New Project Checklist

This page has a series of steps that we follow for the new projects that come to our team. We adapt it based on the scope and context of each project.

New Leads (Project Referrals)
Projects with Multiple Phases
Projects from existing partners
Cold or unresponsive partners
Project Kickoff

New Leads and Project Referrals

Ensure the lead has a corresponding entry in Zoho.
- Leads received via the ███████████████ are automatically added to Zoho, and will have a corresponding auto-created post on ███████████████.
- New leads received anywhere other than the form can be added via the ███████████████ or manually added to Zoho. If adding manually:
  - Add the entry as a Lead (rather than a Project).
  - Use the status of contacted.
  - A corresponding post will automatically be created on the ███████████████.
- New projects for existing partners can be manually added to Linear and do not require any additional Zoho entry.
  - Add a new Project in Linear.
  - Set the status to Proposal.
If the lead came in to a personal email, forward the message to ███████████████ so we can continue the conversation in our shared inbox. If it came in via some other method, hold on to that info so it can be included in a P2 post, see below.
Do some basic research about the lead (Google, Wikipedia, social media, MGS) to understand who they are and their history with their website, WordPress, Automattic, etc.
- Are there answers to our discovery questions we can answer at this stage?
- If the lead could benefit from working with an agency, connect with the Automattic for Agencies team (███████████████) to strategize on the approach and determine the possible next steps.
Work to understand the general scope of services that we would provide. If the referral comes from Matt, he may indicate in his referral message what he has in mind (e.g. “if you give them a login they can take a look around and make sure everything is tip-top, and also set up Jetpack.” vs “they’ll build a beautiful new WordPress site for you and get everything moved over.”).
Send the site-owner a short welcome email from our shared email address in Zendesk.
- In this reply, you will need to update the requester on the ticket to the partner and, remove Matt’s email as CC and add Matt (███████████████) as a Follower for the initial reply. Confirm that you are using the correct emails, as names are not necessarily unique on Zendesk.
- After the initial reply, remove Matt as a Follower, and resave the ticket.
- If it’s a Matt referral and he’s already contacted the lead, wait a few days to see if the lead responds before sending a welcome email. This will give them an opportunity to see Matt’s initial email instead of our follow-up, potentially leading them to miss it.
- You can use the pre-def in Zendesk macro named ███████████████, but tailor the products mentioned and the anticipated needs of the site to the partner.
Add a comment to the corresponding post on the ███████████████ with initial information about the project. If this is a new project for an existing partner create a post using the the Add new lead button, and include the new project details in a comment.
- Tag the post with the partner slug, #team51-partner-slug so we can find it easily in the future. If the slug is a partner’s name, the convention is to put a hyphen between the first and last name rather than smush them together. Adding the tag in a comment will add it to the main post automatically.
- Include results of any WebPageTest or Lighthouse you perform or other performance information where relevant.
Unless the partner prefers to work through email only, schedule a kick-off call inviting the partner, and, if including design, someone from the design team. During the kick-off call,
- Introduce how the team works.
- Start to work through the project discovery questions and include the Woo discovery questions if applicable.
- Is the site already on WordPress? Consider separating the environment migration from the redesign by moving the site over to the desired host as a first phase (███████████████).
- Make sure to identify any particular timeline needs, hosting needs, third parties involved, etc.
- Find a good time to mention that we will ask for their help in spreading the word about WordPress.
- Does the site owner also use Tumblr or any other A8c products (e.g. MailPoet, Pocket Casts, Day One, etc)?
- If including design, leave time for the designer to ask their questions.
After the kick-off call, add your notes to the project’s Outreach P2 post.
Start considering the design phase. If you plan to use an existing theme, it’s OK to share links to a couple of themes on WordPress.com/themes (make sure it’s block themes). Depending on comfort level with design and block themes, a designer, TAM, or developer can complete the customizations to an existing block theme. If the project requires a design phase, schedule a design call.
If the proposed site functionality is a fairly common use case, check out the ███████████████ for recommended plugins and details.
If you need to do more discovery, continue to ask additional questions as needed.
If we’re moving forward and have some agreement on project scope, convert or merge the Lead in Zoho to a Partner + Contact. Use a pattern to create a Project P2.
- If a Zoho Partner already exists for the Lead, you can set the Lead to the status of Lead Transferred.
- Leave a note on the Outreach P2 linking to the Project P2, indicating that all future work will be documented there.
- If this is an internal project (involving A8c stakeholders): note the “Internal Project” table in the project template patterns. Please update the table to ping all necessary A8c stakeholders so that they can follow along with the thread and determine the extent of their involvement. Please also familiarize yourself with the Working and communicating with other teams at A8c handbook page.
If this is an existing site we’re managing, the site should have a ███████████████. Leave a note in the OP and a comment linking back to the Project P2 you just created stating that there is a new project underway with this site/partner.
If the site will be using WooCommerce, create a plan for migration of products, sales, customers, etc. from any old stores to the new WooCommerce store.
Start to think about project resourcing, based on timeline, project needs, and current team bandwidth. If contractors will be involved at any point, it would be good to reach out to get a sense of their interest and availability.
Prepare a project brief. Send it to the partner to get written confirmation that it’s accurate and comprehensive.
Work with the partner to settle hosting, project specs, due dates (as needed), milestones, future maintenance plans, etc. Will vary by project.
Large Projects / Multi-Phased Projects – The primary TAM should have a pre-retro/risk assessment to work through any items that might cause a delay. This could be done with another TAM and/or with a member of the development team to scope larger/complex items of a project.
1. ███████████████ that can be used as a sample to start from. This assessment took place in the middle of the project but ideally would’ve happened earlier.
2. If you’re doing a store migration, either from Woo or from another platform, start planning this now. Make sure you gather the details outlined in the Store Migrations to WooCommerce Considerations, and loop in a developer to consult/help.
Previous Partners – If we’ve worked with the partner on a previous project, we should meet with and have a knowledge share with the previous TAM on their experiences with the partner.
Limited time engagements – For some partners, we’re only engaged for a short period while onboarding to an Automattic product or a site build. For these projects, we’d want to set them up for success after we have ended our engagement and should direct them to Happiness Engineers once we’ve finished. Please check out ███████████████.
To create the production environment, GitHub repo, and appropriate project templates, please use one of the host-specific checklists ███████████████.
If the project involves working with internal Automattic teams, create a temporary, project-specific Slack channel, following the naming convention: #team51-[project-name], and add relevant team members. You may invite people from other divisions if relevant to the call. For example, we might invite members of the Woo Customer Success team when pitching a WooCommerce project.

