Managing Digital Projects

A great deal of publishing is now done on the web, which is a fantastic way for you to contact the people who want to read your content, but may never have had the chance to purchase your products in print. Managing publishing on the web is very different from traditional print publishing and even differs from publishing CD-ROMs.

The most important difference is that web project management is about the management of constant gradual change. As an example, look at The Guardian, which is the second most visited news site in the UK, after the BBC. When The Guardian website was recently overhauled, it was not changed all at once. The look and feel of the various departments on the site (for example politics, arts, etc.) stayed the same, while the most important pages (mainly the front page) went through several rounds of changes. Over a period of time the redesign of the front page (after several versions) was rolled out to the rest of the website.

This is the difference between printed and digital products. Digital publishing allows for continuous change in response to feedback, and the most successful websites (like bbc.co.uk, guardian.co.uk and gmail.com) take advantage of this model. Sites that stick with the publishing model of their print ancestors are not so successful.

The bad news for many is that the changes the web will bring to a number of “mature” industries, such as print publishing, are only just beginning. The challenge this brings with it is not tapering off, but ramping up. For example, we are just starting to see books that can be read on mobile phones. In such circumstances everyone needs to have the most up-to-date methods of dealing with the kind of constant radical change that the web produces.

Many editors and publishers will be familiar with conventional approaches to project management, as this traditionally is the technique which has been applied to the commissioning of a new printed book. A conventional project management process tends to have a planning phase, a delivery phase (where the work is actually done) and a quality assurance or approval phase (where the work is assessed against the original specification). Such a process is very vulnerable and fragile in the face of change. In the project management of a digital product, agile methods of project management are coming to the fore. These agile techniques emphasise working in short iterations. One way of seeing this is as breaking a conventional project into a large number of small “mini” project

Managing Digital Projects is a new two day course from the Publishing Training Centre which will give you a good understanding of the best practices in the management of digital projects. It will also give you the tools necessary to continue to manage digital products through periods of continuing and radical change.

A day refresher session has been added to the two day programme, which will be scheduled a few weeks after the course. This additional day will allow delegates to report back on their experiences of introducing the ideas that are discussed during the course. Part of the philosophy of the agile method is to 'start from where you are', and during the two day course, delegates will be encouraged to identify what their first move is on the path to improve the way they manage digital products. The refresher day will offer the opportunity to assess progress on this path and the tutors will provide support, advice and coaching. In this way it is hoped that the “away-day” syndrome can be avoided – that is the phenomenon of attending a course and going away enthused with new ideas but, on returning to work, being overwhelmed with normal day-today concerns and failing to implement this new knowledge.

The course is taught by Mark Stringer who has been working as a software developer and project manager for the past fifteen years. He first worked on web projects at the pioneering internet publishing company Chadwyck-Healy in 1997. He has also worked at organisations such as IBM, Xerox, Cambridge University and the Bafta award-winning web development company Soda Creative. In that time he has experienced just about all the possible problems that can crop up in developing software for the web and has developed methods for the delivery of projects in a digital environment, based on the best models produced by others in the industry.

Working with The Publishing Training Centre, this course has been specifically tailored for a print publishing audience, particularly those that manage, or may in the future need to manage, the publication of digital material.

See the Managing Digital Projects course page for more details.