I’ve been pretty busy lately. Or always - depending on what’s making me busy. From school, to travel, to work, to family, there is always something to do. I used to try to do it all. It was not only impossible, but it made me feel terrible and didn’t get me the results I wanted, needed, or deserved. Enter prioritization. Now, I take 15 minutes at the beginning of the day to list out everything I want to accomplish, then prioritize, delegate, reschedule, and cross things off to end up with the top 3 that I’ll get done first.
For DAM strategy, you see pretty early in a project what is important. What are the assets people keep searching for, sharing, updating, or losing? What are the brand terms and projects that need to be part of the taxonomy so assets associated with them are easily grouped together? Who are the key stakeholders to include when not everyone can make a call? What important dates are coming up that need to be met and which are flexible? If only 3 of the 5 areas of content will be ready to go live, which 3? Are there projects that can only happen after this step is completed?
You have probably had some of these questions come up in your DAM work, and dozens more, that are part of prioritization. In a lean team, you might not have a project manager or content lead to help decide the key metrics, assets, and team members to prioritize - it might be your call. The success of the project can depend on your choices.
No pressure.
What has been freeing to me is knowing that most of the time, the DAM is a living project that will need to be tended to long past Day 1 launch. Collecting the wish list of everything everyone wants all at once (great movie!), and then reviewing it to find the most important and impactful steps will help you plan for Day 2. For everything you say yes to, there might be another you’ll have to deprioritize. How do you feel better about saying no?
Decide - own the choice; Commit - share the why; Repeat - publicize the progress
Own the choice once you decide what to prioritize. No one likes admitting they can’t do it all, but when the choices are a half-assed job or a successful one that stayed within scope, you better believe most prefer the latter. Some people might have made different choices; as long as you are comfortable with your decision, that’s none of your business. This applies to home life too - why do you live in your neighborhood? Married that guy? Had 0/1/2/3/4+ kids? Once you stop trying to please everyone and own your choices as the best ones for you, your team, and the project with the information and resources you had at the time of the decision, you’ve done your job. No apologies.
Share the why and commit to prioritizing what you have. Owning your choice doesn’t mean colleagues and team leads won’t have questions. Since you have gone through the process of reviewing the options, interviewing stakeholders, and reading scope documents and timelines, hopefully, the choice will be backed up with sharable data. You can also bring in previous experience that the team might not have. You are a valuable SME and that E - experience - is its own data point.
Publicize the progress on repeat to avoid surprises. You might think keeping prioritization decisions to yourself or a small team will make things easier. And it might, for a little while. But the goal of your DAM project is collaboration, so consider how the rest of the team - including stakeholders tasked with budget and timelines - will feel if they learn about the changes late in the process. Share early and often. If you’ve done your homework and can tell them why the project will be more successful with these choices, you are giving them the talking points and story to share upstream and prepare for future project rounds.
There are only so many hours in the (work)day. Dividing your skilled team’s attention and efforts to get everything done, no matter the quality of the work or the impact of the outcome will end up with a burnt-out team with little to show for it. Focussing on the high-value tasks you have prioritized and doing those well will result in a better project with quick wins that reflect the goals you can achieve with the resources you have - not those you wish you had. Prioritizing is an important step in your DAM project and as good use of your experience as any other step you’ll take.