Projects with Multiple Phases

Note: for projects where we will be launching the site in multiple phases, it’s vital that each phase has its own project brief, project P2 and discrete project entry in Linear. This helps raise visibility of potential “hidden work” between TAMs and allows us to more accurately estimate and understand future workload.

Projects referrals from Existing Partners

After we launch a site, the project usually gets handed over to the Support Team. From there, the Support Teams handle supporting the partner’s needs. Occasionally partners will introduce us to another business, website, or organization that they think would be a good fit for our team.

For any referrals that come through an existing partner, they need to go through the normal process as listed above in our New Leads (Project Referrals). Launch needs to lead any conversation and discussion with a partner we’ve never worked with so our messaging and offerings are consistent.

Support TAMs will ping @51-launch-leads in Slack to make them aware of the incoming referrals.

New Projects for Existing Partners

Create a new project in Linear connected with the existing partner.
Manually post a new Outreach P2 using the Add New Project button on the P2, which will generate the correct post pattern.
If a Site Post P2 exists for the partner/site, add a note that we’re starting a new project and cross-link to Project P2, Linear entry, Outreach P2, etc.

Cold or unresponsive partners

From time to time, we run into partners that become unresponsive or don’t reply to our emails. If you try to reconnect with a lead after some time, go through the New Leads checklist above again, focusing on items 3 and 4. Check if someone else has connected with the partner (from The Special Projects Team or A8C), if the contact we have on file is still the right person to reach out to, if something has changed on their current site, etc.

Dig further into what we can offer the potential partner and tailor the email/messaging so it might resonate better with the partner, ███████████████.

If we don’t get a response to our emails, we can pursue other options to connect. This could be in DM from any of our A8C social accounts or Matt’s accounts if he was the source of the referral.

Marking a project as cold

If we have an outreach or project with a partner that has become stale for whatever reason, we should follow the steps below to ensure we don’t loose track of it and keep checking in on the status on regular intervals.

Start a conversation with your team lead about the project. Considerations for marking a project as cold, and potential check-in cadence, is done on a case-by-case basis.
If we’ve decided to mark a project as cold we should add an update in P2, including a short status update, outlining what we’ve done, and what’s needed to reactivate the project. ███████████████. See suggested pattern below.

Suggested pattern for marking a project as cold

Moving the project to Cold

Short status update

What we’ve done:

What we need to reactivate the project:

Keep the Linear project assigned to you and set the Linear project’s status to Proposal. This will stop biweekly the prompts for project updates.
We include Linear project with the Proposal status in our quarterly cold projects and leads check-in where you’ll provide an update on the status and any considerations for next steps.