Studies by the Project Management Institute show that the overwhelming majority of problems arising in the course of outsourced project management trace their origin to the point of handover. The key to project management success lies in careful planning: taking time at the beginning of a project and getting the right advice.

1. Take time

Take time at project scoping stage to assess fully what is involved in your project, bringing in specialist consultants as necessary, and ensuring that you have anticipated as many risks as possible and formed contingency plans to cover those risks. 

2. Establish clear parameters

Be sure to get the parameters of the project clear before you take quotes. Try to be as clear as possible about where the grey areas are, so that you know to expect estimates from prospective suppliers, rather than quotes, for those aspects of the job.

3. Have an articulate pricing structure

Establish from the beginning, preferably when you take quotes, clear frameworks and formulae for determining developments in the scope or complexity of the project, and thus a mutual understanding of factors influencing cost fluctuations. Unit cost models insure against the prospect of any dispute about costs.

4. A human face

Try, if at all possible, to get all participants around the table together before the project gets underway. This puts a human face to an email signature and enables people who may not otherwise meet (or sometimes even speak!) to establish some sort of rapport and understanding. There are many variants of misunderstanding; it is important to engender a spirit of partnership between client and suppliers from an early stage.

5. One brief, one handover

Prepare a single, detailed brief to accompany a clean handover of any assets or material, rather than a succession of fragmented communications with important details buried among a host of unresolved issues. Follow up written briefs with a phonecall or meeting (and vice versa) to address any instances of inadequate, ambiguous or inconsistent instruction or areas of misunderstanding.

6. A single point of contact

Make your key point of contact available for queries and clarifications to the brief and ensure that he/she is supportive in assisting the project manager at the interface with client-contracted authors and contributors.

7. Be disciplined with amendments

Be efficient in giving instructions for amendments at editorial and proof stages. Keep these to a minimum, including only those that are strictly necessary. Keep the wording of such instructions tight. Follow the supplier’s guidance on how these should be presented.

James Croft is an experienced publishing project manager, with ten years’ experience in providing bespoke publishing solutions to the business, education, government, charitable and traditional publishing sectors. A strategic, analytic and pragmatic thinker, he is well-equipped to help you understand, organise and realise your publishing goals.

James is the Publisher for Pencil-Sharp Publishing Ltd, and was, until recently, Director of Pencil-Sharp Ltd, the publishing project management company. Pencil-Sharp’s clients included the Office for National Statistics, the Chartered Institute for Language and Training, Edexcel and RPS plc.

James personally project managed complex projects for each of the afore-mentioned clients, as well as for David Fulton (Granada), Incisive Media plc, The Good Schools Guide, Aspinal of London, different divisions of Pearson Education, Garnet Education and many others, involving every aspect of editorial and design, including multi-author and agency authored, and multi-component/multimedia, projects. 

James is currently doing developmental editing on teaching and learning resources for Edexcel and for Garnet Education, as well as consulting for Aspinal of London and Redemptorist Publications.  

Over a decade, James has served over 50 different publishers. The best of these publishers’ house styles have been brought together into an authoritative and unique presentation of James’s own house style.

For consultancy purposes, he produced an ‘all-you-need-to-know’ guide to publishing process for senior managers coming to the task from outside the industry and for those new to outsourced management frameworks, available as part of his standard consultancy package.

James seeks to invest in your understanding of the processes publishers follow to achieve their publishing goals. The introductory guide mentioned above highlights some of the most common problems and pitfalls that arise in outsourced project management situations. It is written primarily for companies and organisations for whom publishing is not a core activity, and also for those who are unaccustomed to working in partnership with out-of-house management suppliers.

The print component of this guide contains a concise summary of factors you need to consider and the kinds of questions you need to be asking from the outset, as you scope, plan, commission, and originate your material. It also contains useful explanation of editorial, production and print processes and guidance on how to successfully navigate these stages of development through to final print or other product delivery.

The CD component of this guide contains internal quality assurance documentation and briefing templates – for you to adapt to your own use.

If you have a publishing project that you would like to discuss, contact James Croft at jcroftpublishing@googlemail.com and ask for a copy of the guide.