I’m curious, how specific/general do you keep your projects? Do you archive projects often? How do you name your projects? Do you use any prefixes or postfixes?

Here are some of projects… I’m trying both specific and general projects to see what works better:

Company X - Internet Marketing - Sales - Webinars - Website - Customer Care - Product A development - Strategic Partnerships

Company Y - Email Marketing - PPC Advertising - Search Engine Optimization - Customer Feedback System - Multimedia CD - Partner Jumpstart Meeting - Product A Development - Companyname.com Website - Sales Support - Strategic Partnerships

As you can notice, the projects for Company Y are a lot more specific. How do you organize projects?

Project numbers is the key !

First three letters are the company – next you have the year – next a number (this one you each time change with a new project) – then a description. At the beginning of a new year you start counting again from 001

IMA06-002 Bookkeeping

IMA06-003 Staff Management

LEV06-006 Revolution Stores

PHI06-407 Category Management

Glue this number to any kind of folder, document or invoice, we use the same numbers in our timesheet program Harvest. We even use it to put on drawings or faxes. If you don’t do this you can’t find back anything in your office or folder or office server after three years or months.

Would love to hear how others do this but it works for us !

We follow the same principal as JPB.

Project Title = Client Code + Year + Sequential Number + Description

or ABC 07123_Exterior Signage Concepts

The key to any project management system is to clearly define the completed state of any project. Wether a project lasts 1 week or 1 year, it needs to be “completable”. In other words, no perpetual projects.

Great insights oscar & jpb. Thank you.

How does everyone else organize their projects?

I have several “perpetual projects” similar to what I think you are doing Melvin.

We started using Basecamp to provide a system to better track responsibilities, not so much for traditional project use. I have several committees and departments that have “projects” setup. They are listed by the committee’s name or by “Department – General Tasks” or “Department – function” in some cases where the same department has several projects. We use these to track the many things that we are constantly doing to try and make it clear who is working on what.

It is real easy to have a meeting, figure out what direction you want to go and not have it clear who is actually going to do what. In these cases there are many “sub-projects” that are defined generally by a milestone tied to a To-Do list and a message thread for that particular action.

We also have started to use BC for mare traditional projects, but have not settled into a strict naming system. Right now the project names are 2-4 word titles that give the gist of the project.

Thanks TMG for your comments.

I went in and updated all my projects to use “client initals” + “project #” + “project name” method for naming projects. I’m also prefixing milestones with the “client initials”.

• VOL 001 – Internet Marketing
• VOL 002 – Sales
• VOL 003 – Webinars
• VOL 004 – Website
• VOL 005 – Ponder Pearls

• WAG – All content given to Volcanic
• PON – Send 1st Customer Feedback Email
• VOL – 5 Ponder Pearls customers

This seems like it works well because at a glance, I can tell which company it is and what needs to be done by when. If I want details, I click in and see the associated list.

Thanks JPB & Oscar!

I forgot to add the other benefit of using job numbers in the title is when naming milestones.

Easy to scan the milestone calendar and reference each milestone with the relevant client and project.

I’m on the basic plan on Basecamp, so we’re limited to 15 projects. We have several projects that are under the same organisation. So we name each project the organisation name, we then just use project names to prefix each message / milestone etc.

My project organization is very similar, as well: xxx000 – xxxxxx (STA002 – St Anne Church Website Redesign). As for how the number gets assigned, it’s just an incremented number for each individual client. I do, however, like the idea of adding the year to the prefix. Anyway, as for general/specific organization, I try to keep development/design projects separate from hosting projects, and again keep maintenance projects separate from others. So for my STA client, I currently have STA001, which is for hosting activities (domain renewals, configuring server settings, etc, billing for hosting,), the STA002 which is the project tracking all active development work and invoicing, and then I will eventually have a STA003 for maintenance activities once launched.

The only thing I am running into that is confusing for me sometimes is the three number designation isn’t always the same for each client, especially if they’ve been a client for a while. (e.g. STA001 is hosting, but another client’s project for hosting activities is ASH002). That said, it hasn’t been that big of a deal for me to completely rethink it all.

[edit] Forgot to add, I archive projects as soon as the final invoice has been paid. For hosting-related projects I will either keep active or put on hold until the next renewal.