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Jory MacKay
Jory is a writer, content strategist and award-winning editor of the Unsplash Book. He contributes to Inc., Fast Company, Quartz, and more.
July 09, 2024 · 11 min read

How to manage creative projects: Tips for agencies & designers


How to manage creative projects: Tips for agencies & designers

While “creativity” is often treated as some ethereal quality that materializes when you least expect it, the truth is that creativity cannot exist without order, structure, and planning.

Unfortunately, there’s almost always a push and pull between creative teams and project managers. Full-blooded “creatives” want freedom to explore, ideate, and come up with unique ideas. While business executives and project managers need actionable plans, realistic deadlines, and metrics to monitor their progress.

With recent data showing that the global creativity agency market is forecasted to grow to $770 billion in 2024, there’s never been a more important time to find order in the chaos of creative work.

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In this guide, we’ll explain what creative project management is, how to manage projects without stifling your team’s creative spirit, and the best tools and processes to get you over the finish line.

What is creative project management? Why is it so important?

Creative project management is the framework to plan and deliver creative projects either within a business team or to a client as part of an agency or creative team.


How to manage creative projects: Tips for agencies & designers

Like many other types of project management, creative projects are managed and coordinated by a project manager who pulls the strings to keep everyone on track.

But what makes creative project management different is in the subjectivity of their deliverables. Creative projects almost always have a heavy design element, with milestones focused on copywriting, marketing, web design, advertising, and branding — deliverables that can be harder to estimate and track their progress compared to more “traditional” tasks.

But subjectivity is only one issue that plagues creative project managers. These projects also face common project management hurdles, such as demanding stakeholders, unexpected scope changes, and limited budget, resources, and timelines.

All of these elements put a lot of pressure on project managers — but the payoff is worth it.

Here are some of the benefits that come from proper creative project management:

The global creativity agency market is forecasted to grow to $770 billion in 2024, so there’s never been a more important time to find order in the chaos of creative work.

In the best case scenario, project management empowers creatives to do their best work. So what does that look like in practice?

Creative Project Management 101: How to successfully run a creative project

All good projects follow a project lifecycle, and creative projects are no different. To help you bring structure to your creative deliveries, let’s dig into each phase of a typical project and show how they can be applied to your creative team.

Phase 1: Concept and initiation

The concept and initiation phase is where the first seeds of creativity are planted and nurtured. Crucially, this is where team members come together to explore different ideas and solutions to set the foundations of the project going forward.

Key tasks to complete:

What makes creative projects different?

This phase is often formalized by a scope of work (SOW) that details all of the specifics, including the reporting schedules, approval points, milestones, and expectations of both parties.


The concept and initiation phase is often formalized by a scope of work (SOW)

For creative projects, your scope may be less clear to allow more space for exploration. Instead, you might include a limited number of revisions or a hard deadline for accepting the SOW.

Best practices for creative project teams:

Phase 2: Planning and design

If the concept and initiation phase is where new ideas are born, the planning and design phase is where they come to life. Like all good deliveries, this phase starts with the formal work to plan the project’s controls before moving into a creative design process.

Key tasks to complete:

What makes creative projects different?

Unlike other types of projects, creative initiatives often have longer and more involved design phases. This will be an iterative phase, with multiple rounds of feedback leading to changes in your design concepts.

Again, it’s good to limit the amount of time spent in this phase to keep things moving. Remember: constraints breed creativity!

Best practices for creative project teams:


Planio task with comments/questions for a client about the design work

Phase 3: Build

With the design finalized, it’s time to build the deliverables. For creative projects, this could include building a website, loading a social media ad campaign, printing physical media, or writing campaign copy.

Key tasks to complete:

What makes creative projects different?

With such a detailed design phase, unlike other types of projects, creative projects often have a short, sharp build phase. You should already have a good idea of what needs to be made based off of the mockups, designs, and user research completed in the previous phase.

