Adaptive Path Blog

An interview with Scott Berkun, author and public speaker on
Show Length: 20 minutes

In 1956 a documentary called The Mystery of Picasso was released, showing two hours of Pablo Picasso doing what he did best: making paintings. This film gave the public a first-hand glimpse directly into this infamous artist’s creative process. Public speaker and writer Scott Berkun and I got together for tea to talk about the film and our own experiences around creativity. As both managers of creative teams and creators of work ourselves, we looked at how our processes aligned with Picasso’s…or where we could learn from him. As the discussion unfolded, we came up with an interesting set of guidelines that enable creativity to flourish.

Listen to podcast on www.TeaWithTeresa.com

I just finished working on a project where half of my team was in our Austin office and half was here in San Francisco, which meant 2 different time zones. In addition, our client was in yet another city. Since this was my first time working with such a split team, my learning curve around remote communication, meeting facilitation, and maintaining a strong team dynamic was pretty steep. I thought I’d take a moment to compile those learnings and share.

Tackling Time Zones

• Adjust daily schedule for both offices: A couple of days per week, work on the other team’s schedule/time zone (and vice versa).
• Create a clock for the other time zone on the dashboard of your computer for easy reference.
• People naturally assume you are talking about their time zone, which you may not be. So, make it a habit to always give the time in both times zones when discussing scheduling, no matter what the mode of communication (conversation in the hall, phone calls, IM, email, etc…).

Make It Feel Like Your WHOLE Team Is Right There With You

Use a monitor with dedicated web cam in your project room—sit it at project table (permanently) as if the remote team member(s) is sitting at a spot at the table. It makes them feel a bit more like a real person. (Note: use a Logitec web cam if you can afford it ($100)—quality is much better than iSite webcams.)

Remote Meeting Facilitation

• Adobe Acrobat Connect seems to be a great tool for me thus far. It has video (so you can see the other person/team), document sharing (everyone looks at the same thing at the same time), and the ability to mark on documents (you can point out, specifically, what you are talking about/needs changes).
• During remote meetings, I find that typing live notes about what is said on the shared screen really helps. That way, everyone sees and confirms what was heard and you get double-clarity/reinforcement.
• The downside of Adobe Acrobat Connect: Document resolution is so-so, so don’t use for visual design. Or, send the visual design documents and use the Adobe Acrobat Connect screen simply for reference/orientation during the meeting.

File Sharing

While I don’t like the interface, DropSend.com has biggest file limit out there for the price (it’s free depending on your use).

Shared Calendars

I like creating a shared Google project calendar and embedding it in Basecamp. I give the appropriate people (client team and internal team) the right to add/edit events, meetings, etc. And, you can also make Basecamp milestones feed directly into the calendar.

This is my list of learnings thus far. Please add to this post if you have good tips and tricks to share with the rest of us! And I’d love to hear about tools that you like better than the ones I’ve listed — I’m always on the lookout for better ways of doing things.

Earlier this week I got to see what Brian Cronin will be sharing at the end of our Managing Design Projects event, coming up on February 5, 2009, and I got really excited at the end of his presentation. This past year or so I’ve spent some time talking to experts in the field about managing visual design, and sharing ideas about project management. But in my conversation with Brian, he had me commit to something that I’m going to do to expand my practice of program management, and I’ve been bubbling with excitement ever since (yes, I said bubbling). I look forward to sharing with you, on the day of the event, what I’ve committed to, and learning from you all what you’re going to do to expand your practice.

If you’re a program, project, or product manager, come learn about conflict management, facilitation, client relationship management and much much more. Creating a community, and having you all meet each other, is just as important to us as the event itself, so please join us at the beautiful Ft. Mason in San Francisco! Pricing increases to $295 tomorrow, so register today.

Last month we announced Managing Design Projects, a ‘grassroots’ Adaptive Path conference, coming up on February 5th 2009. Since we announced the event, we’ve had people from around the world register. We’re thrilled to create this new community of people that help make design work happen behind the scenes.

We also announced that Scott Berkun will be keynoting at the event. He is not only author of Myths of Innovation, and Making Things Happen, but a kick-ass speaker with great stories from his experience managing projects at Microsoft.

Lynne Waldera, founder and CEO of InMomentum, Inc, a management consultancy, will also be speaking at the event. She’s an expert in organization strategy and one of the wisest people I’ve ever met. She will be talking with us about: Conflict Maneuvers:  Navigating disagreement, politics and emotions to “make things happen”. I’ve had a preview of what Lynne will be sharing with us, and I believe it will be valuable to anyone that’s works with creative teams on making big things happen.

Come join us to hear Scott & Lynne speak.

Space is limited to 60 people for this deeply discounted event, so register today! Price increases to $299 on January 15th.

We are happy to announce that Scott Berkun will keynote our Managing Design Projects conference in February. This is very exciting for us and having heard Scott present in the past I am confident he will really get things off on the right foot. We have also posted the schedule of the day’s activities to give everyone a taste of what is to come.

