Project Management:
One of the challenges was to identify ways to streamline the creative and production process in order to meeet timelines, scope and budget. icu2 managed the project applying a hybrid agile-waterfall approach out of software development (not normally used in creative projects). This approach breaks the project into short sprints, within the context of a clearly defined scope and budget.
Creative:
Initially the client envisaged a powerpoint style presentation with simple animation to maintain control over costs. Having assessed the budget in relation to the requirement for high quality communication, icu2 suggested a more engaging result could be achieved by reallocating project funds from character illustration and scene design to animation. This was achieved by customising stock vectors as the basis of characters and scenes and focusing more on custom animations using modified illustrations.
Communication:
With multiple departments involved in oversite over the project, it was imperative to maintain communication through a single point of contact within the organisation. This prevented miscommunication between internal and external stakeholders. As these types of projects are very labour and time-intensive, we encouraged more regular comms between production staff and client (15 minutes at the start of the day), short management meetings (half an hour at the end of the week) and client sign-offs upon completion of sprints/milestones.
Reviews and Amendments:
Due to the linear dependencies of tasks, an unforeseen change in the latter stages would affect earlier production stages, requiring significant rework, re-processing and re-editing.
To maintain control over scope and budget, each video was broken down into scenes, milestones and stages with client reviews and signoffs allocated to each stage. Client amendments were budgeted into the cost of the project, with stages closed upon finalisation and approval. Reopening a stage after it had been closed would require an amendment to the scope. This incentivised both the client and agency to be thorough and methodical in the management of changes. As a result, there was only one out-of-scope author's amendment. A change registry was maintained throughout the project with signoffs from clients, internal stakeholders and the agency.
Timelines:
As the project was being publicly presented to the Department of Health and Human Services, a hard deadline had to be defined for the project. Upon assessment of the project plan, timelines and resources, it was agreed that one video could be produced within the proposed timeframe. This deadline was met.
We were able to expedite the process by allocating scenes to multiple team members. Consistent look and feel were achieved by referencing the brand specification, a visual brief for both static and moving images and a single point of creative direction internally.
