Creative operations: a guide to the silent work that keeps projects running smoothly

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Key takeaways

• Creative operations management sits at the intersection of operations, project management, resource management, and client services
• By creating processes and optimizing resources, the Creative Operations function supports teams in producing high-quality work consistently and on time
• Using resource management tools for capacity planning and tentative planning helps creative ops managers keep projects on track

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As part of your role in Creative Operations, you’re responsible for leading a team of uniquely talented individuals, while simultaneously building systems to produce impactful and inspiring work consistently.  

Too many restraints, and they lose their spark ✨ Too few, and projects might drag on forever ⌛

This guide explains the fundamentals of creative operations and shows you how to establish a creative workflow that takes bright ideas from brief to delivery.

What is Creative Operations?

Creative Operations is the function responsible for <highlight>setting up and overseeing processes and structures to take creative projects from brief to delivery. </highlight>

It involves but is (definitely) not limited to:

✅ Understanding your creatives and what helps them do their best work 

✅ Enabling teams to communicate and collaborate with one another

✅ Building processes to help your team work on initiatives efficiently 

✅ Speaking to stakeholders to understand their needs for projects

✅ Identifying and allocating resources to the right projects 

✅ Making sure the budget doesn’t run out before the project ends

✅ Looking at the big picture and creating strategies and plans to meet organizational goals

Creative Operations can be found in both companies and agencies. The difference is that in-house, your ‘clients’ are also your team members 😉

How is creative operations management different from project management?

The short answer to the creative operations versus project management debate is that the former has a wider scope than the latter. Creative operations involves improving efficiency and processes to help the creative team do their work better and faster, while creative project management is chiefly concerned with delivering successful projects. 

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Aspect| Creative operations management| Project management ~

Scope | Broader scope that’s focused on improving efficiency, processes, and overall team performance. | Narrower scope that’s focused on planning and executing projects. ~

Key responsibilities| Evaluates and prioritizes incoming projects and handles resource allocation while ensuring the creative team focuses on impactful work. | Oversees project planning, tracks progress, manages timelines, and maximizes budgets.

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Who is involved in creative operations management?

Creative operations management involves a range of roles, from C-level executives to entry-level positions, all working toward the same goal: streamlining the creative process and ensuring efficient project delivery.

• Director of Creative Operations: this senior role is focused on establishing processes and strategic planning for the creative department. Creative ops directors focus on efficiency optimization and creating an environment conducive to creativity 🧑‍🎨
• Head of Creative Operations: similar to the director position, this role is responsible for strategic planning, fixing process inefficiencies, and managing the creative operations team. They often report directly to C-level executives. 
• Creative Operations Manager: this role supports the director by managing day-to-day operations and ensuring projects run smoothly. They meet with stakeholders to discuss their needs, manage resource constraints, ensure departments communicate effectively, build processes that help the team work faster and better, and swoop in to address roadblocks 🦅
• Creative Operations Specialist: this role offers specialized skills or knowledge that improves workflows and support the Creative Operations team 
• Creative Operations Coordinator: this is usually an entry-level role. Coordinators assist in the daily operations, manage project timelines, and ensure different teams communicate. They also maintain documentation and report on project progress 📈

📝Note: even if their job titles don’t explicitly include ‘creative operations’, many people planners manage creative resources. Here are some variations of creative ops titles we’ve seen:

• Creative Services Manager
• Resource Manager
• Director of Production
• Director of Brand Operations 
• Senior Capacity and Freelance Manager

For example, the quote below is from one of our customers, Atlassian’s Emily Feliciano, who holds a different title but performs the tasks associated with a creative ops role.

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Emily Feliciano

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Creative Resource Manager at Atlassian

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At Atlassian, everything flows through me—from requests for a logo for our Amsterdam soccer team to high-level executive campaigns. I’m responsible for prioritizing projects and understanding their impact on our ongoing work. As the central point of contact, I manage the flow of information in and out, owning the resource request space. From there, I delegate tasks to producers or project managers, making me the first point of contact in the process.

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How to build a creative operations workflow in 3 steps

Creative operations management sits at <highlight>the intersection of operations, project management, resource management, and client services.</highlight> Your role may involve tasks across these areas.  

Instead of covering the many tasks you need to do, the workflow below focuses primarily on setting up the structure and conditions that enable your creative team to deliver projects on time and within budget.

1. Identify existing processes and tools and determine shortcomings 

Every creative team has its own workflow (some more chaotic than others 😅). 

