The short answer
Project management at a small architecture firm comes down to four habits and two lists. Each project gets one row on one list, and each item gets one owner and one next date. That list gets a 30-minute review every Monday morning, and anything sent out for an answer is logged with its date. The two lists are the project list and the CA log, which has one row per submittal, RFI or change order. With the four habits and two lists in place you need no methodology; without them, new software is a slower spreadsheet.
One row per project
With one row per project, anyone can answer "where is that job," the question every principal hears ten times a day. Left to right, the eleven columns are project number, name, stage, design phase, lead, client, jurisdiction, next action, next-action date, what it's waiting on and folder link. For a residential studio, the name is the address. Nobody fills a twelfth column, and half-empty columns teach staff to distrust the whole list.
Two rules make the list trustworthy. First, an automatic rule issues each project number: the next in the year's sequence, never reused and never duplicated. The last Asana account we read had two projects numbered 2634 and two numbered 2643, because numbering was a habit. Second, each row belongs to its lead, so when a next-action date passes, the lead answers for it on Monday, not the principal.
New inquiries and proposals sit in their own group at the top of the same list. A proposal is a project without a number yet, not a record in another system. Once won, it moves to the active group and gets its number that day.
Phases and milestones
Phases live on each project, not on the list. Each project gets its own board (a tab, sheet or section in other tools), with a group of rows per phase. The phases are 1 Pre-Design, 2 Schematic Design, 3 Design Development, 4 Construction Documents and Plan Check, 5 Construction Administration and 6 Closeout. A group for each jurisdiction's submittal path goes between 4 and 5; delete any that do not apply.
Milestones are gate tasks inside the phases, with no duration. Marking one Done means the phase has turned a corner. Four examples: "SD approved by client", "Plans submitted to Building and Safety", "All clearances cleared, permit ready" and "Certificate of occupancy issued". Skip a separate milestones list; it's one more record to keep in step.
The task status needs five states: Not Started, In Progress, Done, Blocked and N/A. N/A decides whether anyone uses the template. A quarter of any architecture checklist is "if applicable", and without N/A every finished project looks 70 percent complete.
Keep each project's task list short. The studio whose Asana we migrated had 40-task templates and used them on none of its 70 projects, which had a median of 19 tasks. The group structure, pruning by jurisdiction and Gantt setup are free on the phases template page.
Who owns what
Every item has one owner: a person, never a team. Three roles cover a small studio. The lead, or project manager, owns the project row and every task on its board: next action, dates, waiting-on value and the answers at the Monday review. The principal owns the whole list, stage changes, the fee, the contract and the decision to take a job. An office manager or coordinator, if you have one, owns CA log upkeep and follow-ups, consultant records and the intake of new inquiries.
Consultants and contractors are the party an item waits on, never its owner. They go in a waiting-on column with four values: us, city or agency, client and consultant. It's the most useful column: "what are we waiting on the engineers for, across every job" becomes one filter, not an afternoon of email. The usual failure: every row with no lead defaults to the principal, and a principal who owns 30 rows updates none of them.
What to track per phase
Track six things in each design phase: deliverable, dated client decisions, dated consultant deliverables, next action, fee invoice and what it's waiting on. Once the drawings leave the office, add three more: the date each thing went out, who it went to and the days since. The table shows each phase and the gate that closes it.
| Phase | Track | The gate that closes it |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-Design | The signed contract and retainer, the site information (parcel, zone, jurisdiction, survey), the program, the consultants engaged | Contract executed, retainer received, site information on the row |
| Schematic Design | Client decisions with dates, the SD set, the preliminary cost opinion, the SD fee invoice | Client approves SD in writing |
| Design Development | Consultant deliverables with dates, the DD set, outstanding client selections, the DD fee invoice | DD set issued with consultant drawings coordinated |
| Construction Documents | The drawing list, consultant sets received, the specification, the permit application package | CD set issued for plan check or bid |
| Plan check and permits | Each submittal with its date out, corrections received, clearances by department with a waiting-on value, resubmittals | Permit ready to issue |
| Bidding, where the studio runs it | Bidders, addenda, the bid date, the recommendation | Construction contract awarded |
| Construction Administration | RFIs, submittals and change orders on the CA log, site visit reports, pay application reviews | Substantial completion |
| Closeout | Punch list, record drawings, the final pay application, closeout documents handed over, the final invoice | Final invoice paid; row moved to closed |
The Monday-morning review
The whole studio meets for 30 minutes and walks the list on screen in stage order: pipeline, active in design, plan check, CA and closeout. For each row, the lead answers three questions: what changed last week, what's the next action and its date, what are we waiting on. Answers go into the row during the meeting, not afterward. On a row whose next-action date has passed, the missed date comes up first.
Then the plan check and CA rows get a second pass on the CA log. Any item out more than seven days without an answer gets named, and its owner says what they'll do about it before Tuesday.
Three rules keep it to 30 minutes. A design question becomes a next action with its own meeting. No row gets more than 90 seconds unless it's blocked. The office manager or the most organized lead runs the review, so the principal answers questions instead of chairing. The review is the part no software supplies, and it keeps the list from decaying into the spreadsheet it replaced.
How to handle plan check and construction administration
Once the drawings leave the office, the project runs on someone else's clock: the plan checker's, the contractor's or the HOA's. So plan check and CA get their own log instead of more tasks on the project board.
