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Intelligence
Project Managers: Be thankful!

Intelligence

Project Managers: Be thankful!

Jan 15, 2015By mStoner Staff

I know first hand that our project managers have a direct impact on the quality and success of the work we do for our clients. I don’t say it as often as I should, but I am thankful that mStoner’s project management practice is mature and top-notch.

When I read Paul Boag’s post, Be proud of your digital project managers, it made me smile. It’s a timeless post about an important topic. He’s right, project managers help us offer great service to our clients. Paul Boag, I’ll see you and raise you. I go one further and say, “Be thankful for project managers.” We most certainly are at mStoner!

I know what it’s like on campus. Your day job is filled to the brim with email, meetings, unfunded mandates, and high expectations about more cool communication work your small team could do. Even when you hire a partner like mStoner—and firms like ours hope you view that as getting what you wished for—it means you are kicking off a complex project as an add-on. The project is critical and exciting, but it’s still more work. And no one says, “Stop your current job so you can focus all of your energy on this project.”

Here’s where I’m thankful on your behalf. When you hire mStoner, you get a team of passionate, smart, and funny individuals and that team includes a project manager. At mStoner, the PMs are super heros. Without the benefit of capes, the PMs at mStoner keep it all looking easy, seamless, effortless, and oozing wow. Every day, Jennifer Presley and Patrick Powers:

  • Build relationships by connecting often (and everywhere) with our clients.
  • Manage time lines, schedules, budgets, and daily tasks for both the mStoner team and the campus team.

Let’s dig into this PM thing a bit more. Here’s what we’re really talking about:

Communication and Customer Service

When you hire an external partner, you have questions about approach, you have concerns about how we’ll get it all done, you have ideas about what we should do and how we’ll work together to do it. Your mStoner PM knows all. They will put a communication structure in place; they’ll even modify that structure slightly to better suit your needs and for greater project success. Our PMs are available. They will be there via email, phone, text message, chat, and hangouts; it’s not unlikely they will get a sense they should get in touch with you and they will.

Technical PM

Think about all of the teeny, tiny details and all of the big strategic decisions that are essential for all types of communications projects. Now think about all of the stuff in between. The PM creates the plan to cover it all. The technical PM work will address who does what when. The PM will schedule people and tasks, monitor budgets, adjust and enforce time lines, lead meetings with clients, gently remind mStoner team members, and the beat goes on. I’m exhausted just writing about it. People, this is where the magic happens. This detail and technical approach is what gets you from an idea to done.

Thank you sincerely, Jenn and Patrick. We salute you today and always.

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