As my colleague Julia mentioned a few weeks ago, after looking for events that focused on project management we found the field largely dominated by tools developers (Hello Microsoft!) and the Project Management Institute both of which didn’t feel like they addressed the particular needs of project managers who work in the design field. So we created our own!

The goals of the event are to identify some best practices, common work-arounds, key tools and begin a conversation with our peers that we have admired seeing our colleagues enjoy with both the IXDA and IA Summit. Since PMs don’t necessarily go to the same places to get information about how they do their work and how they can do it better, I am asking you to forward this to a PM that you know.

As this is the first time we are holding this type of an event, we have priced it below our other events at a thrifty $249. As of January 15th the price will increase to $295. If you have 2008 education budget left you can take advantage of the current event sale that will give you an additional %15 off until 2009! What a deal!

Register today!

I spent the weekend shooting a video art piece with a very small crew (meaning, three of us). The production was filled with many of the joys, trials and tribulations of most shoots I’ve been on (thus, the love/hate), and I thought I’d share a few of my favorite reminders and learnings. While these points are specific to directors of movies, they also apply to most other creative processes.

1. The director sets the tone of the production experience with their first words and interactions with the crew. Start strong.
2. Do a quick run-through of the entire performance at the onset of production to establish the big picture in everyone’s mind. In the process, you’ll also discover any ambiguities in composition, blocking and understanding of roles early.
3. Planning and production are symbiotic. If you rush the planning phase, your production will be disorganized (and less successful) as a result.
4. Unless you have photographic memory or are a genius, refer to your shot list throughout the production – ESPECIALLY if you are pressed for time. If you don’t, you WILL forget something. You’ll probably forget something anyway, but at least you’ll forget less.
5. Don’t skimp on equipment quality. Not only will it affect the quality of the final footage, but it says something to the crew about the level of respect you have for their skills. Same goes for the quality of food you feed them.
6. Remember that your actor’s performance is partly shaped by how well you interact with and nurture them. As easy as it is to neglect them to seemingly important production issues, you may sacrifice your story in the process.
7. Production always takes longer than planned. Carry spare batteries.
8. You’ll never get all the footage you wanted – or, at least, it’ll never be perfect – so you’ll just have to figure out how to make the movie anyway. Expect it, accept it, and move on.
9. Breathe. The world will not end if you don’t get that shot. Or if you run out of batteries. Now refer back to #8.
10. Remember that this is supposed to be fun.

Once, I only had ONE thing to do…not the onslaught I face in a typical day, but a single, solitary thing to wrap my brain around for an entire week.

I was attending a one-week video art residency at Arts Electronic. I had a cozy place to sleep, a private workspace with equipment, and someone nearby for help when needed. Because all of my basic needs were taken care of, I was able to surmount an unfathomable number of technical tasks in a short period of time. The result was draft one of a documentary. Prior to that week, I had never opened an editing program.

This experience of intense creative productivity is the basis for my project management style today. As an artist myself, I understand firsthand the importance of developing a nurturing environment in which to create. Keeping this in mind, when I start a new project with a team, I do a few simple things to enable the same singular focus and heightened productivity that I experienced at the residency:

Keep it simple
Part of my job is to take care of the team’s basic needs, so they can focus on creating. Practitioners don’t need to be thinking about meetings, finances, client relations, or buying supplies and tools. If they are, the creative process isn’t getting that attention and the work suffers. At Adaptive Path, we also limit practitioners to one project at a time so that their focus is not split in multiple directions.

Make the physical workspace inspirational
The team needs to feel good enough in their physical workspace to spend hours there brainstorming and making. Grey cubicles and blank walls kill creativity. At our company, each team has a dedicated room for their project. I make sure those rooms are filled with the tools needed to create. The walls are then quickly covered with drawings, doodles and illustrations.

Take care of the team
The director of the Arts Electronic residency, Annie Langan, was like my guardian angel. She cared immensely about my experience and took care of my needs before I was even aware of them. My goal as a project manager is to be that guardian angel. I pay close attention to the health, mental wellbeing, and dynamic within my team. Sometimes practitioners get so deeply entrenched in their work, they need to be reminded to take care of themselves. To produce dynamic projects, their brains, bodies and spirits need to be nourished, not exhausted. When team members feel cared about, they also become more deeply invested in the success of the project.

There are, of course, many other aspects like budgeting, scheduling, and client relations that make project managers successful. But when project managers also develop an environment that encourages focused creativity within their team, they set the foundation for exceptional ideas. At the core of projects is the work itself and, most importantly, the people that create it; foster those two things and you have the recipe for a dynamic project worth talking about.

The project managers at Adaptive Path have been doing some thinking about the tools we use to track budgets and schedules.

We currently use a web app called Harvest to track our hours, Basecamp for sharing deliverables and communicating with teams, and several custom Excel spreadsheets to do just about everything else.

These have worked pretty well for us thus far, but we’re looking for ways to improve our toolset.

So project managers – and I know you’re out there – tell us: what tools do you use for budget and schedule tracking, resource allocation and forecasting?