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Forum Name Marketing CF
Topic subjectEskelian's strategic plan.
Topic URLhttps://forums.carrionfields.com/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=56&topic_id=281&mesg_id=608
608, Eskelian's strategic plan.
Posted by Eskelian on Wed 31-Dec-69 07:00 PM
The way I'd typically handle something like this in a project setting where I'm too stupidly overwhelmed to be a major stakeholder is as follows:

1) Engage contractor (Stunna).
2) Sign NDA/etc.
3) Request statement of work to be developed by contractor at a T&M price, with an upper hour limit (max X hours), detailing typically the following information:
- What are the payment terms?
- What is the work to be done?
- What are the dependencies of me?
- What are the dependencies of the project?
- What are the terms of authorizing funds and additional work?
- What is the approval process for decision making?
- Establish a standing status update meeting as necessary.
- What are the success criteria?
4) Revise as necessary.
5) Go/No Go decision.
6) Execution with standing meetings to track.
7) Project completion.

These tend to be boiler plate like documents and cover all the essential #### I need to understand before authorizing work to be done. I'll drill into each item on a one by one basis, just to show that these don't have to be 500 page long documents and in fact, they are typically 1-2 pages long.

1) Payment terms
Contractors generally want to get paid. I think Stunna was volunteering to do this for free but I'm not sure what the commitment level is here. IE, would he commit to doing an SOW, approval process, taking the ball and basically running with it. Assuming there are no payment terms here as I don't think CF has the budget for a real time and materials contractor at $100+/hour or whatever.

2) Work to be done
High level business statement of what sort of activities are going to occur. Really this is the heart of what people are proposing in this thread but I don't think anyone's actually accepted *doing it*, which is the key problem. This identifies what is being done and by whom, really its like all of these posts except a "by me" statement at the end of each bullet point.

3) Dependencies of Me
What do I need to do? Maybe this is a kick off two hour skype convo. Maybe this is establishing an account with Google. What are things that I explicitly need to do and what is the impact if I do not do them?

4) Dependencies of the Project
What things need to happen that are outside both my control and the contractor's control? On big projects this is a risk assessment, on small projects this might be empty entirely. This is probably empty for a marketing effort but in other contexts this might be things like acquisition of branding materials by a third party or legal document dependencies like privacy policies and ToS.

5) Fund Authorization
This usually communicates how funds will be handled. On big projects, this boils down to invoicing and reimbursement. On very small projects, this might simply be a request to purchase via email followed by a completion of purchase by the stakeholder. IE, "Can you please buy 50 Google click credits and email me when its done? Sure no problem."

6) Approval Process
On small projects this is typically just written email acknowledgement of a decision. IE, Yes you may launch that advertisement.

7) Standing Meetings
These are generally important and as frequent/infrequent as necessary but its good to have at least 15 minutes set aside monthly or bi-weekly to get on the phone/skype/whatever and make sure everyone's still alive.

8) Success Criteria
How do we know we're done? Is this an email acknowledgement? Who needs to be present to review the final work product? Etc.

Anyway, I feel like we're hung up on step one. None of the imms are interested in "being contractors" for this work, there's no budget for a third party to do this work for money and of the players qualified to do this work pro bono, they're too busy.