so, again, thank youfor taking the time to join our webinar today. this is going to be kind of aspecial presentation from kyle gilbert. he's the production managerat kitchen sink studios. they're one of teamgantt'slong time customers. this is the first time we'vedone a webinar like this. you've probably been on otherwebinars that we've done-- or that i've done.
we do a lot of features,like teamgantt 101, teamgantt 201, or kind ofteamgantt centric webinars. and we thought we'd trysomething different this time, and just take the opportunityto have one of our customers actually share with you howthey're using teamgantt, and just allow them tobe candid and to let you know the benefitsthey get from it, why they chose teamgantt. maybe that will help you ifyou're deciding whether or not
you'd like to sign upif you're on a trial or even if you'reusing teamgantt and you're justlooking for extra tips, hopefully it'll help yoube able to determine that or to better use teamgantt in the future. also, it is the first timewe're doing a customer webinar like this. so if you like it and youwant more, be sure to let us know, either in the questionsfeedback at the end,
or you can write in tosupport@teamgantt.com and just say that you thoughtit was good, and helpful, and then we'll try andcontinue to do more of these. ok. so for the agenda today, i'mgoing to spend about five or six minutes just giving youa brief overview of teamgantt as a company andthen also just tell you what's new on oursoftware platform, basically give you theoverview of all the features
that we have. it should not takemore than five minutes. we don't want toinundate you with slides. i know you're here probablyto hear kyle talk more than you are to hear me. so after that, we'll spendmaybe 10 or 15 minutes. i'm going to passit over to kyle. he is going to have apresentation of some slides. and i think he'sactually going to show
you some of his actualprojects and how he set them up in teamgantt. and then finally, we're goingto have questions and answers at the end. so if you havequestions at any time, feel free to writethem into the questions section of thegotowebinar control panel. we're seeing thoseas you write them in. and we're going to spendwhatever the remaining time is
to answer all those questions. i believe we'll be ableto get to all of them. so, feel free to write thosein and don't think that we're forgetting about them. we see them. and we'll get tothem at the end. so for those of you whoaren't familiar with teamgantt as a company, we wereactually founded in 2009 by john and nathan.
they're the co-founders and thecurrent owners of teamgantt. they went live with it in 2010. over the last five orsix years, we've actually added thousands of customers. some of the larger customers arelisted up there on the slide. we go from anywhere fromdivisions of large corporations to mid-sized design agencies,like kitchen sink studios and all the waydown to individuals and small consulting agencies.
so there's not reallyone specific vertical or one specific sizecompany that uses teamgantt exclusively. it's more of a onesize fits all tool when it comes toverticals and size. so our customers,when we talk to them, there's a few reasonswhy they've told us they choose teamgantt most commonly. three that are most common,that i see over and over again
are first of all,the ease of use. they just think it's reallyeasy to use, easy to learn. and that reallyhelps them to get their teammates and theirusers on-board and actually using the tool on a daily basis,which of course is usually the hardest challenge witha project management tool. it's not that it doesn'thave the features you want. it's just that yourteam does not use it. we really tried to overcomethat by just making it
very simple, very easy to use. so, the second thingwould be their features. you know we're not going totalk a ton about the features right now. on the next slide, i kindof go over the features. but we just give youthe ability to go from planning a project,to managing the project, and then reporting andtracking on the projects. so all steps of managingyour project, that's
available in teamgantt. and finally, peoplelike the design. they like how it's clean. it's easy to understand what'sgoing on in your project. and it's just nice when you'representing to your management, or presenting toother customers, to be able to see your projectin the best possible light. so, if we fast forwardto today, we're still privately ownedby john and nathan,
the same co-founders. they deliberately decided notto seek outside investment when they were creating the company. we've been a profitablecompany for five years. so almost from when theystarted the company, it's been profitableand growing. and those twothings really allow us to be productfocused and focused on what our customers want.
we don't have any pressurefrom outside investors to grow rapidly orto increase sales. our main focus is justto grow sustainably and to continue to add featuresthat our customers are actually requesting. so, let's talk about theteamgantt platform real quick. so i split it up into four mainareas of project lifecycle, project managementlifecycle, more or less. so the first one is planning.
