23h of 20 planned
As separate lines
- Plan20.0 h
- Actual23.5 h
- Over plan3.5 h
Project management office · Digital agenciesSince 05.2024
RedLoft
External project management office for RedLoft
RedLoft had one project manager and turned down non-core orders. Now we run those orders and the support of delivered projects, and the agency has not had to hire anyone in that time.
12+months of reports in a row
5platforms across projects
80hours on one support project, June to September 2025
0new hires at the agency
External project management office for RedLoft
- Client
RedLoft, a digital agency building websites and services for the wellness industry. redloft.ru
- ServiceExternal project management officeProject managementContent management
- TimelineProject office30 moSpa complex6 mo
- TeamHead of the project office: the agency’s founder2 project managersContent managerQA engineer
- Tools
project websites
project websites
project websites
project websites
project websites
documents
tasks and time tracking
Billed for the time actually spent.
Where it started
That was the situation in May 2024, when we started: there was nobody to run non-core orders. For more than a year now the client has received a monthly report from us with hours for each area.
The first project: a spa complex website
It all started with one project. The agency was building a corporate website for a premium spa complex, and it had to go live by the day the complex itself opened. Requirements, the estimate and the schedule were agreed, and the team had designers. The in-house manager was running another project, and RedLoft was looking for someone to break the schedule into tasks, hand them out, watch deadlines, correspond with the client and prepare reports.
We took that part of the work. The agency kept the money, acceptance of interim results and the client relationship. The agency had no tracker then; tasks lived in spreadsheets. The scope was known upfront, so the stages ran one after another. From May to October the pages were designed and built, we wrote the specs for integrating the front end into 1C-Bitrix, and the client’s in-house manager took the project from there to launch.
A sports school, and what came after
Some time later the agency received a request for a sports school website. RedLoft used to turn down such orders unrelated to wellness. This project was handed to us entirely, including picking the team.
After it, the agency handed us everything outside its core projects: support and development of delivered websites, production of non-core websites and finding specialists when its own are not enough.
Tasks moved from chat to a tracker
There were more specialists and more tasks, and tasks set by a chat message got lost. Support is billed by the hour, and the client is invoiced from time records. Reconciling reports with specialists and with the client was taking longer and longer.
We compared several task management systems, showed the client the comparison, and they chose Yandex Tracker. Before the launch we agreed how we would check the result in two months:
- tasks don’t get lost;
- every specialist logs time;
- reconciling reports takes less time than before.
We set up the board and statuses. A task moved to testing is assigned to the QA engineer automatically. Notifications go to the work chat: to the specialist about a new task, to the project manager about a task ready for delivery. Then we moved the current tasks over and trained the team to manage tasks, log time and export the report.
Two months later all three conditions were met. The backlog is visible to everyone in one place. Everyone logs time, because specialists are paid from the report exported from the tracker. The effort report is put together in a few minutes. After that the remaining projects and contractors moved to the tracker.
How we work now
Once a month the client receives a report with tasks, statuses and hours by area: design, front end, back end, copywriting and management. Plan, actuals and work over plan are shown separately. One support project alone came to 80 hours from June to September 2025, a third of them on management.
We assemble the team for the tasks. It includes the head of the project office, project managers, content managers and a QA engineer. Some we engage directly, some through platforms and contractor companies.
Client feedback
We work with Roman as an outsourced project management office. His job is to build and oversee project management inside the agency, and he handles that role with confidence.
I liked that the work runs almost autonomously: a tracking system is in place, task and project statuses are transparent, communication is clear, and there is control without micromanagement.
Overall I am happy with working with Roman and his agency. He is a strong management partner for agencies that need an external project office and systematic control without overloading their own team.