Understand how your team currently manage projects before making any changes. You can do this by observing their processes, identifying team structures, and asking questions to identify any slow, lengthy, or duplicated steps. Communicating with your team and involving them in this process helps you build trust and encourage buy-in for new processes. 

Questions you can ask include:

• Are there frequent missed deadlines or confusion about task ownership?
• Could any tasks be automated or streamlined?
• What project management or resource management system are you using, and how well do they integrate?
• Do you often feel overworked or underutilized? Are there any bottlenecks in resource allocation?
• Are there communication breakdowns or too many meetings? Do people feel out of the loop?
• Do you have clear metrics, or do you find it hard to assess performance and efficiency?

You can also use data to help you understand the state of things. For example, if you have a system in place for tracking resource capacity, you can check whether your team is frequently overutilized or underutilized. 

2. Create better processes for all stages of the project lifecycle

Based on what you’ve learned, it’s time to improve how things are done. Let’s walk through some structures or guidelines you can set up. 

🧑‍💻 Intake 

Set up an intake process that lets you capture all requests in a central form.

For example, Feliciano uses a creative portal in Jira where stakeholders like creative directors or senior managers make requests sorted by tiers. Once a project or request is allocated to a team member, she tracks it in her resource management tool, Float (that’s us! 👋), for a holistic view of capacity. 

As projects come in, you can start evaluating the scope, requirements, and timelines to see if your team is able to take it on. If someone is asking for a social media strategy from your marketing team in one hour, it’s probably not going to happen. 

❓Discovery 

Meet with stakeholders, such as project requestors, department heads, and even team members, to gather insights on project requirements. This is especially crucial when there are no previous projects to reference for details like expected timelines, steps, people involved, or project scope.

Ask the following questions to understand their expectations:

• What are the goals of the project?
• How will we measure those goals?
• Are our goals achievable within our resources, budget, and timeline?

💡Concept 

Once you have a clear understanding of what your team needs to deliver, you can bring them together to brainstorm ideas. 

While you want your people to be creative, you need to set a project evaluation and selection process that considers constraints like resources, time, and budget. Here are some questions to consider: 

• How does this idea align with our project objectives and overall business strategy?
• What specific resources (e.g. copywriters or product designers) will be required to develop this idea, and do we currently have access to them?
• What are the estimated timelines and budgets for executing this idea, and is it realistic given our current project commitments?
• What are the potential risks or challenges associated with this idea at this stage? 

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Pro tip: plan for future scenarios with the tentative project plan feature in Float

You can map out projects with placeholders for future hires or contractors needed for unconfirmed projects using Float. Seeing tentative allocations, and their possible effect on existing ones, can help you make informed decisions and spot resource constraints on time. Don’t worry about your schedule being disrupted—the color outlines differentiate unconfirmed allocations from confirmed work. 

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⚒️ Implementation 

It’s time to get scheduling ⏳

But before you start, you need a dedicated resource management system to give you full visibility into your people’s capacity and skills. This involves setting up:

• Work days and hours 
• Locations 
• Time off 
• Roles 
• Skills 
• Employment type 

You might already be using an Excel sheet or project management tool to monitor and track capacity. While that might work at the start, spreadsheets lack real-time updates and are hard to manage, while project management tools usually don’t give you accurate insights into your team’s capacity.

What you need is resource management software like Float for a centralized view of your team’s capacity, skills, and allocations.

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Justin Watt

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Co-Founder of Switchboard

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Spreadsheets are the junk food of resource management—they’re easier and more satisfying in the short term, but they’ll make you sick if you rely on them too long.

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When scheduling your team, to the best of your ability, ensure that there is enough time planned for the work to be completed effectively and that the right number of resources are allocated. This might involve reprioritizing tasks, adjusting due dates, or negotiating for additional resources.

While work is ongoing, monitor metrics like team capacity, billable time, scheduled time, and logged hours to understand how your team spends their time. 

Additionally, workloads should be distributed fairly to prevent team members from being overburdened or underutilized. One easy way to stay on top of workloads is to run weekly capacity planning meetings with other stakeholders to review allocations. If there are imbalances, you can use resource management techniques to even it out. 

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Jade Garvie

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Senior Resource and Operations Manager at Given

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Every Thursday, we have a meeting to check for any issues, like overbooked people, project conflicts, or available capacity.

