What's the big deal?
Perhaps, for some, nothing. But we ran into a problem. We are engaged in building and automating sales systems, implementing CRM, creating a cloud infrastructure for business. In addition to development and production departments, client projects often include marketers, salesmen, accountants, and other employees. And we began to think about how to organize an effective project management process.
If the development and production process is organized in a platform like Jira or GitLab, then no one, except development, understands what's what . To connect a third-party employee to the project, you need to meet with him, explain the context, fix the task somewhere, then control the readiness level in working chats, get the result through chat, and add it to Jira. And so every time.
Development is cut off from other departments of the company, they don't know how to attract us, and we don't know if they need our participation.
A couple of years ago we discovered the Asana platform. In this article, I want to tell you how we organized the development and production management process so that:
- the whole company worked in a single ecosystem,
- everyone had enough functionality,
- it was possible to estimate the cost of each project in hours and money,
- work with clients was long-term: not within the framework of one task, but within the framework of an entire project with a constant backlog of ideas.
A little about getting to know Asana
I spent 10 years searching for convenient software for project management. Trello, Jira, Planfix, Megaplan, Bitrix24 and dozens of other task trackers have not passed the strength test. Then I found Asana. And everything worked out.
In our opinion, it is the best and fastest growing platform for task and project management. Today Asana is the world leader in popularity and user satisfaction. This is evidenced by the graph of the g2 rating.
We are fans of Asana, we even got certified to be able to implement it to clients.
I will briefly describe the process from sale to project implementation
Since we sell IT services, our funnel is quite long and, towards the end, it enters the production and, sometimes, development department.
The sales department carries out standard manipulations: audit, approval of commercial proposal, signing of an agreement, transfer of the transaction to production. Production may not accept the contract: it must necessarily indicate the budget, the date of transfer to production, the estimated time fund for the implementation of the project.
Thanks to the combination of amoCRM + Asana, when the transaction is transferred from the sales department to production and vice versa, the work is not interrupted anywhere. The area of responsibility of the sales department is indicated in blue, the area of responsibility of the production department, in pink - the development department.
It is important that the development department, unlike the project department, is not involved in every project. Sometimes the system setup does not require custom solutions.
So, when the manager accepted the project into production, the sales manager in 1 click goes to Asana (screenshot). From amoCRM, the project is automatically created in Asana.
A task (task) with a project map, commercial proposals is automatically created on the general board of clients' projects. All clients that are currently in production are displayed here. Here a responsible manager is appointed, deadlines are set, the type of work is selected, and task statuses are changed.
A manager can launch any of the proposed automatic business processes in a task:
- Find / Create a Client's project + Attach a task there
- Fill in the task with information on the deal
- Create a deal from the current task
The project is filled with all the data specified in amoCRM. Depending on the type of services, a set of subtasks is immediately created for the implementation of relevant work blocks. All that remains for the project manager is to decompose the detailed tasks, assign responsible persons and deadlines.
This board helps you take new projects to work. But it is inconvenient to control the current statuses and the presence of projects in the risk zone on it.
How we group client tasks and projects
From the general board of all projects, the manager adds the project to 3 more boards:
- personal client board;
- portfolio of active clients;
- manager portfolio.
Let's figure out why we need each of the entities.
In the screenshot you can see the client's personal board.
Why is this board?
We used to think in tasks. I completed the task, went to do another. It turned out that we do exactly the amount of work for the client that he asked for. But we wanted to build long-term relationships, so we moved from working with tasks to working with clients.
We make sure to write down all the ideas for improvements for the client. Even if this is a thought accidentally thrown into the air by a client, we fix it and finish it off. This is how the task backlog is formed, the work with the client does not end.
What's on this board?
Our Asana is associated with several services:
- CRM system (for interaction with the sales department),
- TimeDoctor (for time tracking),
- ERP- ( ).
We've added a quick resource control panel to Asana. You hover over the plate over the task and see who and how much worked on the task, what bonus they earned.
The work of the production department is estimated by the hour, so it was important for us to strictly track how much time it took for each employee to solve the client's problems.
What is the benefit of using the board?
As a result, in the ERP system, we see the Project report . Transaction status, project participants, project budget, hours worked and deadlines.