that's probably how a lot ofyou found teamgantt initially. you were looking for a wayto plan out your charts in an online gantt chart. so, of course, we offer youthe gantt chart in a list view to be able to see your projects. we allow you to designdependencies between tasks to make sure your projects areoccurring in the correct order and that the criticalpath is being met. we allow you to assignresources and users to tasks,
so you can do resource planning. and we allow you to dohourly estimation as well, where you can assign hoursto users for projects. and you can just make surethat your hours are all lined up how they should be. the second stage wouldbe managing the project. for that we offer amy task dashboard, which is just a dashboardwhere users can come in and see everything assigned tothem and basically work out
of that dashboard. second thing wouldbe the ability to communicate torequest progress updates. that kind of goes to the thirdstage as well, communication and collaboration. so, it's one thing to be ableto plan and manage the project. but it's also extremelyvaluable to be able to pull all of your teammembers and your employees and have them collaborate ontheir parts of the project,
and then be able tocommunicate as that's going on. so, for that we havefull ability to comment, that's integrated with youre-mail, the ability to upload documents and to be able to seeall your conversations in one place. and finally,tracking and sharing, it's great to be able to takebaselines of your project and be able to comparethat back to-- or see how your project ended and comparethat back to the baselines
that you took along the way. we offer time tracking, whichis currently in an open customer beta, which is the ability toactually have users track time that they're working ontasks, and then gives managers the ability to report on thatand export that in a csv file. if you are interested inhaving time tracking turned on for your account, you can writein to support@teamgantt.com and just say you'd liketime tracking turned on. and we'll turn it on for you.
again, it's anopen customer beta. so it's pretty muchthe final product with maybe just a few tweaksbefore we do a general release. and it's free of charge. it's included with theteamgantt platform. so if you're at all interested,just go ahead and write in and we'll turn it on for you. finally, undertracking and sharing, we have the pdf exportand the public link,
which allow youto share teamgantt with people outsideof teamgantt, who aren't necessarily users. and with that,enough of my slides, we're going to get to thepart that i'm sure all of you are here for. kitchen sink studios hasbeen a long time customer. i think over threeyears of teamgantt. kyle gilbert's a productionmanager over there.
they used teamganttpretty extensively. and so i'm going topass it over to him. and he's just goingto give you guys a little presentationon how they're using it, kind of some of thehighlights, and show you some of theprojects in teamgantt that they have set up. all right. how's it going everyone?
thanks for taking the timeto tune into the presentation today. my name is kyle gilbert. i am currently withkitchen sink studios. i serve as the productionmanager over here. so basically i am the projectmanager for the entire agency, as well as serving as aproduction manager for the film team, and making sure all ourfilm projects go smoothly. so, i use teamgantton a daily basis
to set out all ourprojects and keep track of-- keep trackof their work flow. so today, i'm going to giveyou a little bit of insight more on the projectmanager side of things and show you how i useteamgantt and its benefits. so, a little bit about kitchensink studios, kitchen sink studios, we're locatedin phoenix, arizona. we are a creative anddesign consultancy in downtown phoenix.
kitchen sink studios currentlyconsists of about 20 employees. we call ourselveskitchen sink studios because we offer everythingwithin the kitchen sink of creative andadvertising of products. so anything from branding,print design, web design, development, renderings,animation, illustration, copywriting, photography,film, and social media. currently, we all offerall of that in-house. and we have dedicated teamsto all of those sections
of the business. so, you can seeteamgantt actually is a perfect platformfor us, because all of these differentsections of the business work at their own pace. therefore, the timelinefeature of teamgantt is extremely crucial to seehow those projects relate to each other andhow they overlap in the scope for a client.
so, i'm going to getinto why we chose teamgantt in the first place. as aaron said, we'vebeen a customer for about three years now. and we've been extremely happywith the results of teamgantt, both on our end and we'veseen extreme happiness from our clients and theway that we share our gantt charts with them. i'm going to switch back andforth between my presentation
and my gantt charts today,to just kind of give you guys an insight on tothese bullet points. so, the first pointi want to make about why we chose teamgantt isthe visualization of timelines. so, i don't know if any ofyou are familiar with gantt. but this is the basicplatform of gantt. as you can see onthe left side, i've created sections for eachpart of the business. so, we have a web developmentsection, a film section,
photography, branding andidentity, graphic design, and then even a littlebit of account management. so, basically what i willdo is i will set out a gantt chart for the entire scope. and this lets me see how each ofthese sections of the business relate to each other. and it's a perfect visualizationof these timelines, to see how manyweeks they span over and where different parts ofthe scope are overlapping.
it really helps. so if say a graphic designeris delivering a graphic element to the film team, they cango into the gantt chart. and the film team cansee when that graphic is supposed to be comingfrom the graphic design team. so it helps both for me andfor all of our employees to kind of visualize whenthey're getting stuff done, how many days theyhave to work on it, and what other departments andtasks are dependent on them.
