As a creative agency, your team never has a shortage of requests flooding in. Whether it’s new work you’re dealing with or updates to existing work, you need to wrangle those requests, manage the client’s expectations, and understand your team’s priorities. It’s a lot to juggle without a central repository for all your current projects. Not to mention, if you’re spending all your time tracking down data and sorting through your inbox, there’s no time left to be creative.
But you can regain control. Prioritizing file structure organization within a design agency does the following:
- Provides shared clarity on initiatives
- Funnels all work into a single, accessible location
- Establishes a concrete workflow to maintain quality and consistency
- Makes work visible, so you can calibrate productivity and capacity
That’s where Wrike comes in. Instead of burying you in email threads and instant messages, collaborating across a design project management tool brings order to chaos by organizing requests as soon as they trickle in, and making sure you get all the information you need to get started. Set up requests to instantly pop up in the folder they belong in, so you can distribute work across your team knowing exactly what’s required up front. We sat down with one of our very own CSMs to share some file structure best practices.
Here are 3 different folder structure templates for creative agencies that’ll leave your creative team feeling like:
1. By Status
If you’re projects are highly status-based, and you find yourself needing to schedule a lot of status meetings to keep up with projects, this file structure is for you. Break down tasks by status so you can stay up to date on active projects with a glance and address anything that’s falling behind.
This format also allows you to manage and measure your team’s bandwidth week over week. Track how many active projects your team can tackle, so you can take on more or push back with confidence when your team is maxed out.
2. By Request Type
If you have a significant amount of requests from clients coming your way, break down tasks by requests so you can prioritize them and divvy them out accordingly. Within the request form, you can ask about deadline, importance, documents, etc., so you can decide who on your team has the capacity to take it on. Funneling all requests into one place make it easy to distribute across your team or dodge what you can’t handle currently.
Use a “Backlogged Jobs” folder for requests that aren’t urgent and can be addressed during slow weeks.
3. By Timeframe
Used by our very own creative team, this file structure is best for teams managing a good amount of web work. This format breaks creative project tasks down by time frame, so you can see which tasks need to be completed immediately, and which ones can be pushed to next week.
This file structure organization works really well for teams who follow the Scrum methodology and work in short sprints, because it helps you visualize all your tasks for the next iteration. At the end of the sprint, you can retrospectively review what’s been completed and what’s been pushed out.
Additional Resources on Creative Agency File Structure Organization Best Practices
Taking the time to organize your files and tasks upfront will save you (and, most importantly, your clients) a lot of headaches down the road. Here are some additional resources on folder setup design:
- For more creative agency file structure best practices, check out How To Organize Files In A Design Agency
- Looking for some free templates to get started? Check out these 7 Free Templates for Your Next Big Project
- Learn How to Find the Best Project Management Tool for Your Agency
- An agency speaks up on how they structure their design workflow in How to Keep Your Design Files Neat and Tidy.
- Read HBR’s piece on setting your creative team up for success by committing to organization, collaboration, and individual expression.
- Check out how our design team uses Wrike in our post, How to Create a Winning Design Team Workflow
