This graphic and guide will give a high level understanding of how projects work at Argyle. Feel free to refer to this graphic and the below guide to properly manage projects at Argyle.
Work Intake #
Argyle provides services to clients in 3 ways: Part of an on-going strategy, through email/Asana requests, and through requests during client meetings.
Account Managers who directly interact with clients will forward requests via email or through Asana to project managers. For ongoing projects, the client’s Strategists will tag project managers in a task within Asana, from which assignments will be distributed.
For Project Managers #
After you receive a request as a project manager, you are to enter the task in both the respective Department team and project, as well as the Client team’s respective project. The Strategist will then assign tasks to project managers, including send dates or schedules depending on the client. You determine who to assign the task to depending on the type of work that needs to be completed. You can check the client list / responsibilities spreadsheet to see who handles what for each client. Project managers can also reference the submitting design work to Argyle’s design partners doc when creating design tasks. Once assigned, project managers are expected to create a timeline for each task, allocating 2-3 days for each part/exchange in the process, such as tasking out to copywriting, transitioning to the designer, seeking client approval, and implementing the email.
Confirming Timelines with Assignee and Account Manager #
With a task created, the next step is to review it with the identified assignee from earlier. This is done to get a sense of their current capacity and for them to review the request and confirm an acceptable timeline for the completion of the task. This helps avoid situations where the assignee misses tasks because they are over capacity and may miss an inbox notification about this new task.
After confirming the timeline with the assignee, report back to the Account Manager with an estimated time of completion. It’s recommended to give a 1-2 day buffer between when assignee expects to be completed, and for when the client will receive confirmation it is completed. This is done for 2 reasons:
- If something doesn’t work as expected and there is a delay on production
- If done in time of assignee’s ETA on task completion, Account Manager can report back we’re done early!
Work is completed – time to review and confirm with Account Manager! #
The assignee (e.g., designer, copywriter, etc.) should comment at their project manager a task is completed, but if not please check the original task and see if it’s completed. Once the project manager is notified, please review the work that was completed to ensure assignee has understood and delivered on any ongoing tasks or client requests. When tagging assignees with deliverables, the project manager should clearly state the purpose in the tag, such as ‘graphic complete, please send to client’ or ‘copy complete, please review and approve for design.’ Additionally, the project managers should send a Google Chat with the task link along with their comment to the Account Manager and/or Strategist to prevent any potential issues of information getting lost. If not, follow up and resolve any misunderstandings before confirming completion with the Account Manager.
If something doesn’t work as expected, the task assignee should notify you immediately (ideally prior to task completion date, but should definitely hear by task completion date of any delays). If there is a delay, work with the task assignee to determine updated ETA and report this back to the Account Manager.
Keeping up with the Argyle Projects #
Terrible play on words, I know, but this part is cool despite the lame writing (lol).
To easily keep Account Managers in the loop, project managers can set project status updates for Client projects you manage. Be sure to toggle the reminder to “Update the status every Friday” in Asana for ongoing projects being managed. This will keep project managers on top of providing status updates for client projects, allowing account managers an easy way to check on the account to see how work is going.
These status updates have links which can be gathered and provided to Account Managers via an email.
