Key takeaways
- Agency PMs balance very different specialist teams; some technical or UX background helps you ask the right questions.
- Large agencies offer a visible PM career path and are a good place to break into the field.
- Get project management into scoping meetings so account management does not commit the team to work it cannot resource.
- Set expectations early and raise scope changes with the client without being annoying about it.
- Design stays iterative while development runs in sprints; PI planning across program managers gives the client visibility into dependencies.
About this episode
“I love the very quick and fast pace of an agency and my projects.”
Project management roles are pretty similar across industries, in that PMs are mostly responsible for facilitating projects and teams to a successful delivery while keeping a keen eye budgets and deadlines. That’s certainly the case for agency project management, but for some reason it’s just a little more different. Is it the fast pace? The clients? The huge network you have in a global agency? The creative culture? Or maybe the way a PM is viewed and utilized in an agency?
In this episode of Time Limit, we talk to Donna Sargeant, who is a program manager at Wunderman Thompson, a global creative agency that helps its clients meet their business goals through the strategy and execution of digital and print projects. In the interview, Donna provides a glimpse into agency life as a project manager, and we touch on:
- What does a project manager do at a marketing agency?
- How to get into agency project management
- Project management roles and team structure
- How PMs work with account managers
- Agency process
Additional resources mentioned in this episode: