How do you handle a sole request with multiple deliverables?

Hi Leah,

We have a couple different scenarios that align with your first item.

1a. Campaigns - these for us might be a little different than you're describing. We have a request come in for a campaign which we convert to a project, the we set up a request queue to route the individual campaign tactic requests into that project. Those individual requests generally have additional information specific to that tactic and they get converted to projects of their own. Additionally we have a "campaign number" field, and all the individual tactic projects plus the campaign project all have the same number in that field to tie them together. This way the team can use that number to refer to the original project if needed

1b. Photography requests - we might get 1 request asking us to photograph 200+ individual products - that's a bit too many to copy one at a time. Also generally the details for each product are on a spreadsheet. So we have a template for a kick-start where we can put all the details for the individual products, plus columns for any information pertaining to the entire request such as requestor name and any info about them that is needed on each request. Then with the Kick-Start we create individual issues for each product that needs to be shot. This method allows us to treat each of the items from that original request as their own request.

2. Things like web ads, we treat as one request and train our designers to provide all the sizes needed for each ad type. The "ad" is the deliverable, the various sizes are just something the designers know they need to create.

Hi!

At my former agency...

• For 1, we usually converted the main request into the "Creative Development" project which included the Discovery and Concepting phases. We would then create a Program for that campaign and then all the various tactics were created as different projects in the program. (NOTE: Each project did have a field for Job Number so we could tie the info together in our financial system, but each project did not have all the details from the original request. Just wanted to be clear.) We would then utilize Cross-Project Predecessors on those projects so if the concepts were running late, it would push the schedules of the tactics. For reporting, we could use Program or Job Number to tie the projects together, but we could also use the projects to see how many websites, banner ads, print ads, OOHs, etc. etc. we had as each tactic was a separate process.
• For 2, like Heather mentioned, we considered the banners just one Banner Project and then just listed the various sizes that were needed for the designer. We didn't consider them 5 different ads.

Hope this helps :)

Heather - your approach to the photography request is interesting. We just had people put a link to an Excel Online spreadsheet (we had Office 365) in the request, and then the team would update that with comments or say that it was done for each photo. (Although the photos themselves were uploaded to WF so that they could be routed as proofs and approved by the right parties.)

@Leah Janz‚ On the note of multiple deliverables in one projects...

The desire to track that is something that was requested by our executive team members. In our case it was more common for social media posts since we typically have one job per brand per month for all the social posts they need anywhere from 3-15 usually). We created a simple manual text field called 'Number of Deliverables' and put that in our request form for SM. That way we have an accurate count of how many posts are being delivered since thee number of projects wasn't accurate.

It worked for us!