A Guide to Creative Project Management Software
- Adilla
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
Many creatives can be resistant to structure and scheduling. Most find a schedule daunting and even restrictive to their creative flow. However, in practice, this may not be the case at all.
Table of Contents
Challenges in Creative Workflows
There’s one thing about creative workflow: inspiration may not come consistently. Hence, there are challenges when applying structure to creative rhythm.
Fluid Deadlines and Iterative Work
When it comes to setting deadlines, it’s no mystery to us at all how our creatives find them pressuring to a point that it might affect their creative flow. Additionally, their tasks in the big picture involve repetitive tasks such as ideating their creative work, working on it, seeking review and approval, and then bringing it into the world. You would think that a predictive flow would set a deadline more easily.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, as some of these phases do end up going back to a previous phase (e.g., ‘Review’ back to ‘Work in Progress’) to either fix something or change the idea. Hence, setting a rigid deadline becomes a challenge.
Balancing Inspiration with On-time Deliverables
Creatives perform better when they are inspired, and usually, inspiration doesn’t really strike on time. So, when structure, objectives and requirements are written down by creatives, it might not be delivered on time. To find the balance between when they’ve struck the idea gold while meeting the deliverables on time is difficult.
The Role of Project Management Software in Creative Work
So, how do you actually utilise project management in a creative environment?
Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity
With the repetitive tasks of creative work, Creative Project Management (CPM) software provides features that can automate these tasks and standardise the workflow. So, creatives would spend less time on administrative work and more on creating.
Streamlined Workflow
A CPM software offers a structured framework that fits the creative chaos of its projects. It would simplify the complex workflow and coordinate the workflow of the team better.
Customised Interface and Flexibility
What differs CPM from its traditional counterpart is the ability to change the features according to the needs of the creative projects. While still providing the structure and flow to ensure everything is on track, it has the flexibility that doesn’t stifle the creativity of their teams.
How Creative Project Management Supports Creative Mental Health
You might be thinking, does this help with the pressure and mental load of creatives when CPM is laid out for them? You’d be surprised to know that it does.
Reduced Stress and Overwhelm
When projects and tasks are clearly defined, timelines are set, and workflows are organised, it helps reduce the mental strain on creatives. Since they need to conserve their energy for their creative work, it’s essential to lessen their mental load to ensure the quality of their output is not compromised.
Improved Communication and Collaboration
Miscommunication tends to happen a lot when working on creative work, so software that could provide contextual reviews and collaboration would ease any potential problems. Especially if it's centralised in one software to better ease your team’s workflow.
Establish Work-Life Balance
With transparency and better control of what creatives can work on, they can establish a better work-life balance. A CPM software can better track the time spent on a project, giving insights into how tasks can be better distributed throughout the project timeline.
Features that Creatives Value Most
Now that the benefits outweigh the concerns, it's time for you to find which creative team tools you should focus on when establishing creative project management software with your team.
Visualised Timeline and Task
Visual tools are the common visuals that are required for creative teams. Most importantly, the software must be able to display visual documents seamlessly, so keeping track of visually heavy tasks would be easier.
Streamlined Feedback and Communication
Feedback and communication between creatives are one of the key components of their creative workflow. So, to have this feature to streamline this process is essential in CPM software. For example, TESSR’s Review feature makes this easy with its ability to give contextual comments directly on a visual art, like a whiteboard with a picture pasted on it, if you will.
Refined User-friendly Interface
More often than not, the reason why our creatives are less likely to use project management software is because of the complex interface and the non-user-friendly approach to utilising their features. So, keep this in mind when choosing software for your team. Even for our TESSR programme, we provide hands-on help to better optimise our software.
Key Takeaways
The unpredictable nature of the creative process makes it so that structure doesn’t seem to work well with them.
However, a flexible structure and workflow will produce a more efficient and productive creative team.
Utilising project management software that can work around the creative chaos of it all can help you find the balance between structure and creative freedom.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is the one feature that’s the most important for creative teams when using CPM software?
The one feature that creatives should prioritise is a feature not a lot of other project management software have: TESSR Woohoo. This is a tool that calculates the weighted completion percentage of projects.
It is a way to measure progress that takes into account the importance of different statuses in a project. Instead of seeing all the statuses of tasks equally, they are given weights or levels of priority to better visualise the progress of the project.
Mainly, this feature helps creative project management software make informed decisions and adopt an agile method in managing their team. With Woohoo, you get a greater understanding of the overall project’s health. Plus, TESSR has a free forever plan!
Is task management the same as creative project management?
Task management may not be the same as creative project management, but it is a part of CPM. Task management doesn’t touch the other parts of CPM, as it only focuses on the tasks of the project and your team.
Is all project management software CPM?
Not all project management software can be considered its creative counterparts. Not all software that can optimise visual documents is customised according to the needs of a creative project.
Author bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies, like parodies of animated shows and plots for board games. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Now an advocate for mental health and effective project management for the creative industry. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
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