Practice

User journey of setting up a new project across our systems.

1. Grab the Estimate number from ⏱ Harvest, which is usually a 7-digit number like 0003009. The Estimate should already be marked as "accepted", and if not this should be verified with whoever was responsible for the sale before proceeding.

2. Create a 📋 Project in Harvest using the Estimate number and client short code, which is usually an arbitrary three letter code, like "COS" for Council of the City of Sydney or "UOS" for University of Sydney. 1. The final code would be something like "UOS 0003009". 1. Give the project a descriptive, client-friendly name. 1. Enter the budgetary information as appropriate and add relevant roles/team-members.

3. Head over to ⛰ Basecamp and create an equivalent project there.

   • At the moment, for better or worse, the naming convention for Basecamp differs slightly than the one for Harvest by using an em dash as delimiter rather than the square brackets, so the project becomes "UOS 0003009 — Award Winning Project" rather than "[UOS 0003009] Award Winning Project".

4. Figure out who, from the client's side, needs to be on the project and let them know (however you like) that you're going to add them to Basecamp, and what to expect.

   • Try to reassure them that it's not going to be difficult or intimidating to use, and that mostly all they'll have to do is reply to e-mails from you, which will come from Basecamp rather than your normal address.

5. Document all and any high-level timings that you know about in the Schedule. This would be any deadlines or other commitments that have been made, launch dates, promises from the client's side to provide information, etc.

6. Create a "set-up" to-do list with any small project management tasks that need to be done and will require time to be tracked against them.

   • Try to imagine that you will never need to write a Harvest time entry for the time you spend on a project because you'll already have a list of to-dos sitting there to click "Track time" against.

   • Even very granular tasks are good to have listed there as they give a lot of context to others on the team about where the project is in its lifecycle and allow smooth delegation and handover of activities.

7. Get the relevant Partner to create an internal project overview document that helps anyone new to the project get a complete understanding of it and the aims so that they can "plug and play". A sample document is available here.

8. Upload any supplied documents or artefacts given by the client into the Docs & Files area, and forward any relevant emails to the Email Forwards address ([e-mail]).

   • The Basecamp project should act as a complete archive of the project context and no artefacts, documents or decisions should live in e-mail, Dropbox, Google Drive or Desktops as they're not team- and client-accessible.

   • Of course, all source code will be managed in GitHub.

9. Add the clients to the Basecamp project using the "new method" as prompted.