Hello,
When starting my hosting business a couple of years back, I offered hosting and hosting alone. Then, as I saw a tremendous need for design and training services, I changed my business model to include these needed services. I'm not really one to turn down a paying gig, so I quickly ramped up on Dreamweaver/Fireworks, and began accepting $500 - $2500 design gigs, only accepting projects I thought I'd be able to handle.

Problems - as more and more design projects were underway, I noticed "process gaps" -- that is --- dead time between website developement. Example - waiting for a real estate agent to submit her photographs, waiting for a small wine company to finish their pdf documents for posting, etc.

Hmmmm, in trying to make effective use of these "process gaps", I would accept smaller web design jobs and quickly knock those out for pocket cash, while awaiting the bigger jobs to submit their graphics and text to me.

I've been exploring ways to try and make more effective use of my time. I have been kind of "spinning" lately, getting to the point when I wake up in the morning, I'm not sure what I should be working on first. I have 7 or 8 currently running projects.

I've been using an Excel spreadsheet to have a birdseye view, with dates and small summarys in each cell according to domain.
Also, each domain contains its own legnthy "scratch notes" document, its like a "captains log" of the development for that particular website. But, nevertheless, I'm having a little trouble staying organized as I take on more sites.

I've considered Microsoft Project. How do you busy web host/designers use to manage your time more effectively?

Best,
Brad

I currently work for a small web design company of 12 people. Obviously, with 12 people we can take more jobs than a single person can, but we still have gaps. We are always waiting on clients to provide content just as you are. Rather than finding small jobs to fill the time, we build sites for ourselves. We've been trying out affiliate programs or building little tools that are ad supported. Our goal is to limit the effect these client gaps have on us. While we aren't making millions we at least have something to do in the meantime.

It helps to make a task list the day or night before. I find that, when left to my own devices, I tend to just sit and look at the pile of work and not ever really get started. If I plan it out the night before, so that I have a clear picture of what I need to do, it really helps.

--Tina

It helps to make a task list the day or night before. I find that, when left to my own devices, I tend to just sit and look at the pile of work and not ever really get started. If I plan it out the night before, so that I have a clear picture of what I need to do, it really helps.

--Tina

Yeah, I basically sit myself down and just do an old fashioned Things To Do list. Its not so bad with 4 or 5 concurently running website projects, its pretty much in my head. But as more and more come on, I find it harder to control my timing. My hours are billable hours, so I basically write my times down in each individual website document file, and at the end of the day tally the hours in a Website Timesheet Excel file:
Example: website1.com 3:30-4pm 30 minutes
Example: wegsite2.com 4:15 - 5pm 45 minutes
Example: website3.com 5:30 - 6:45 1 hour 15 minutes

I was wondering if you have a decent method of time keeping.
I've considered maybe just using Outlook for my scheduling. Looked a little bit at Microsoft Project. I just think my Domain Word Doc and my Excel spreadsheet method is a bit primitive.
Learning as I go here.
Considered even drafting up a quickie SQL Server 2005 database for record keeping, and perhaps even utilizing that as a portfolio piece. ((( fairly new to SQL Server )))
Hmmmmmmm.... what do you do about Time Management / Record Keeping?

Example - waiting for a real estate agent to submit her photographs, waiting for a small wine company to finish their pdf documents for posting, etc.

its hard to alleviate that. the only option to do full multitasking with anything, by getting yourself a project manager software and scheduling your tasks and stuff.

You can do much better than MS Project - I'd recommend you check out 37Signal's Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com) or my personal favorite, ActiveCollab (www.activecollab.com).

Basecamp is hosted software, pay by the month, pay forever; ActiveCollab is owned software, so you only pay once.

In ActiveCollab you can have Milestones, Checklists (with subtasks), & Tickets (with Subtasks) - along with Discussions, Files, Pages (wiki), Time Tracking & Calendar. A new version is about to be released which allows you to use any project as a template, so you can setup your process once and use it over and over again. Now you've still got to schedule all of the individual steps for each project as appropriate, but once you do it becomes trivial to look at the global calendar each morning and see exactly what you need to do that day. One thing that might help you is the successive milestones feature... you can have it offset all remaining milestones if one gets delayed. If each of your process steps was documented as a milestone, this could make it easier to manage/re-schedule projects where you get delayed waiting on a client deliverable.

In our office we use Milestones as project phases, then Checklists with subtasks represent all of the individual steps in our project process. Then anything that comes up that's NOT part of the process gets captured as a Ticket. We couldn't live without it now... especially for ad-hoc maintenance work, we actually capture about twice as much billable time each month now compared to before. Even though you're a one man shop, I think it could be useful for you. Give it a look.