The meeting is virtual, but it can vary—some people are in the office, and others join via Google Meet. During the meeting, I lead the discussion, and we bring up Float to find what needs changing, if there are any additional projects that we need to add in, and if there are any clashes. Float is our go-to that everyone looks at for if they need to find out who’s got capacity and when.

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Finally, run regular check-ins with team members through daily or weekly standups or asynchronous updates to ensure everyone is aligned— and to put out fires early 🔥 

🗣️ Feedback

Ideally, feedback on deliverables from stakeholders like project requesters or sponsors should be centralized in one place, or at least managed within a system that consolidates all feedback.

You should also keep the number of reviewers to a minimum to avoid conflicting feedback, which can create confusion and slow down the team. 

Consider setting timelines for the approval process and establish the number of feedback rounds permitted. Check to ensure that feedback is clear and actionable so your team understands exactly what changes need to be made.

👀 Review

Aside from stakeholder feedback, it doesn’t hurt for your team to have standards in place that ensure they produce high-quality deliverables. Here are some questions specific to creative projects and initiatives:

• Does the creative asset communicate the intend_ed message and align with the creative brief and objectives?
• Is the visual design consistent with brand guidelines and appealing to the target audience?
• Have all elements been thoroughly reviewed for accuracy, clarity, and coherence?
• What feedback have key stakeholders provided during the review process, and have all necessary revisions been addressed before final approval?

👍 Closeout 

After the project, set up a post-evaluation process that lets you collect feedback on what worked and what could be improved. 

For example, you might compare the projected budget and timelines with what was actually spent. You can also check other metrics, like on-time delivery, to see if your processes helped your team work efficiently. 

Be sure to document insights from your analysis so it is easier to make data driven decisions in the future.

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Float streamlines resource analysis

The easiest way to analyze resource data? Using a dedicated capacity planning software for process automation. Float gathers information on the metrics that matter, so you can understand project progress and team performance.

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3. Get your team on board 

Involve your team in creating and refining processes to ensure they understand the reasons behind any changes. Without their buy-in, they are likely to revert to old habits and tools. 

Organize training sessions, gather input by allowing them to test new tools, and provide opportunities for them to ask questions or voice concerns about new processes.

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‍👀 See it in action

Justin West, the former Program Manager at design agency A–B, successfully encouraged his team to switch to a new time tracking process and tool by getting everyone involved and engaged.

He created a presentation that explained what this change meant for the company, how it would replace their then-current tool, and what was needed from the team to make the new system work. He also emphasized two major benefits: improved well-being and project profitability. 

When the new process rolled out, the team was already bought in, and A—B increased time tracking adoption from 20% to almost 100%.

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6 benefits of successful creative operations management

1. Decreased costs

Creative operations processes help your organization save money. It minimizes time on non-billable tasks, limits overtime, and keeps more projects in-house rather than outsourcing. When extra help is needed, the Creative Ops team ensures it’s given to reliable contractors, minimizing additional expenses. 

2. Increased efficiency and productivity

Creative operations management removes inefficiencies and roadblocks that slow down the creative process, such as excessive administrative work, duplicated tasks, and lengthy processes, letting teams focus on their core tasks. 

3. Enhanced collaboration and communication

With the right creative ops framework, projects are viewed as team efforts rather than individual tasks, reducing misalignment among stakeholders and ensuring the smooth flow of information.

4. Improved team well-being

Creative Operations contributes to a healthier work environment by reducing stress and preventing burnout. It also ensures that team members are assigned tasks suited to their skills and provides opportunities for professional growth, keeping them engaged and motivated.

5. Better resource allocation

The right people with the right skills are assigned to projects based on priorities rather than simply assigning tasks to whoever is available, ensuring that the best-suited individuals handle creative work.

6. Higher quality output

Structured processes act as guardrails that help maintain quality standards and align project outcomes with client expectations. 

Support your people

 The Creative Operations function involves many activities, but at its core, it is all about helping your team do their best work. 

Take time to get to know their interests and strengths. Offer support when needed—like buying them a coffee or protecting their time. And when your team delivers those projects, don’t forget to recognize and celebrate their accomplishments. 

As Comfort Agemo, Senior Capacity and Freelance Manager at the agency Scholz & Friends, says, “Our role is all about supporting the people doing the work. We want them to have fun whilst they’re doing it—because our work is creative!”

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Thousands of creative teams love Float—and yours will too

‍With a colorful visual schedule that creatives love, both you and your team can see real-time allocation and capacity. Once changes happen (and they always will), the drag-and-drop function lets you move allocations in seconds.

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