Best practices for creative project teams:


Planio board showing the progress of a creative project

Phase 4: Sign-off and launch

Once the deliverables are created, the customer or stakeholder must sign off to ensure all parties are happy that the objectives have been met. From there, it’s time to put your creative product out into the world.

Key tasks to complete:

What makes creative projects different?

For many creative projects, you only have one chance to make a first impression. Because of this, the sign-off and launch phase can take time to ensure everyone is comfortable and in agreement that the deliverables are ready for launch.

Best practices for creative project teams:


Planio task with a checklist showing the launch criteria for a creative project

Phase 5: Monitor and close

If you’re an internal team or an agency involved in the creative launch, you’ll need to observe a period of monitoring to review the deliverable’s performance, capture feedback, and make any changes. If you’re not involved in the launch, it’s straight to the closure phase, where you wash up, capture lessons learned, and disband the team.

Key tasks to complete:

What makes creative projects different?

Many creative projects, especially digital ones, have the opportunity to monitor and improve quickly after launch. This means that if something isn’t quite working, you can make changes to maximize performance and have a second stab at delivering success.

Even if your job ends with handing over the creative deliverables, it’s good to keep an eye on them in the wild to ensure that they’re acting as you expect them to.

Best practices for creative project teams:

The creative project management lifecycle helps to structure an initiative from start to finish. While all projects have a chance of failing, following a structured lifecycle increases your chances of success while keeping the team and your customers happy.

A real-world example: Website redesign

Now that you know all about the creative project management lifecycle, it’s time to bring it to life with a real-world example.

Let’s look at how the framework can be used to run a website redesign project between a web development agency and a client.

Step 1. Concept & Initiation

Jasmine is a project manager at Web99, a web development agency specializing in website redesigns. Jasmine has been assigned a new project for Insure-a-pet, an animal insurance broker.

Here’s what Jasmine could do to manage the project through the first phase:

Step 2. Planning and design

Jasmine moves on to the next phase of the project, working to plan out the project tasks and milestones and creates a detailed schedule of work. From there, Jasmine works to:

Step 3. Build

Jasmine assigns the web developer to create the pages approved by Will. During this time, she completes the following to keep the project on track:

Step 4. Sign-off and launch

Once the build and testing is complete, Jasmine presents the final website redesign back to Will for review. During the sign-off process, the following tasks are completed:

Step 5. Monitor and close

Jasmine supports Will through the first two weeks of the website being live by monitoring the performance, capturing customer feedback, and making minor changes to website copy and imagery to improve it further.

Once complete, Jasmine hosts a wash-up session with the team and Will, discussing what went well and what could be improved for next time. Jasmine issues the final invoice and closes the project.

How to choose the best creative project management software

If you’re a creative project manager, a good project management software tool will quickly become your secret weapon.

Not only does it keep everything and everyone in one place, but it’s also great for automating admin tasks, collaborating with clients, and storing important project documents.


Planio - The one project management tool to hold your team together

While hundreds of software packages are out there, choosing a project management tool that balances functionality, cost, and accessibility can be hard.

Here are four things to think about when choosing your next tool:

If you’re a creative project manager, a good project management software tool will quickly become your secret weapon.

Try Planio for yourself — for free. Planio brings together all of the best features for creative project management, without the hassle or headache of a heavy tool. Try Planio free for 30 days (no credit card required) and see how it helps your team excel.

It’s time to get creative — Planio can help

Creative agencies are only getting busier, so to avoid your workload getting out of control, you need to follow an effective creative project management framework.

By breaking your work down into phases and ticking off a consistent set of tasks, you’ll help the entire team stay organized, pull in the same direction, and ultimately, deliver better results. That means happier clients who’ll keep coming back time and time again.

To give your creative projects that extra boost, take a look at Planio.

We help creative teams worldwide plan their projects, collaborate with clients, and keep track of time and costs in one easy-to-use platform. That takes the admin away from you, giving you room to focus on building the client relationships that really matter.