Managing Your Team: Best Practices for Productions

When it comes to running an effective production, there’s tons to manage. Equipment, transportation, craft services, props, locations—there are a million and one things to consider before anyone says “picture’s up.” But of all the things you need to manage, your team just might be the most important.

When your teams aren’t on the same page, issues can crop up quickly. Miscommunication, duplication of key tasks, lack of visibility, security problems—keeping track of who’s responsible for what isn’t easy, but it’s a crucial element of any project’s success. Fortunately, advancements in technology are reshaping the landscape of team management—both on and off set. In this blog post, we'll delve into the importance of role management in production teams and explore Wrapbook's particular role-based solution to these challenges.

The importance of role management in productions

Role management is largely a question of access—that is, deciding who on your team has access to sensitive information and who has the permission to perform important functions. Striking the right balance between granting team members sufficient access, while also preventing unnecessary access, is crucial. 

Too much access can lead to confusion. Does your production assistant need access to your entire team’s payroll history? Probably not, and granting them that access makes it harder, not easier, for them to access the information they actually do need. On the other hand, too little access can slow down collaboration and create bottlenecks. After all, you probably don’t want every single kit-fee approval running through your Head of Production. Spreading out authority for certain tasks across your team can help to lighten the load at the top.

Keep in mind that as your project evolves, your roles and permissions may need to evolve with it. That’s why the best team management strategies are not rigid but flexible, allowing team members to modulate their roles and fill gaps as needed.

Let’s dive into some common roles, and see how they can benefit from better team management strategies.

Producers and Head of Production

Producers and Heads of Production are often tasked with managing tasks, keeping track of key data, and marshaling resources to ensure that the production’s goals are met. It should be no surprise, then, that they’re often faced with the challenge of needing to convert vast amounts of information into actionable decisions. This means having broad access to all the necessary information is key.

Producers and HOPs can also struggle to delegate effectively. Those that are unable to empower their team members with key permissions can end up in the unenviable position of having to carry out tasks and process approvals themselves. This can lead to bottlenecks, delays, and frustration across the team.

The best team-management strategies for Producers and HOPs will usually involve:

1. Real-time data. In an industry that moves as fast as production, it’s absolutely critical that decision-makers have the most up to date information possible on their projects. Knowing where your budget was a week ago simply isn’t good enough in 2023.
2. Delegation of authority. It isn’t necessary for a good Producer to make every decision on their own—in fact, it usually slows things down. Vesting authority all the way down the on-set chain of command is crucial to keep things moving smoothly.

Production Managers, Production Coordinators, Freelancers

Production Managers, Coordinators, and Freelancers play pivotal roles in production operations. To streamline their workflows, it's essential they have easy access to tools and resources. Reducing the need to seek frequent approvals can significantly enhance the production process.

For improved efficiency and clarity for this group, consider:

1. Role-based access control. Ensuring each team member at this level has access to the tools they need will increase efficiency and eliminate confusion.
2. Clear differentiation of roles. Duplication of key roles is common lower down the chain of command. Making surethat each team member has a clear and specific set of responsibilities is crucial.

Accountants, CFOs, Controllers

Financial roles within a production team often encounter obstacles when managing tasks and waiting for approvals. Delays—due to endless back-and-forth communication with the Production Manager, Producer, or HOP—can often slow down Production Accountants and even cut into a project’s bottom line.

Effective team management should emphasize:

1. Clear communication. The free flow of data from set to the accountant’s office is key. Strategies that bring production and accounting closer together are good; strategies that place them within a single, logical system are even better.‍
2. Full transparency. Effective team management strategies for finance teams will seek to improve communication between the finance team and the rest of the production. Keeping all relevant cost data in a single place makes it far less likely that things will fall through the cracks.

Implementing best practices with Wrapbook

We’ve discussed how effective team management can speed up production, eliminate confusion, and help projects wrap more smoothly. Let’s look at how Wrapbook’s Role-Based Access System gives you the power to implement some of these strategies.

Role-based access in Wrapbook

We makes it easy for production companies to configure roles & permissions without sacrificing data security. With built-in flexibility and customizable access controls, our platform grants the whole team the right level of access to get the job done. 

With its configurable role-based access system, Wrapbook empowers teams to create custom roles tailored to their specific needs. With Wrapbook you can:

• Choose from among five preset roles
• Duplicate any preset role to create a custom role
• Create a custom role from scratch

In each case, you have the ability to determine exactly how much access to give to each individual member of your team. Not only that, you can edit the access you’ve given after the fact, so if circumstances on your project change—and really, has there ever been a project where they didn’t?—you have the flexibility to change right along with them.

Here’s how roles work in Wrapbook:

Each permission is grouped into three levels of hierarchy.

1. Permission Sets — These are the top-level groupings that encapsulate multiple permission categories. (Example: Payroll & Financial)
2. Permission Categories — These are groups of permissions that encapsulate permissions within each major product area. (Example: Company Settings)
3. Access Levels — These are the level of access that each role can enjoy within a given permission category. (Examples: Full Access, View Only, View Basic)

As you can see, this model gives you complete flexibility into how you allocate permissions across different roles. Want your Production Accountant to have access to employee financial information without giving them the ability to run payroll? You can do that. 

Want to give production assistants access to basic employee information without compromising more sensitive information? You can do it. Want a producer to have access to everything, but still want to run payroll yourself?

With Wrapbook’s new roles and permissions capabilities, you can manage your team in whatever way makes the most sense for you. That not only keeps your production safer, it also keeps your team moving more efficiently, and gives everyone a clear sense of what their role is, and how they fit into the whole. And in a business as collaborative as production, knowing how you fit into the larger picture can make all the difference.

See how we're connecting your entire crew on one platform here.

If you want to see how we’re bringing teams together, give this a watch.