last longer. Since the chances for this scenario happening will be small, you will set up yourself in the best way to tackle any project that comes your way in 2020 – that is, set up yourself for project success!
A couple of final thoughts
As you can see, even though the COVID-19 crisis was a terrible time, there is a lot that we can learn from it. If you use this time to look at the way you deal with your digital agency, adapt and find new ways to upgrade your project management skills, you can establish a strong team that’s ready to tackle new projects. To do that, all you need is to take a careful look at your revenues and resources and reevaluate them. Once you do it, your digital agency will be ready for the head start after COVID-19.
Related Read: Exclusive Data From Forecast Shows How Agencies Are Failing To Maximise Profitability