Each row on the log is one thing sent out, with its project, party, type, date out and owner. Parties include Building and Safety, Planning, Fire, the HOA and the contractor; types are submittal, RFI, change order and resubmittal. Add any due date the contract or the city sets, and what the item is waiting on. The status follows the real lifecycle: awaiting, received, corrections, resubmitted, approved, ready to issue, closed.
The rule that earns its keep is the seven-day follow-up. After seven days in awaiting, a dated task to chase the item appears on the owner's list. It's a task, not a notification: principals ignore the notifications sent to them, and they tell us so on our first call.
Plan check in a city like Los Angeles adds a layer. Besides the permit, the city issues a Clearance Summary Worksheet listing three to twelve departmental approvals. Each becomes its own item, waiting on the agency that owns it. Smaller jurisdictions have fewer approvals and the same structure.
The CA log page has the columns, statuses and permissions. The workflow page has the eleven stages from inquiry to closeout, with the documents at each handoff.
Tools for a small architecture firm, compared
The system above fits any of five tools. Prices are as shown on each vendor's page on October 7, 2026: asana.com/pricing, clickup.com/pricing, monday.com/pricing and monograph.com/pricing.
| Tool | Price (October 7, 2026) | Does well here | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| A spreadsheet (Google Sheets or Excel) | Included in the office suite you already pay for | The project list, for a studio under ten live projects | Phases per project, owners with reminders, a follow-up rule, any view that is not the sheet |
| Asana | Starter $10.99, Advanced $24.99 per user per month billed annually | The task list and My Tasks. Starter has timeline and Gantt views, forms, custom fields, reporting dashboards and unlimited automations; time tracking and resource management are Advanced features | A board per project pruned by jurisdiction has to be built by hand; fees stay out of it |
| ClickUp | Unlimited $7, Business $12 per user per month billed annually | The cheapest full task tool: custom fields, Gantt, dashboards and native time tracking on Unlimited | 1,000 automation executions a month on Unlimited and 5,000 on Business, which a studio running follow-up rules reaches |
| monday.com | Pro $19 per seat per month billed annually | The list, a board per project, the CA log with a follow-up rule, fees on private boards, dashboards across 20 boards, 25,000 automation actions a month. Built in one to two weeks | It all gets built first; utilization on a dashboard we build; QuickBooks through a custom app |
| Monograph | $45 to $490 a month; Pipeline is an add-on | Hours, fees, invoicing and profit by phase, working on day one | The CA log and consultant coordination are not named on its site |
Under ten live projects, a spreadsheet and the Monday review are all you need. From ten to 40, use a work platform: monday.com if fees have to stay private and the CA log needs a follow-up rule. Choose Asana or ClickUp instead if fees live elsewhere and budget decides. If your real question is hours and margin by phase, add Monograph alongside, with one rule about which tool owns the project list.
The software comparison page covers nine tools, adding Deltek Vantagepoint, BQE Core, Newforma and Notion. It has year-one totals for a 10-person studio and a decision table by firm size. If you're already on Asana, read the Asana vs monday.com comparison, which includes the cases for staying.
Questions principals ask
How many projects can a small architecture firm run on a spreadsheet?
Up to about ten live projects, or until the first submittal nobody can find, whichever comes first. A spreadsheet holds the project list well. Past ten, you need what it lacks: phases per project, owners with reminders, other views and a follow-up rule for things out with the city.
Should a small firm use one board for all projects or one board per project?
Use one board per project once you pass ten live projects or your task lists run longer than 15 lines. A real architecture task list runs 49 to 64 lines once the submittal path is in it. Across 200 projects, that's 10,000 to 13,000 rows on one board, slow to open and hard to filter. The project list itself stays on one overview board, one row per project, with each project's board hanging off it.
What does it cost to have a project management system built in monday.com?
Hawkpoint's Foundation, from $3,000, takes one week: the project list with phases and milestones, an intake form, three automations, a dashboard and recorded training. Full System, from $7,000, takes two weeks: Foundation plus fees by phase, the CA log, consultant coordination, the proposal pipeline, client approvals, permissions and dashboards. It includes the move from Asana, Trello, Monograph or spreadsheets, but not seats: monday.com Pro is $19 per seat per month billed annually, paid to monday.com. The free 30-minute review sets a fixed quote before we build, and the pricing page lists what's included and excluded. If you would rather set it up yourself, first read our page on when you do not need a consultant.
Key takeaways
- Four habits: one row per project, one owner and next date per item, a 30-minute Monday review and a dated log of everything sent out.
- Eleven columns on the project list, numbers issued by a rule and new inquiries in their own group at the top.
- Phases are groups on each project's board; milestones are gate tasks inside them; the task status includes N/A.
- Track six things in each design phase, plus three more once the drawings leave the office.
- Plan check and CA run on other people's clocks, so they get their own log and a seven-day follow-up that creates a task.
- Under ten projects, use a spreadsheet. Past that, use a work platform: monday.com if fees must stay private. Add Monograph alongside if your question is hours and margin.
Limitations of this page
What this does not cover
This system fits residential and small commercial work that goes through a planning and building department. It leaves out resourcing and utilization; hours against fee by phase is Monograph's territory, touched on here only briefly. The plan-check detail comes from our work in Los Angeles City and County, and your jurisdiction changes the rows, not the structure. The tool table describes each product as its own pricing page did on October 7, 2026. We sell monday.com builds, so weigh the monday.com row accordingly.