Producing the case study

Here’s a hot take: it’s ideal to start working on the case study during the project.

PMs should keep a “for case study” doc and jot down things as they happen over the course of the project. This is because they can forget things once the project is complete. Once the project is complete, they can simply share those pointers with Marketing so they can come up with a first draft as fast as possible.

This reduces the chances of anything important being left out when a writer talks to the PM to get information. There’s nothing like getting it straight from the horse’s mouth, and in this case, the horse is writing, so there’s lesser chance of things getting twisted too. This means operational efficiency gains for everyone involved, not just marketing.

Hiring a PM who can write and understands the value of case studies is worth it and can save a lot of the time that’s spent initially gathering material from different teams. This type of PM will return their value many times over.

Ask them to keep the log focusing on what challenges (development, design, content, any special challenges) the client wanted solved and to provide an overview of how your teams solved those challenges. Then the writer can talk to each of the different teams to dig out more information when writing the case study.

Even if you don’t get approval for the case study, you can put the PM’s doc in the knowledge base and use it internally.