Project Management in the Busy Season

Not many people know this, but summer is the busiest time of year for those of us in website development. Summer is often after companies have paid their major bills and discover a little wiggle room in their annual marketing budget. This extra money often means getting a new website designed!

Now, this is my first summer holding the position of Lead Website Developer, so I have been learning a lot about project management and scheduling. I thought I’d share a bit about how we at Audaxis manage the summer web design rush.  The preparation process begins long before school lets out—this year, April is when the leads began to pour in! Project leads can take quite some time to come to fruition, but that gives us ample time to plan and strategize. If we already work with the client looking to revamp their website, we base our open and close projections on other work we have completed together. If it is a new client, we base our projections on what kind of development is needed (e.g., whether what they are looking for requires a complete overhaul or just a few updates) and our collective experience on similar projects. Then, we consider the requested deadline for each project and level of difficulty. We also determine which projects could be worked on simultaneously and which ones need to be completed entirely on their own. We build a project schedule based on this information and have regular Development Team meetings, which helps us keep our projects on track.

It’s a lot of work, but this level of planning allows us the flexibility we need during these busy times. It helps us balance our development workload, and most importantly, ensure that our clients continue to receive the quality work they deserve!

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash