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 any grey areas, 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.

The key to project management success lies in careful planning: taking time at the beginning of a project and getting the right advice.

Pencil-Sharp Ltd is a publishing project management company offering bespoke outsourcing solutions to help you understand, organise and realise your publishing goals.

We offer experienced publishing consultancy. To view full profiles of our core team and learn more about who we are and what we have to offer, visit our main website: www.pencil-sharp.com.

Pencil-Sharp believes in investing in your understanding of the processes publishers follow to achieve their publishing goals. To this end we have produced an introductory guide with a view to highlighting 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 the guide contains all our internal quality assurance documentation and briefing templates – for you to adapt to your own use – as well as information about Pencil-Sharp and the services that we offer.

If you have a publishing project that you would like to discuss, contact James Croft, Director, at info@pencil-sharp.com and ask for a copy of the guide.