Project Plans for electronic music

Workflow and time management in terms of the process of creating a track has been one of my recent hurdles, as explained in my reflection blog for my track 'Attitude'. I embarked on another project soon after but this time as I was organising recording sessions and already had demos in place, I wrote up a thorough project plan and a scheduling spreadsheet. Despite not being the grandest scope, It's good practice and I knew I definitely could utilise both documents as very good templates much more in future work.

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Because of putting things like this in place, I found I was much more focused and gained a lot of clarity about what I'm doing and when I'm doing it. My previous project diverged a lot from what I really had intended because I never had in place some type of written guidance to consult. Whereas the output of this single (which will be released very soon) was much more straightforward, and I think because of that - I was able to spend more time on the creative side and produce something I enjoy a lot more, and that's the most important thing.

So what did I include in my project plan? Basically I gave myself a brief as if I was approached by a client. I wrote down what I wanted to get out of doing the project, its objectives and major milestones. I find it's another way of putting what's in your mind in writing, and understanding the potential result of the work before you get started.

I then did a lot of administration, like keeping a list of all the private streams to my demos for easy access and that will be used at the recording sessions. Also keeping a hub google drive for all the files involved in the project, I believe if you get that sorted straight-up every time you start a project of any kind - you will never lose track of any important files.

The image above is my gantt spreadsheet I made as a schedule. I found what I got out of it most was being able to track key dates with a lot of attention to detail. There's comments sections and status for whether a particular task was completed or not too. Unfortunately for this project I didn't really return to the spreadsheet regularly to update it and check what needs to be done that's coming up. However, it's absolutely going to be perfect for future projects and can be applied to a lot of different applications.

The last section of my plan was a risk mitigation table. Super helpful more-so if you're working in a team. It helps to sort out a contingency strategy for when shit hits the fan like when team members aren't doing the work they're expected of or just completely leave the project. I included a lot of other things like alternate routes if one of my milestones doesn't work out (as some of them relied on external communication etc.).

I think the main thing I took away from this is that I had a full and complete understanding of what I wanted to do, rather than just wanting to do something and charging in. It definitely helps relieve stress putting up constructs like this and helps you push towards your goals!

Cheers,

Jbox :)