Discover main tasks, what you need to be able to do and everything you need to understand to achieve them effectively.
Plan your own day-to-day work effectively
- Manage your own time and work so it has a positive effect on others involved, such as using regular to-do lists
- Ensure your work is delivered on time and meets what’s required
- Remain flexible, adaptable, and positive to all the requirements of your role
- Seek help or advice when limitations in your knowledge or expertise might impact on schedule, budget, or quality
- The production/project workflow and how yours and others’ roles fit into it
- How your role and responsibilities may need to change to handle the different requirements of different pieces of work
- The priorities between different tasks, to allow you to plan your work
- How to respond positively to change
- How to make decisions even when very little information is available
Plan work effectively when working with colleagues, partners, and suppliers
- Manage other people’s expectations about what you can/can’t do
- Meet deadlines and fulfil agreements keeping to schedule and required quality
- Inform others promptly of any difficulties with carrying out your agreed actions or meeting commitments
- Identify when changes will have an adverse effect on budget, timescales or other parts of the work and communicate this appropriately
- Work with others to identify alternative solutions to deal with changes in requirements or available resources
- Make informed decisions, considering how these will impact on others inside and outside your team
- The different departments in the production or project you are working for and their roles and responsibilities in achieving the overall aims
- The hierarchies and dynamics of any teams that you are part of
- Relevant people in your own department, other departments, suppliers or partners and their work roles, responsibilities and the breadth of their skills
- How planning, decision making processes and relationships work between the different teams on the production or project, and with other organisations
- The importance of considering the needs of other teams and organisations in your own thinking and planning
Advanced: plan and manage specific projects
- Identify what kind of approach and quality is expected for the production or project and what requirements are to achieve this
- Identify what available budgets, timescales, and resources are for the project
- Find out all key information needed for the project and clarify any ambiguities
- Make realistic estimates of equipment, materials and people required to meet the creative and technical demands of the production or project
- Identify key milestones and plan how they will be achieved
- Make sure people are hired with the appropriate skills to carry out the work
- Give accurate and concise information about plans to the people involved in time for them to influence plans, where appropriate, and take action
- Establish arrangements for effective communication between everyone involved on the production or project
- Use accurate, current, and reliable information to compare progress against plans and schedules
- Monitor activities and progress sufficiently to enable you to identify unexpected changes in plans and communicate these to all relevant people
- Suggest and agree practical solutions when there are significant deviations from schedule and plans
- General understanding of the size of the production or project
- How to find out and record key information and requirements of the project
- The best ways to check the quality of the work done on the production or project
- Roles and responsibilities of the people involved and who the decision makers are
- How a workflow can help people understand interdependencies between different activities and improve communication and teamwork
- The information required by different colleagues and teams at each stage
- The equipment required and any specific requirements relating to it
- How and when to identify specialist skills, equipment, or materials needed on the production or project, and where to find or hire them
- How to monitor and check activities and progress, and what information is needed for this
- How to identify actual and potential deviations from schedules and plans
- Likely contingencies which may arise on productions and how to deal with them
- Common causes of delays and how these may be avoided or accommodated
Advanced: plan work effectively when working with clients or customers
- Manage your clients’ or customers’ expectations of how relationships will operate and the work involved
- Make realistic promises, deliver promised actions in the timescale and manner agreed and communicate this to clients or customers
- Anticipate and proactively communicate unavoidable changes in agreements to clients or customers
- What can affect client or customer decision-making and lead times including, if relevant, their team or organisational structure and internal processes
- The risks when planning of over-promising or acting solely for the short term in relationships with others
- The role of other departments or teams in your production or organisation in managing client or customer relationships
- How to positively communicate necessary changes to what’s agreed and changes to the work or service
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