Brandon

As cool and web 2.0 as all of the 37signals toys are I'd recommend Central Desktop over BaseCamp any day of the week. Just more professional IMO especially if you eventually want to let clients into their workspace to collaborate with you.

We tried ActiveCollab also. Still picked Central Desktop over that.

A question, patrick. Why do you say that Central Desktop is more professional?
I'm asking out of curiousity because I haven't used Central Desktop. I used Basecamp and was pleased to see that there were options to remove all Basecamp logos and do your own custom styling. There's also pretty good account management for client collaboration. You can restrict who can see what project(s) and who can edit lists, milestones, etc.

I've used both and I am not going to ever rule out using Basecamp. I still have my credentials for my one free account.

However with the clients that I work with I just found more structure and more understanding when working with CD rather than Basecamp. I work with a lot of lawyers and federal government clients. I'd have a hard time getting them used to Basecamp. I'd probably be more inclined to use Basecamp on an informal project rather than a large formal one. There are also features I like in CD like being able to do alot of things from email w/o actually having to login to the interface. I can update documents, add new projects, tasks, etc. all from email with CD.

Just my opinion. I am sure there are disagreements.

Thanks for the specifics, Patrick. Just to clarify, I was asking out of curiosity. I can see Basecamp not being for some (or a lot of) people. That's why I asked you. Thanks for your opinion. It seems to be an informed and balanced one.

You can do much better than MS Project - I'd recommend you check out 37Signal's Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com) or my personal favorite, ActiveCollab (www.activecollab.com).

Basecamp is hosted software, pay by the month, pay forever; ActiveCollab is owned software, so you only pay once.

In ActiveCollab you can have Milestones, Checklists (with subtasks), & Tickets (with Subtasks) - along with Discussions, Files, Pages (wiki), Time Tracking & Calendar. A new version is about to be released which allows you to use any project as a template, so you can setup your process once and use it over and over again. Now you've still got to schedule all of the individual steps for each project as appropriate, but once you do it becomes trivial to look at the global calendar each morning and see exactly what you need to do that day. One thing that might help you is the successive milestones feature... you can have it offset all remaining milestones if one gets delayed. If each of your process steps was documented as a milestone, this could make it easier to manage/re-schedule projects where you get delayed waiting on a client deliverable.

In our office we use Milestones as project phases, then Checklists with subtasks represent all of the individual steps in our project process. Then anything that comes up that's NOT part of the process gets captured as a Ticket. We couldn't live without it now... especially for ad-hoc maintenance work, we actually capture about twice as much billable time each month now compared to before. Even though you're a one man shop, I think it could be useful for you. Give it a look.

Brandon

Thanks for the write up --- Checked out Active Collab and Central Desktop --- look real good. I think that may help me.I definitely like your comments about "capturing about twice as much billable time"!! Sure, I'm a one-man shop for now. After dayjob, household wife and kids, I've got about 20 hours weekly dedicated to my small but growing web hosting/design business. Of the 20 hours actual labor, only about 10 is true design billable time. The other 10 hours are spent in coorespondence (both phone and email), and other aspects of the business. Heres a likely breakdown of my 20 hour week:
50% (10 hours) billable design work (get about $400 per week)

Heres all my other Time Killer (but necessary) stuff
****************************************************
10% (2 hours) Accounting / budgeting, paying bills, financial planning, credit management, debt collection
10% (2 hours) pc maintenance, upgrades
10% (2 hours) Attempted Growth Expansion / employees or Vendors
hiring and firing, trying GAF (get a freelancer) motivation, arbitration
10% (2 hours) Problem Solving - troubleshooting, quality control
customer service
5% (1 hours) Warehousing (that is - digital warehousing)
inventory control, storage and cd-rom backsup/burns, domain name management-inventory, istockphoto inventory, MonsterTemplate inventory, etc.
5% (1 hour) Coorespondence: advertising copy, letters or email to clients or prospective clients, looking into press releases, looking into articles

My percentages are give/and/take, but thats roughly how I spend my non-billiable 10 hours per week.
Best,
Brad

Brad, you're doing the right thing by organizing yourself now instead of later. If you find yourself going full-time with your business then this preparation will certainly pay off.

Also (to the original poster) I cannot stress enough: Figure out a rough process for how you want to work BEFORE you get any of the tools mentioned. You should define the steps you want to follow and your workflow. It should even be something you could do with paper and pencil or a simple spreadsheet. Get the process well defined, THEN go out looking for a tool that will support your process. Too many find the cool tool first, and then shape process around it. Very bad idea. You'll never know if you have a good tool if you don't know how you want to work up front.

Process first. Tools second.