Mykyta Lovikov, CEO and founder of the Letsmake.site web studio, shared his experience of using Worksection with us. He also shared some interesting insights into the success and failure of projects, as well as how prioritization can replace task deadlines.
Tell us about your company
We’re the Letsmake.site web studio, and we develop turnkey websites. Our clients are established small and medium-sized businesses that seek to effectively present themselves online, increase the number of clients or expand their business through entering new markets and attracting search traffic.
Let’s talk about the features of your projects
The result of our projects is usually the creation of a new site or updating the functionality of existing ones. Depending on the format and scale, it takes from 2 to 12 weeks. The development of a full-fledged turnkey corporate website takes on average 6 – 8 weeks.
Usually, 3 – 4 people participate in each project, but for large projects, we involve additional niche specialists for non-core work. In addition, as the owner of the studio, I am personally involved in the key stages of each project.
Screenshot from the Letsmake.site website
Why do you think unsuccessful projects happen?
Unsuccessful projects happen when something goes wrong during the work on the project. And most problems on development projects, in my experience, come from breakdowns in the work and communication management.
As for the success of projects, for me it means positive feedback from the client, the team’s satisfaction with the result, and hitting the planned profit targets. And the indicator of that success is the traffic, sales, and business growth of my clients — which, in turn, guarantees my professional growth. And therefore my profit. That’s why I want the sites we make to be effective, not just pretty.
How did you know it was time to implement a project management system?
I have been using Worksection for a long time, since around. 2015. I first tried it for personal tasks, then suggested and rolled it out at the company where I worked as a marketer at the time. Before that came a stage of chaos, notebooks, Google Sheets, and Trello. The number of projects grew, and switching between boards became more and more difficult.
So there was a need to keep all projects under control in one place. That’s how I found Worksection. And when I started my own business, I had no doubts about which task manager I needed to organize processes.
How does Worksection help you at work?
Worksection helped me build a clear business process.
Also, all updates, results of discussions and agreements should be recorded in comments to the specific task to which they relate. There is a list of stages that each task goes through (WAIT, DO, CONTROL, DONE). And there is a responsible person for each stage.
Worksection highlights overdue tasks in red. And when I systematically had the entire service interface glowing red from such tasks week after week, I thought:
Can I control the future? — No.
Am I able to predict the creative process of other people? — No.
All I can do as a manager is to determine what is important to do at the moment and communicate that to the person who’ll actually do it.
That’s when I started using task prioritization instead of deadlines.
The Worksection interface stopped flashing red, the tension in the team’s work disappeared, and the number of successful tasks and projects began to grow rapidly.
What is the key to a successful project?
High-quality planning and risk management, as well as well-organized project communication between all its participants.
For me, the main criterion of a successful project is the total satisfaction of all parties: the customer, the team and myself as the owner of the studio. And that includes meeting the project’s deadlines/quality/cost for the customer, how interesting the project is for the team’s professional growth, and the planned profitability figures for me.
Which companies do you think Worksection would be suitable for?
I know from my own experience that Worksection will definitely suit any small and medium-sized company with up to 20 – 30 people. Although it will also be useful for other industries and large companies, because the system gives you the flexibility to organize any process: from sales and marketing to recruiting and onboarding employees..
I can definitely recommend Worksection as a task and process management system for business, because it has everything you need to organize the company’s work. It is useful and not annoying, and this is very important :)