Re: Developing marketing CD - best way to manage project

[Beth Agnew <beth -dot- agnew -at- senecac -dot- on -dot- ca>]

My first thought is, are you sure a CD is the best way to present this 
material to your target audience? I realize that it's probably someone 
else's decision, but there's nothing worse than spending months on a 
project only to find that customers don't use it. If it is a demo, that 
shows a potential user how easy it would be to put integrate your 
product into their operation, then it makes sense. If it is just a showy 
presentation of features and benefits, the production values required to 
make it impressive might stretch your budget.

Assuming that a CD is the right way to go, there are some very good 
project management tools and resources available. MS Project is a good 
standby, but there are also Open Source project management trackers such 
as the GanttProject. <http://sourceforge.net/projects/ganttproject/>. 
Here's a fast and fun project management tutorial, and there are others 
you can find on the web: 
<http://www.softwareprojects.org/software-project-management.htm>.

The most important thing to remember about project management is to 
closely manage and control the scope of the work. Projects can go to 
h3ll fast if there are unaccounted for changes to the amount of work 
(number of tasks, complexity of tasks, add-ons), and everyone suffers. 
Every time the scope changes, the project manager needs to re-evaluate 
the entire project to see where time, money or resources must be added 
(or subtracted). You'll hear talk of the WBS, work breakdown structure. 
Again, plenty of resource on the web about this, but here's one: 
<http://www.4pm.com/articles/work_breakdown_structure.htm>. That should 
help you decompose the tasks into what work has to go into the CD.

Finally, once you're working to plan, resist the urge to add little 
improvements (Hey, wouldn't it be great if we put in some Flash?!?) 
because that changes scope. An early test of the CD with one or two 
customers to get their feedback wouldn't be amiss, either.

Good luck with it!
--Beth

Nelson, Julie wrote: