My Promotion: Director of Design Services

At work of late, there have been a lot of changes. The past six months plus have been an incredibly busy and tumultuous time for my company: good things, but a great deal of change to go along with those good things. We’ve moved in to a new office (and a new building entirely), and hired on a staggering number of people in a very compact amount of time.

In short, we’ve been growing. A lot.

Ben has been playing numerous roles for a good long while now. In addition to being Art Director, he’s also been instrumental in working a great deal with the Dev Team in getting our CMS solution built, and ready to be rolled out to our clients. To be quite honest, it’s baffling how he’s been able to do all he’s been doing these many months. I’m amazed his head hasn’t exploded yet.

This last week, there was an even greater amount of change on the office front. Ben was officially given a new position as Director of Product Development. It’s sad for me (and for many others) to see him move away from the Design Team… but the shift makes sense, as he’s been instrumental in getting our CMS ready for the marketplace. Not only will he be able to guide the nuts and bolts of things, he’ll also do so with a designer’s eye – an invaluable combination.

With Ben’s shift away from design, I’m happy to say that both Jane and I are filling some of the many roles that Ben had, prior to his promotion.

Jane is now Art Director for the design team, and oversees anything design-related on our side of the room. In the same way that Ben signed off on projects prior to them leaving our hands, Jane will do the same in her new Art Director role.

As for me, I’ve now taken on the position of Director of Design Services, and effectively oversee the entire design team. My new responsibilities include tracking/delegating all Design projects, ensuring we hit our deadlines, and running things day-to-day on the design side.

Additionally, I’m also in charge of the site standup process, when new clients sign on to our CMS. Start to finish, it’s a complex process that I’m still wrapping my head around. Suffice it to say there’s a healthy number of sites queued up, with an incredibly aggressive delivery date on the horizon. Lots and lots to do.

This past week has been a bit of a blur. Things are coming at me with greater speed, and from more directions than I’m used to. In the past, I would get busy periodically… but you could see the busy-ness coming. Now, it happens suddenly. I’ll be working on something that’s due and two urgent emails will arrive, at the same time that someone stops by my desk to talk about a project.

It’s weird to think of myself in a management position, but in many ways I’ve been doing a fair number of these tasks now… just unofficially. This past week, I’ve spent a good deal of time in meetings. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be spending even more time in meetings soon.

While continuing to be a Flash Developer was part of the promotion, I’m now wondering whether or not this will actually be the case. Most of my time these days is taken up with planning or meetings or some variation therein; I’m hard pressed to imagine discrete chunks of time where I could actually build/code, without interruption. I have a sneaking suspicion that any Flash development I do may end up being on my own time, on my own projects.

So far, I’ve been relying a great deal on iGTD, to keep track of all my tasks. In trying to organize all the projects and to-do’s I have on my plate, this has been the app I’ve turned to. However – I have little experience with management software, so I’m all ears if someone out there has any recommendations.

It’s been a really exciting week so far. Tumultuous, stressful, crazy, overwhelming… AND exciting, all rolled into one. It’s neat to feel part of all the changes that are happening to the company in the present moment, and to be taking part in shaping all the changes to come.