Typical Project Pattern

Recently I was asked by an interactive agency to help improve its overall processes including strategic consulting processes. They were unclear exactly how to begin ideation and when.

I have always been on the creative side of things; coming up with ideas for my own companies and others. Along the way, I have learned that to be a successful idea person you also need to be proficient at getting these ideas recorded and executed. So I have developed process and project management skills as well. This client put those skills into play.

My first step was to make the following pattern visible. Almost every effort in the interactive space - whether internally at a company or in an agency - follows more or less the same pattern:

1. Intake - Understanding the charge, building the team etc.
2. Analysis - assessing what is there and then thinking strategically. This is the time for innovation.
3. Feasibility- Can the ideas that came out of the ideation work be built? How?
4. Production - The making of whatever you are hoping to deliver
   
5. Outcome - proposal, website, white paper, strategy brief etc.

As you can see from the diagram, projects often lead to others in a continuing spiraling cycle.