Managing creative projects well comes down to understanding the ever-present project management triangle: scope, schedule, and cost.
For projects in many other industries, determining these factors is relatively straightforward: If I’m building a three-bedroom house, I’ll have blueprints and dimensions (scope), which will tell me the amount of cement, wood, windows, flooring, roofing, and everything else I’ll need. Based on the available employee resources, I’ll know how long each phase of the project will take (schedule) and be able to calculate the total cost (obviously, cost). Now, that’s not to say that nothing will go awry or require flexibility and adequate change management, but the overall planning is pretty simple.
Creative projects are not so simple. Answering the questions of cost and time for a company rebranding, for example, is much trickier due to the somewhat ethereal nature of these questions.
