Introduction to Event Project Management Documentation

Project management in BackOps is the list of everything that has to get done to deliver an event, kept inside the event itself. It answers one question for the whole team: what is left, who owns it, and when is it due?

Why Project Management Matters

Most event teams track work in a separate task tool, a spreadsheet, or a whiteboard in the production office. That list drifts away from the event almost immediately. An advance comes back from the caterer and someone has to remember to tick its box. A file needs sign-off and the reviewer finds out by email. By show week, nobody trusts the list, and the real status lives in people's heads.

BackOps keeps the work next to the event it belongs to. The tasks you write sit beside the tasks BackOps creates for you from advances and files, and those generated tasks update themselves as answers and approvals come in. The organization sees every active event's tasks in one roll-up, in its own vocabulary.

How Project Management Works

Tasks are the units of work. A task has a name, a description, a status, a priority, start and due dates, assignees, and optional reviewers and custom fields. Tasks can have subtasks and can depend on other tasks.

Statuses are yours to define. Each event has its own list, such as Not Started, In Progress, Waiting on Client, and Done, and each status belongs to one of five states: To Do, Active, In Review, Done, or Archived. The state is what BackOps reasons about, so you can name statuses however your team talks.

Reviews gate completion. A task with reviewers cannot move to a Done status until every reviewer has approved it.

Phases group tasks into stretches of the event, such as Pre-Production, Load-In, Show, and Strike, each with its own dates.

Constraints record what is blocking work: a late deliverable, a pending approval, a task that has to finish first. They make the friction visible while it is happening and leave a record for the post-event review.

flowchart LR
    A["Advances"] --> T["Event tasks"]
    F["Files"] --> T
    Y["Event type attributes and roles"] --> T
    U["Tasks you create"] --> T
    T --> O["Organization Tasks roll-up"]

Some tasks are created and managed by BackOps. Advances with task tracking, files that need review, and event type attributes and roles that must be filled all add tasks that keep their status in step with the work they track.

Managing Tasks

Create tasks and subtasks, assign them, and work in list, calendar, Gantt, and Kanban views.

Task Reviews and Comments

Require approval before a task is done, and discuss it in comments.

Task Statuses and Custom Fields

Define your statuses, map advance and file progress to them, and add your own fields.

Phases and Constraints

Group tasks into stretches of the event and record what is blocking them.

Tasks BackOps Creates

The tasks advances, files, and event types add, and what you can change on them.

Organization Tasks and the Roll-Up

Your organization's own tasks and every active event's tasks in one place.