Creative workflow management: Steps & software

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Airtable

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Project management

Articles

Project management

Project management tools

Articles

Project management

Project management tools

Creative teams are producing more content, in more formats, across more channels—but the way this work is managed hasn't kept pace. Requests proliferate, the review process happens inside tools that only some people have access to, and assets disappear into folder mazes after launch, as teams move on to the next project. When deadlines are missed, it’s difficult to pinpoint where the breakdown was, creating friction between hard-working teams.

Workflow management provides the structure to move projects smoothly from ideation to final delivery. This process allows teams to coordinate across designers, copywriters, strategists, requestors, and stakeholders so that workloads are balanced, progress is visible, and ownership is clear. When workflows are connected from end-to-end, creative teams spend more time doing what they do best: creating work that resonates.

What is creative workflow management?

Creative workflow management is a systemic approach creative teams use to manage creative projects from concept through completion. It defines how requests are captured, how work moves between team members, identifies the approval process, and ultimately ensures that creative assets are delivered on time.

Unlike general project or work management, which might span multiple teams, creative workflow management is focused on the unique challenges faced by creative teams. Creative work often involves multiple rounds of iteration, subjective feedback, and last-minute changes. With every integrated marketing campaign, for example, changes in messaging or strategy ripple across video, social media, print, and web assets, which involve different processes and people.

When handled well, creative workflow management gives everyone visibility into project progress, required production timelines, and flags issues that put the project and creative delivery at risk.

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Key phases of creative workflow management

Creative teams feel the difference when effective creative workflow management is in place. It helps ensure that earlier deadlines aren’t missed along the way, causing creatives to condense their work into panicked, unrealistic timeframes. It also helps define scope and stakeholder sign-off, so that teams aren’t creating and recreating the work every time someone changes their mind or has a new idea.

Be sure to think through each of these distinct phases to help prevent frustration and burnout.
Intake and briefing: Many teams request assets, often with competing priorities, making it difficult to know where creative resources will provide the most impact. A standardized intake form streamlines how people make requests and includes essential details to determine priority: what's needed, when it's due, who's requesting it, what initiative it supports, and what success looks like. Consider, too, what a more detailed creative brief must include to actually kick-off the project.

Triage and assignment: Teams have limited resources and may not be able to accommodate every request. How will creative leads assess project scope and priority across requests? What options might be available for templating or self-serving? Once priority is assessed, how will you match people to projects, based on capacity and expertise? In this phase, project timelines and task ownership must be clearly mapped.
Production and collaboration: This is where the magic happens. Creative work requires collaboration, whether it’s for design mockups, copy, or video footage. Throughout production, team members share work-in-progress and iterate based on feedback. The workflow process keeps everyone aligned on current versions and next steps.
Review and approval: Multiple reviewers often need to weigh in—for brand adherence, legal compliance, and campaign or product messaging alignment. Stakeholders and approval hierarchies must be clearly defined, and early, to keep the process moving and so that it’s clear who has final say.
Delivery and archival: When creative teams ship, it’s ideal to store the finished work in a digital asset management (DAM) system that allows colleagues to easily find and repurpose the work for future projects.

7 steps to building a creative workflow process

Building an effective creative workflow process requires understanding how work actually flows through your team, not how you wish it would. Start where you are, then refine as you learn what works. Here’s how to begin:
Map your current state. Document how creative requests reach your team today. Where do briefs come from, and do they contain the right information? How does work get assigned? Where do reviews happen? Who approves what? Capture the messy reality, including the informal handoffs and rogue Slack requests. You can't improve a process you haven't defined.

1. Identify bottlenecks and gaps

Where is work consistently delayed? Is intake chaotic, with requests arriving through five different channels? Do designers wait days for feedback? Does anyone know which version is approved? Are digital assets impossible to find once delivered? These friction points show where workflow improvements will deliver the most impact.

2. Define clear stages and ownership

Establish the specific phases that every type of project moves through and who's responsible at each stage. You may want to break the phases referenced above into more detailed phases depending on the complexity of the deliverable (e.g., video production vs. paid social ads). Set milestones to track progress toward project completion. Consider: When does a request become an active project? Who assigns work? Who can approve

3. Standardize the intake and planning process

Create a consistent way for colleagues to make creative requests. A standard intake form should capture the essential details—deliverables, deadlines, target audience, brand requirements, how the project relates to broader business initiatives, and success metrics. Also, build in some flexibility in your planning for time-sensitive or special cases that may crop up.

4. Build in feedback loops

Factor in specific windows for feedback and approval, with realistic timeframes. Define who reviews, at what stage, how and where they provide feedback, and how many revisions can be accommodated per the timeframe. Early stakeholder feedback is often recommended before the work gets too far along. Regular check-ins keep stakeholders informed and help teams meet deadlines.

5. Connect workflows to where work lives

Your creative workflow and the system you use to manage it should integrate with where the actual work happens. Your project tracking system should be able to connect to files, whether Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, or other online proofing tools, and help teams see where final deliverables are stored in your DAM or file-sharing platform. This way, project status and access to files are available in a single unified platform.

7. Plan for iteration and improvement

Launch your workflow, test it on real projects, then refine based on what you learn. Workflows sometimes need to adapt to changes in the business. Build in regular check-ins to assess what's working and whether there are new friction points to address.