and i'll get a littlemore into that later. another thing i reallylike about gantt as a project manageris it gives me a quick judgment of capacity. so a lot a big question ialways get from our business development people is whenthey can bring a project in. and in order to gaugethat, i always use gantt. so i have my ganttchart right here. what i can do when theaccount manager comes to me,
and they ask me-- say theyask me, the month of march, how busy we are on theweb development side? i have my developersdown here, which i can assign them tasks in gantt. and it shows methe number of tasks they have on any given day. this synopsis is great, for thefact that i can click on it. it shows me exactlywhat they're working on. and the more towards the colorred a box gets on any given day
means how packed they are. so, if the account managercame to me today and asked me when we could take onsome development work, i would gauge by clickingon one of these boxes, seeing how long i think thosetasks are going to take them. and depending on howbig of a project is, i may move-- tellthem that we might want to consider bringingon a development project not till mid-april.
so, it's a greatjudgment of capacity and lets them knowa quick answer to tell the client on whenwe can take in their project. also, another great thingis the customer interaction with gantt. so, we always are completelytransparent with our gantt charts with the clients. at kitchen sink, webelieve in transparency. and we believe in the clientbeing part of the project.
what i will typically do isafter i've set out a scope like this in teamgantt,i will typically, as aaron said before,there is a pdf feature. so what i can do is i can goin here to the gantt chart and i can export a pdf. it asks me multiplequestions as, what paper size i want to do,how i want to show the date, what resources iwant to display. and then also there'sadvanced options,
as to if i just want to showa segment of the gantt chart. what i'll typically do at thatpoint is i'll click view pdf. and then it willcreate a pdf for me. it's also very visuallyappealing with our logo and very professional. so what i can do is i cansend this over to the client as their version to kind ofknow what they can expect for the scope of this project,and when they can expect things on their end.
to touch back on thatas well, i will also set out client feedbackdue dates in gantt. so, the way we do thingsover here at kitchen sink is typically we will havedifferent rounds for projects. as you can see right herefor this landing page, we have one round-- we havetwo rounds of wire frames. i'll also build in therea client feedback stage. i find this effectivebecause part of a project is always client feedback.
and i believe that youshould build that in, in order to accountfor those days that your clientsneed to review things. it also helps bring yourclients in on projects. and it gives them due datesso the project is fair. and you're holding themaccountable as well. the great thing about thisis i have this set out for client feedback. and as aaron said,with the dependencies,
each of these littlemarks between the tasks are dependencies. so if a client doesn'tdeliver feedback on sunday, i can push thiswhole timeline over, so they deliver it tuesday. and that way the clientknows that this timeline has been pushed backthat far, and they have to expect that, since theyweren't true to their due date, the project gets pushed back.
and typically this opentransparency helps. and clients reallyappreciate it. and usually they're okwith that push back. the other thing, and abig point aaron made, is teamgantt isextremely user friendly. as i go in here, ihave multiple options. i have my projects. i can assign peopleto those tasks. and then i can create boxes.
a new task is as easyas typing something in, and then gantt gives you-- righthere it creates a timeline. from there, youcan drag and drop and create how long youwant the task to take. and you can see a startdate and the end date. once you assignsomeone to the task, that task is assignedto that person, comes into theirtask bar, as well as shows up as a new projectin their daily amount
of active projects onthe capacity screen. so, i know that was quick. but i also want to move alongand tell you guys kind of where we were before gantt. so before gantt, we had triedother project management softwares, such as [inaudible]. and they were great formanaging tasks and seeing when things were due. but people reallynever knew when
they were supposed to start onstuff, how many days they had for the project, and what otherprojects were being dependent on them finishing their tasks. even before that, we wereusing things like email to send back andforth due dates. we were keepingexcel spreadsheets of projects that were going on. and then we wouldhold a weekly meeting called picket fence,where we would basically
talk about what departmentshad what going on in the week. so you guys can seethat before gantt, where i've summed everythingup into one software, we were using threeseparate forms of keeping track of projects. and it really justwasn't working out. and it becamemessy very quickly. so how gantt has helped us. gantt is greatfor accountability
of timelines and scopeof work, both on our end and on the client's end. one thing i always dowith all my creatives when i set out atimeline is i make sure that they are ok with thatamount of time i have set out. and once i get thatverbal approval, they know and i know thatthey are accountable. and they can get thatwork done in time. it's also great for planning.
as you can see,i'll pull up this. so this is actuallya gantt chart that has multiple projects open. this is actually allof our film projects in the next couple months. the reason this isgreat for planning is i can see where wehave shoot dates, where we are doingpre-production for shoots, and where we arein post-production.
