Cooking Up Delectable Campaigns with Project Management Software

What happens when the employees of a project management software company (Workzone) take a field trip for a fun night of cooking? It made me wonder how people who breathe “project management” all day long would fare in a different environment.

Three Courses – Three Workspaces (i.e. Your Marketing Department At a Glance)

As our class began the instructor laid out our cooking stations: the appetizer, main course and the side dish. “So we know our 3 workspaces now,” said Rick Mosenkis, Workzone’s master chef and CEO. Everyone laughed. “Workspaces” are the content groupings that Workzone uses to organize projects…clearly the team had not gotten project management off the brain yet.

For marketing departments (the place my mind immediately ventured), workspaces might be your major marketing campaigns or the internal client groups that you serve.

Something like this:

– Winter Catalog
– Spring Sale
– Summer Catalog
– Fall Direct Mail Campaign
– Annual Half-Off Sale

or this:

– Client/Department A
– Client/Department B
– Client/Department C
– Client/Department D

As we got down to food preparation, one of our customer success coordinators, the folks who are dedicated to a successful and smart set-up, timely chimed in, “I guess we now get to start building our projects…dibs on project cucumber salad.” These guys need to get out more.

 Preparing Perfectly Palatable Projects  

Projects are the next level down below workspaces. Our culinary projects might be laid out as such:

• Workspace: Appetizer – cucumber salad
  • Projects:
    • Cucumber prep
    • Salad dressing prep (a lovely oil and vinegar, with a touch of sea salt)
• Workspace: Main course – chicken (or salmon for the fish and vegetable eaters like yours’ truly)
  • Projects:
    • Chicken optimization (there’s a better word our instructor used, but essentially this is pummeling the meat for optimal cooking and absorption of the glaze)
    • Glaze (peanut butter based or balsamic vinaigrette for friends of fowl)
• Workspace: Side dish – jasmine rice and steamed veggies
  • Projects:
    • Rice (yes, I learned rice needs to be prepared and not just poured from a box)
    • Vegetable prep

On the marketing department front, it might look like this:

• Workspace: Spring sale
  • Projects:
    • Web pages (microsite)
    • Online advertising
    • Print advertising
    • Social media
    • Delivery
    • Reporting

What’s for Dessert?

Our meal was a grand success, a well-orchestrated culinary masterpiece. Well-organized project plans can be satisfying as well, if you have the right tools.

There are a zillion project management software choices out there. You need to decide whether you want an all-in-one prix fixe software tool or want to order a la carte and hope that everything blends together nicely.