We can predict the cost of similar development projects, the calculation of KPIs becomes completely transparent and there is no room for the illusion that development takes just a couple of hours. If necessary, we always have an interface that we can show the client for reporting.
Asana briefcases
This functionality has been implemented in Asana for a long time. But we didn't immediately appreciate it. At first, we just collected all the projects of our managers into portfolios. It turned out that during his time at the company, Denis Kiselev worked with 61 clients.
It's fun to know, but not enough to justify the time it takes to collect. And we scored on portfolios. Everything changed when we equated the project in Asana with one deal in the CRM system.
Previously, the manager subscribed to all projects and received notifications for all changes in the Inbox (notification feed). Each status update, a new comment was displayed in the feed, starting with the newest one. On Monday, the leader sat down and performed inbox tasks sequentially. Priorities were out of the question, and sometimes important tasks did not reach their hands.
Now there is an employee portfolio and a project department portfolio. In the first, the manager manages his projects, the second gives the manager control functionality for the current workload of all employees.
Project department portfolio
In the screenshot, you can see projects sorted by employees.
Once a week, the project manager updates the status of each project. Writes what was done last week and what is planned for the next. Sets one of three tags: under control, at risk, there are problems.
The manager can quickly assess:
- the current volume of clients in the design department,
- the number of projects in work for each manager,
- number of overdue tasks by projects,
- the presence of problems and the need to get involved in projects,
- project deadlines, time spent, funnel stage and project priority.
Portfolios also help us with reporting. After updating the status of the project, the report on the completed and planned work is automatically sent to the chat with the client.
Employee portfolio
Even the head of the project department has his own portfolio. If, pah-pah-pah, he relinquishes his powers, the new person will see all controlled projects that he must continue to track.
Line staff also appreciated the convenience of scheduling portfolio workloads. In the “Load” tab, Asana analyzes the volume of tasks taking into account deadlines and warns if an employee has planned an unbearable amount of tasks. You can change deadlines and adjust details without leaving this tab.
Bug fixing and custom development
A separate team is responsible for our development. Within the framework of the business process, it receives tasks of two types:
- bug,
- new development.
Bugs are checked, evaluated for criticality and submitted to the technical support service.
Development tasks come either from the backlog for internal products of the company, or from the project manager, if requested from the client.
The development process, in general, looks like this.
Tasks fall onto the development board in Asana. There she is.
The task author selects the type “Bug” or “Feature”, sets the degree of criticality, indicates the customer, internal departments of the company that are affected by the task. When the task meets all the requirements of the internal regulations, the director clicks on the lightning bolt icon in the top bar above the task and starts the automatic “Evaluate in Development” business process.
The head of the development department receives a notification about a new task for evaluation, the task itself is moved to a separate board of the same name during the evaluation.
After the assessment, the manager moves the task to the sprint corresponding to the month of the planned completion. Tasks are always on multiple boards at the same time:
- on the personal board of the project manager,
- on the technical support board,
- on the development board.
All participants and employees who control the task can see the progress of the task, receive notifications, and conduct discussions directly in the comments to the task. When the task is completed, the project manager or responsible technical support specialist “take” it to their side in order to continue working on the project.
What happened when we brought the development and production departments back into a single environment with the team?
First, client projects have become more long-term. Due to the constantly updated backlog, the average check has grown.
Secondly, the quality of projects has improved greatly, since the development department could ask a question to marketing, sales, accounting, etc. at any time. We got the opportunity to connect the necessary team competencies on time and offer solutions of a completely different level.
Thirdly, employees, managers and clients received complete transparency in the planned and completed tasks. We learned to MANAGE projects, realized that this is an absolutely technical process from which the human factor can be almost completely eliminated.
Fourth,the team has become more cohesive. Previously, employees had little idea what the mythical development and production departments were doing.
Now, seeing the process of development and technical configuration of systems:
- the sales department finds ideas and inspiration in him how to sell,
- marketers regularly take useful content for posts, articles, positioning and ad copy,
- leaders analyze the needs and behavior of customers, adjusting the strategy.
The result is a win-win-win transformation, in which we, our clients and our partners have won. I would be glad if you share your opinion in the comments: was there anything useful in my article and what project management methods do you use in development!