Managing freelance projects on their own experience
In the article I want to consider the issues that arise in a freelancer due to the need to manage several projects at the same time, to talk about your project and the reasons for its creation.
Working remotely for five years, at a certain stage I was faced with the fact that there were quite a lot of active projects and I had to look for convenient ways to record all comments received by them. An Internet search did not give the desired result: it was about 2008, and all the services of the lists then only gained momentum. In the end, together with a familiar programmer, we made a resource listeg.ru . Initially, it was, in fact, only lists, with the ability to sort them into folders and highlight in color.
After some time, it took me a record of financial statistics: accounting for payments, debts, etc. Then they added it: again, in the simplest form, without reference to the accounts, auto-signing of funds, etc. On this, my problems with project management were solved, and the resource in this form existed for a couple of years.
But the topic itself did not leave me: all services for project management that were on the market seemed complicated for the following reasons:
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My freelancer needs are much simpler: do not look for the right letter in the mail and do not forget to perform this or that task. Everything! That is why it was decided to add projects to the functionality of lists and finance. To understand what is at stake, I propose to consider some points in detail.
To create a project, you need to add a new folder (specify the name) and select from the contact list the participants of this project. This option has one major drawback: if a programmer and a copywriter are simultaneously involved in the project and I don’t want one to see the tasks of the other, I’ll have to create separate projects for them. But this is easy for me to accept: as a freelancer, I rarely have many people working on the same project.
Many will think that it would be possible to make a different level of access for different groups in a project. For example, we create the project “My project”, add the group “Work for a programmer” and “Work for a copywriter”. But then the question arises: can the participants in this project add their own groups in the same way? If so, with what rights? And then the project has an administrator who can do everything, and participants who can do almost everything or nothing. Complicated! The variant with the project, in which all participants have the same rights, is much closer to me, and fully meets my management requirements.
To add a task, you need to specify its name and all. If necessary, all the attributes of the task (deadline, importance, and so on) can also be specified in the title itself - this greatly simplifies the process. It is not necessary to separately indicate the composition of participants, the timing, criticality and other attributes, which many project management services cannot boast. The fact is that in practice, the priority of tasks can change every day, and even more often, and I need easy ways to indicate the importance of a task: for this I simply drag it up in the list and highlight it in red. You can also write “IMPORTANT! Do first. ” Again, working with a small team is much more convenient.
It was the need for a simple project management system that made me create my own resource. In the aggregate, lists, finances and projects, in my opinion, fully provide comfortable project management for freelancers, if the standard mail functions are not enough.
PS I ask you not to throw stones: everyone has different needs, for certain someone will not be satisfied with this set of functions, and perhaps it will seem to someone hyper-complex. All information is provided based on personal experience.
Interested can contact me for free test access.
Freelancer with five years experience
Working remotely for five years, at a certain stage I was faced with the fact that there were quite a lot of active projects and I had to look for convenient ways to record all comments received by them. An Internet search did not give the desired result: it was about 2008, and all the services of the lists then only gained momentum. In the end, together with a familiar programmer, we made a resource listeg.ru . Initially, it was, in fact, only lists, with the ability to sort them into folders and highlight in color.
After some time, it took me a record of financial statistics: accounting for payments, debts, etc. Then they added it: again, in the simplest form, without reference to the accounts, auto-signing of funds, etc. On this, my problems with project management were solved, and the resource in this form existed for a couple of years.
The idea of ​​a simple project management service
But the topic itself did not leave me: all services for project management that were on the market seemed complicated for the following reasons:
- I do not need an account of time spent on the project;
- I don't need task indicators;
- I do not need to write the deadline in a separate field;
- and most importantly: I do not need hypercomplicated links of the project participants: administrators, performers and others.
')
My freelancer needs are much simpler: do not look for the right letter in the mail and do not forget to perform this or that task. Everything! That is why it was decided to add projects to the functionality of lists and finance. To understand what is at stake, I propose to consider some points in detail.
Creating a project
To create a project, you need to add a new folder (specify the name) and select from the contact list the participants of this project. This option has one major drawback: if a programmer and a copywriter are simultaneously involved in the project and I don’t want one to see the tasks of the other, I’ll have to create separate projects for them. But this is easy for me to accept: as a freelancer, I rarely have many people working on the same project.
Many will think that it would be possible to make a different level of access for different groups in a project. For example, we create the project “My project”, add the group “Work for a programmer” and “Work for a copywriter”. But then the question arises: can the participants in this project add their own groups in the same way? If so, with what rights? And then the project has an administrator who can do everything, and participants who can do almost everything or nothing. Complicated! The variant with the project, in which all participants have the same rights, is much closer to me, and fully meets my management requirements.
Task management
To add a task, you need to specify its name and all. If necessary, all the attributes of the task (deadline, importance, and so on) can also be specified in the title itself - this greatly simplifies the process. It is not necessary to separately indicate the composition of participants, the timing, criticality and other attributes, which many project management services cannot boast. The fact is that in practice, the priority of tasks can change every day, and even more often, and I need easy ways to indicate the importance of a task: for this I simply drag it up in the list and highlight it in red. You can also write “IMPORTANT! Do first. ” Again, working with a small team is much more convenient.
It was the need for a simple project management system that made me create my own resource. In the aggregate, lists, finances and projects, in my opinion, fully provide comfortable project management for freelancers, if the standard mail functions are not enough.
PS I ask you not to throw stones: everyone has different needs, for certain someone will not be satisfied with this set of functions, and perhaps it will seem to someone hyper-complex. All information is provided based on personal experience.
Interested can contact me for free test access.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/148268/
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