so i can-- if a accountmanager comes up to me and asks me about if i cantake on a film project, i can quickly pulleverything up. and i can tell them where we cantake in projects and where we can't. also, i've noticedthat as we use gantt, and we use it ona regular basis, and we keep up with managingit, it allows for better company morale.
the reason beingis everyone knows what they're accountable for. they can go into theirgantt screen every day, and they see their tasksand their progress on them. and then they haveme hounding them for projects every single day. and they know what they canwork on, and come in and just get to work right away. so, i want to talk about thecreativity on how we use gantt.
one way we use ganttin a creative way is for our accounting. i do not currently havethat accounting chart open. but the way we usethat is we actually have our accountantswork remotely here. and what we will do is becausewe are a creative agency and our scope usually getspaid within a couple segments throughout the project,what one of our partners will do at the agencyis they'll set out
a gantt chart for accountants. so if you can imagine thisis of the scope of a project, he'll do differentrounds of payment periods and assign it to ouraccountants remotely. what that tellsthe accountant is what days they need to send outthe invoice for the client, how many days that client hasto bill-- has to pay that, and when the checkshould be coming in. there's also a great featureover here is a comment section.
so he could haveconversations back and forth with the client--with the accountant. and he can choose whoto send it to if he wants to loop anyone else in. and that way they canhave full conversations and be on the samepage through gantt. also, another quick integrationwe use is with basecamp. so we currently use basecampmore for our discussion side on our clients end.
however, i'm certainto feel that gantt can fulfill all of this. but a great thing thatgantt does with basecamp is i can move any line over, andof that timeline signifies the due date in basecamp. so when i move thatover and i refresh, it syncs with basecamp. and i can go in here andall my tasks and bars, all the end of the barsbecome tasks in basecamp.
it also syncs upwith who is assigned to those tasksand the due dates, as well as any comments thatare assigned to the tasks. so, some advice iwould have with gantt. typically when icreate a gantt chart, the process is theaccount manager gets in the scope of work. so we, for example,we'll be told this client wants a landingpage, a film, photography,
branding and identity,and some graphic design. the account managerand i will sit down. and we'll create a ganttchart based on this capacity and how long we think it willtake the creatives to do it. once we set out thatchart, i will actually pull in all the creativesworking on the projects. and we will sit down andhave a gantt kick-off. that way if there's any issueswith the creative thinking that maybe they can't getthis logo done in a week,
and maybe they thinkthat-- maybe the account manager thinks theclient is going to take longer than twodays to give us feedback. we can adjust those timelines. and then we can all go offand start on our project. and everyone isaccountable from there forth, because they'vegiven us their word. and they have kind of been partof setting out those timelines themselves.
also, i encourageeveryone on gantt to have it open ontheir screen all day. this encourages themto go back and forth and make sure they'renot missing anything, and to see anything new thatmay pop up during the day. also, if you're goingto manage gantt, i would recommend to appointone person to manage it. the beauty of gantt isit's very collaborative. but here at our studio, andwith our business model,
i am the only one thatis in charge of gantt. and therefore, if timelines getmoved, it's only by my hand. and i know. so with that i want togo in, because i know it's pretty quick,and show you kind of some of my gantt charts. the first feature i'd like totalk about a little bit more in depth is the dependencies. so i will, dependingon the project,
create these dependenciesbetween tasks. that way if anythingchanges in the project, i can move this over and itwill move the whole timeline. the other great thingabout these gantt charts is they can get quitelengthy on a project. so if i just want to seethe film component of this, i can go in hereand i can collapse. and it makes it a littlemore easier on the eyes. notice you stillhave these gray bars,
which are great because youget to see the overall length of the scope you've set out. the other thing i wantto talk about with gantt is how you can make yourbars different colors. so i said that a bigportion of our business is film production. and typically what ido with film production is i will do differentstages of the process. so blue is pre-production.
purple is theactual shoot dates. and orange is post-production. you'll notice thislittle diamond. what the diamondsare are milestones. so these are quickvisual representations of when the whole scope is done. another great feature to makeit a little easier on the eyes, and if i just wanted to judgehow much post-production we can handle, i can go up hereand i can search by color.
so this is our wholepost-production schedule. it condenses as it--condenses it a little bit more and makes it a littleeasier on the eyes. you can also filterby team member. so, for example, michael tippettis one of our graphic designers here at kitchen sink studios. and if i just wantto see everything michael's working on, i cango up here and see everything that's been assigned to him.
