project_management

How are multimedia job process carried out > hi friends, > i have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to > organise my team to get maximum output. > i was going through a lot of books which talk about various organizational > structures and processes to adapt to work > for different industries (advertising, manufacturing etc.) i couldn't find > anything to do with multimedia industry. > > Can anyone talk about a structure of a Multimedia Company > and the various processes it needs to have in place for maximum output > things like what kind of project management skills are we talking about, how > the programming,design and marketing team co-ordinate etc. > how is the progress of a job monitored and how job costing etc is done. > > thanks in advance. Here are some 'possible truths'. Could be all wrong. Open to discussion. The best model is 'Rock band'. The worst is 'Army' In a well functioning rock band, everybody takes a turn to 'lead' (i.e. doing a solo) and there is a common vision about the project shared by all. Rock bands are also quite small. Big teams and rigid hierarchies do not work well for multimedia. Have few and dedicated managers. 'Good managers make it possible for people to work'. If people have multiple skills, leverage this fact, but ensure that they are given the extra time needed to cover that extra responsibility. Design by committee is often fatal. Give people responsibilities and trust them with those responsibilities. If they do something you don't think is quite suitable, which they don't want to change, or can't for some reason, let it pass. Make it a *human* whole. Revealing the idiosyncracies of human authors adds to the appeal of a product. If the design is subsumed to some fantasy of seamless consent, it will lack dynamism. Contradictions are not all bad. If contradictions can not be removed, highlight them. The Beatles are good because you can hear 'John songs' and 'Paul songs' and 'George songs'. They got better in their later years because they allowed their personalities to spill out more into the content without worrying so much about the consistency of 'the Beatles sound'. Keep your timescale focused, if it drags on for more than six months, energy and enthusiasm levels will start to flag. Accept that learning from mistakes made is more important than the quest for perfection. Getting the thing finished is therefore more important than endless tweaking. You can then 'close' the project psychologically and build upon it. A great book which deals with this issue in detail is 'Dust or Magic' by Bob Hughes. Check it out. -- _____________ Brennan Young