Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

The first project I ever worked on with a team in design still lingers in my mind. I was on a team of four, two artist combined with two designers building a sales ad. I had to work closely with one of the artist to build the storyboard design for the team concept. Though it was saluted as a successful project in retrospect as I look over the 15 year old storyboard it was rudimentary at best. We worked within the confines of our software and training and built the storyboard strictly by hand. We followed the concept, technical requirements, and script designed by the team. My contribution was to assure that technically what the artist rendered we could reproduce with the software and technology we had available.


My larger task grew to keeping the artist on task and on schedule. He was very precise and deliberate in his graphic style and was taking excessive time with each cell of the storyboard. He was not realizing that the storyboard is a concept piece not the entire project and can have rough drawings with informative text. If I were to redo this project today I would use storyboarding software and collaboration software to communicate with the other designers on the team. I recall we had communication issues due to schedule conflicts. Software such as SKYPE would have allowed us all to meet without everyone having to be in the same room. Designating a team project manager would have also benefitted each member in defining our roles and duties to the group. The project if redone today given the knowledge I have gained as a designer, technology improves, and software advances would be easier to produce and take a fraction of the time to create.

References:
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
Project management triangle. (2010, June 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_management_triangle&oldid=368175262.
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.