this pulls up a quicksynopsis for this scope of what michael's working onand where he should be at. another filter option isto see when things are due. so you have a lot of optionshere when things are starting, when things are due,what things are overdue. so you can go to duetoday and it will bring up the tasks that are due today. so, i showed you guysthis film section where i have multiple projects open.
and this is a really,really great feature just for seeing things side by sideand judging certain projects based on what kind ofwork goes into them. so i will do this with graphicdesign, film, web design, anything that similar projectsare using the same team for. that way i can judgehow busy they are. and i don't have topull up all my projects. so what you do is this isyour main dashboard when you go into gantt.
what i'll do is i will selectjust the projects that i know that have film with them. and you can go down hereand open multiple projects. and it brings them all up. and you can condenselike i said. and you're free todo so as you please. and it's very easy onthe eyes, as you can see. yes so gantt is very easy. it's very visually appealing.
the other thing isit's very satisfying seeing your projects laid out. and there's a certaincomfort level with that. everything is really easyto move, very responsive. i love the color features. the other thing that's greatis you have a list view. so if you don'twant to see the bars and you just want to see amore traditional list view, you also have that option.
here it shows the tasks, theoverall group, what percentage is complete, the startdate, the due date, and who is assignedto that task. hey, kyle, this is aaron. that looks really good. sorry to cut you off. but we are kind of into thetime that we had scheduled. so at this time, iwant to open it up for questions forany of the viewers.
if you want towrite any questions in to the section ingotowebinar control panel that says questions. if you write thosein, we'll start answering those in theorder that they're received. i know we're alittle bit past time. but i think kyle hasa little extra time. and i definitelyhave time, so i think we can stay on and answerthose questions for you.
of course. so liz wants toknow, how can you get the task name on the bar? so, uh-- [inaudible] so, i believe that'sin the preferences. actually, you wantto go to view. view? yeah, not menu.
you want to go to view and thenshow task names next to bars. one other thing i wasgoing to say kyle is i saw you collapsing and expandingthose groups one by one. but if you go to view, you canactually expand all of them at once or collapseall the group at once. that's great. just a little short cut for you. ok, so next question,excuse me, have you done any studies onhow much time or money
teamgantt has saved you? are you talking to me or-- yeah. sorry, so nextquestion, have you done any studies onhow much time or money teamgantt saves you? i would assume they're wonderingif internally you guys have done any reviews oranything like that. we have not done anystudies on money.
however, it has saved usan immense amount of time. and i would say thepart that contributes to that most is the clientfeedback due dates we set and incorporating ourclients into our projects. i typically assign thoseclient feedback sections to the account managers,so they are-- know when to expect client feedback. and by doing that, we reallyaccount for the whole scope. and we're notgiving-- we're setting
the client an exactamount of days they have to look at a project,and not just giving it to them and hoping they giveit-- get back to us fast. so, i would say that portion isthe biggest direct correlation of saving time on our part. excellent. do you-- just aquestion from me, when you invite clients toyour projects, their permission level that you usuallygive them is it view only
or update progress? or how do you normallymanage their permission? typically, we don't givethe client permission to move bars on there, and justbecause, for a comfort level of theirs, we'll tellthem that, don't worry, you won't mess upthe timeline at all. and it goes back to sayingone person manages it. but we do give them full access. i would say most clients don'tlog on directly to gantt.
and they more refer tothe pdf that we have. and if i change scope, iwill send them a new pdf. that way it appeals to awide variety of clients. some of our clients area little less tech savvy, so a pdf is moretheir comfort level. got you. so, maxime wantsto know, is there a french option available? and i'll take that one.
so, teamgantt is a website. you can actuallyuse google translate to translate all of the textin the website to whatever you want. so if you can go togoogle translate, you can set up your defaulttranslation language to be french. and then if you use thatand you open teamgantt, it will actually translateall of the text in teamgantt
to french. so i know that is one of theavailable options for you. and if you want to give thata try, and if it doesn't work, if you just want towrite in to support, we'll walk you through howto set that up, maxime. that looks like all thequestions for today. kyle thanks again so much fortaking the time to present, to show your company data tous and how you organize things. i really appreciate it.
i think it was really helpful. if anyone has anyfeedback on the webinar, you can write that intosupport@teamgantt.com. as i mentioned, thisis the first time we've done a webinar like this. and we'd like to continue doingthem if you found it helpful. if you did, just writein and let us know. the recording will be sentit out in the next few hours if you miss something oryou want to go back and take
a look again, orshare it with someone else who was unable to attend,you'll be able to do that. thanks again, kyle. thank you. and thank you everyonefor attending. we appreciate it.