Best practices for managing creative workflows

Effective creative workflow management balances structure with flexibility. Lack of structure leads to chaos, but if your workflows are too rigid, teams may begin to circumvent them to move faster. Keep in mind the following best practices:

Make project status visible to everyone. Lack of visibility can lead to delayed team hand-offs, missed review deadlines, and repeated requests for status updates. Select a tool that allows everyone involved to track progress in real-time.
Automate routine coordination. Use workflow automation to handle repetitive tasks like sending notifications when work is ready for review, routing approvals to the right stakeholders, flagging approaching deadlines, and updating the project status when phases are complete.
Create reusable templates for common project types. Use templates or standard briefs when possible for each type of regularly requested project, whether for a social campaign, blog graphics, or product launch assets, so that everyone knows what to expect every time.
Build realistic approval chains. There’s an old saying about too many cooks in a kitchen… and this doesn’t bode well for creative work. Approval workflows should include only those necessary from a creative director and stakeholder point of view. Work with your legal team to understand which projects need review to help avoid fatigue and slowdowns.
Keep assets available for reuse and repurposing. The workflow doesn't stop once files ship. Teams can lean on existing creative assets when planning similar campaigns or refreshing existing content. This also aids global teams, who can adjust assets to suit specific regions. Be sure to tag assets with relevant metadata so they can be easily found.
Optimize resource allocation. Strong resource management helps balance workloads to ensure high-quality creative production. Track capacity, identify when teams are stretched thin, and adjust assignments accordingly. Tools like Airtable can help manage utilization and visualize workloads.
Foster open communication and teamwork. The right collaboration tools enable seamless communication between designers, copywriters, strategists, and stakeholders. When team members can easily share ideas during brainstorming and ideation phases and provide feedback on iterations, the creative process flows more smoothly.

How AI is transforming creative workflow management

AI is changing creative workflow management by helping teams move much faster from coordination to creation. Depending on the tool you select, AI can play a role in every stage—from processing creative briefs to assisting with resource allocation during production to automating the approval process, adjusting dates, and sending updates. AI removes burdensome administrative work, helps anticipate needs and spot potential problems early, and accelerates the entire timeline.

For example, when MGA Entertainment implemented AI-powered brief processing with Airtable, they reduced the creative brief processing time by as much as 60%. As an AI-native platform built on a relational database, Airtable can easily search across assets and analyze images, videos, and designs to surface similar deliverables. The result? MGA Entertainment’s team went from spending hours searching through 40,000+ marketing assets to finding what they needed in seconds.

“Airtable didn't just help us get organized. It keeps us organized so we can operate with greater clarity, speed, and confidence,"

Ashlee Meese

VP of Franchise and Integrated Marketing at MGA Entertainment

AI helps marketing teams and creative agencies coordinate and optimize their entire creative production pipeline, from intake through final approval, and enables creative operations teams to leverage insights previously impossible to extract from project data.

Creative workflow management tools

Creative teams use different tools for different parts of the planning and production process. The goal is to build a connected system instead of a collection of siloed point solutions. Choosing the right tools—including the right creative project management software to connect them all—streamlines collaboration and lets creative teams focus on the creative process.

Project management platforms: These provide the foundation for tracking creative work across teams. Project management tools help you organize projects, assign tasks, set timelines, and monitor progress, from intake through delivery. Many platforms offer Kanban boards for visual task management and customizable templates for different project types.
Workflow automation tools: Workflow tools handle repetitive coordination tasks like routing approvals, sending notifications, updating statuses, and moving work between different systems. Automation ensures consistency and frees creative teams from administrative busywork. Some tools, like Airtable, combine project management and workflow automation in a single system.
Digital asset management (DAM) systems: DAMs store and organize creative assets once they are complete. They provide version control, usage rights tracking, and search capabilities that make it possible and easier to locate existing work. DAMs are where assets live long-term, separate from the active production workflow.
Creative review and proofing tools: These streamline feedback cycles by letting stakeholders comment directly on designs, videos, or documents with timestamped annotations. Creative review and proofing tools enable stakeholders to review simultaneously, asynchronously, and from anywhere.
Collaboration and communication platforms: Dedicated communication and project collaboration tools enable conversations, and the ability to share documents-in-progress within context. They're especially valuable for remote or distributed creative teams who need strong communication functions to stay aligned.

Many platforms offer some combination of these features, but it depends on what you need and what works with your existing tech stack. The goal is to connect tools into a cohesive system where workflow software orchestrates the process across more specialized tools. This integration enables real-time visibility across all creative production stages.

Accelerate creative workflows with Airtable

Airable offers a unique solution that allows creative teams to manage production from intake to delivery—even all the way through digital asset management for post-project AI localization and storage.
Airtable becomes the coordination layer connecting your entire creative stack to brand strategy, enhanced by native AI and automated workflows that intelligently route requests, send notifications, generate briefs, and forecast scheduling issues in advance. As an AI workflow platform, Airtable is flexible enough to adapt to your team’s unique processes and gives the entire org visibility into project milestones and status so that you can ship on time.

See for yourself—try Airtable today.