About Volta One:
- Digital agency;
- 30 people in the team;
- Worksection has been used since the company’s outset.
- Clients: Uber, L’Oreal, Garnier, AB InBev, KFC etc.
Why Worksection
Volta One has been in business for many years. We provide services in Digital Production and social media marketing. We mainly cooperate with corporate clients — Uber, AB InBev, L’Oreal and their brands, such as Bud, Staropramen, Maybelline New York etc. We also work with startups bringing their products to the international market.
The problem of most task managers is that they are tailored for IT companies, being badly adjusted for the day-to-day realities of a digital agency.
The question of organizing the work process came up from the company’s very first day. We tried Trello, Asana, and other task managers. The problem with systems like these is that they’re poorly suited to the day-to-day realities of a digital agency. Most of them are tailored for IT companies with specific internal processes.
How we launched it
Of course, we had help adopting Worksection: they advised us, explained things, and ran training. It matters when the product’s developers consult their clients, listen to them, and help answer the questions that come up in the course of work. That kind of personal support is very important.
Now Worksection is the company’s main tool for day-to-day operations. In it, we set tasks, plan projects, and count the time spent. Every employee who asks “what am I doing today?” finds the answer in Worksection.
If you took this system away, the company wouldn’t grind to a halt, but it would need far more resources for day-to-day management. We’d have to make up for what Worksection does now by hiring people — or hang boards all over the office and cover them with tasks.
Now Worksection is the main tool in the company’s operational activities
What we use
We use almost all of Worksection’s functionality, except for storing files. The project managers use the Gantt chart. It lets them plan the company’s resources flexibly, understand how the projects connect, and make sure they don’t overlap.
We experimented with adding clients to Worksection, but it didn’t catch on. In our case, the account manager passes on to the client whatever they need.
The main reports we use are the time spent and how it breaks down across projects. That’s how we assess the performance of the company as a whole and of each employee.
How we use it
At first, we used Worksection the way its developers had intended, following its authors’ recommendations. Not everything went smoothly. It was hard to manage such a large range of tasks, and we can have 20 – 30 projects in progress at once. We needed to keep them under constant control at every level — top management, middle management, and the people doing the work.
Once we rolled out Worksection’s Task Board, these problems were solved. We were able to fully represent the company’s management structure, as well as the structure of how projects are run. The “Task Board” let each group get exactly what it needed.
At a certain point, we realized that the power of this tool is customization, and we decided to reshape Worksection to fit our needs.
Custom version
Our first and non-obvious solution was to opt out of handling projects in the “Projects” section. Our typical project takes the form of a task with subtasks.
We divide our projects into external and internal ones. The main view used by us is “Task Board” with a pre-built workflow, statuses and labels guiding the project. Each board represents a
department consisting of designers, copywriters, developers and marketing managers. There are
also boards related to the project status, such as “documents” and “general register of projects”.
Each of our projects starts out in the Upcoming section. We plan it and figure out how it should get going and how to run it. Then the project moves onto the relevant department’s board. The project manager is responsible for everything going on inside the project. They see all the tasks, their sequence and connections, as well as the deadlines and priorities for the end performers. The end performers, in turn, see their workload and task priorities just by clicking on their photo. Top management can monitor all the projects too.
What makes a system like this convenient? Every employee understands what they’ll be working on right now and in the near future. A person can receive tasks from different project managers, and they also agree on the order of priority with the PMs. We set the global priorities at our weekly meetings.
Statuses and labels
We developed statuses for the processes which really take place in our company. For instance, the video production department has its own work processes and labels. They may customize the workflow “for themselves”, to fit it into their reality. This is a unique inherent feature of Worksection which we have not seen in other systems.
- Labels are an important aspect of Worksection’s functionality. They help to identify the project type.
- You may also use labels to indicate the task status.
people are the main resource
Tailored for Digital
Our way of working in Worksection could be used at any digital agency that runs a lot of projects. When several dozen projects — internal, external, on hold, or maybe stalled — are in progress at once, they’re very hard to manage. You can’t even get a clear picture of what’s going on.
We can handle about 20 projects simultaneously. Due to Worksection, four project managers cope with such scope. Worksection will fit all types of businesses where people are the main resource. These are production companies, digital agencies, architectural bureaus perhaps.
To manage projects and people efficiently, you need the right tool. Worksection is exactly that kind of tool.