Background:

When I joined, the only criteria that the team used to define scope and allocate resources was time and interest. If the project could be accomplished in by the defined deadline it was assigned to a producer and the producer would determine the scope of the effort based largely on how fun it sounded.

The Problem:

As a result, we were spending huge amounts of time on low impact work while often declining or ignoring work that could have a larger audience or provide more significant benefits for the company.

Additionally, our communications with our customers and the work they could expect varied wildly depending on who was running the project.

A new Intake Process:

I put together an intake team and together we aligned on the priorities that incoming projects should be judged against. With that information, I built out a decision tree to help us categorize potential work into one of three tiers relating to the effort required and the impact of the projects

Standardizing workflows:

I then worked with the team to establish processes associated with each tier. So once a project was assigned a tier, a producer would know who to partner with on creative and what to deliver to the customer.

Impact:

These changes were hugely successful for the team. The work went more smoothly because producers and designers knew what everyone would contribute and when. And the overall workload was distributed more evenly between producers because the amount of work for each project was well established.  

Leadership was happy because there was a clearer, more inspectable relationship between money spent and quantifiable impact.

And it reduced confusion for the customers because they would get the same service and could know what to expect each time they worked with our team.