How Lightswitch Uses Adobe Workfront to Scale Video Production

What is Adobe Workfront?

This year, Lightswitch made the switch to Adobe Workfront. While we’ve had other systems that worked well for us in the past, as we continue to evolve, we were looking for something that could streamline all of our work processes so we could spend more time focusing on what we love most - making videos.

Adobe Workfront is a cloud-based work management solution helping businesses to plan, track, and manage their work efficiently. It especially aims to make collaborations across teams easier, housing almost everything we need in one place. We work on a lot of projects simultaneously at Lightswitch, so being able to scale our project management all in one place was a must when we were looking to improve our processes.

Organization: Portfolios, Programs, Projects

We organize our entire production operation inside Workfront using a hierarchical series of buckets:

• Portfolios = Clients
  Each client we work with gets a portfolio, acting as a central container for all their work. Beyond just housing projects, each portfolio also includes standardized long-term reference material like brand guidelines, logos, style references, stakeholder contact info, creative preferences, and notes on what’s worked (and not worked) in past projects. This means producers and editors always know exactly where to find what they need - even if they’re jumping on an already established project for the first time - and we never have to start from scratch, even months later.
  
  

• Programs = Internal Org
  Within each portfolio, we create programs for different departments we work with. Quite often our clients are large organizations and we may have ongoing work with 4 different departments - this helps keep all of the info attributed to the correct team, avoiding confusion.
  
  

• Projects = Projects
  Each project represents a specific piece of work, which can contain multiple deliverables. Every project can reference individuals, files, tasks or elements and other "buckets." All of our projects use a strict file naming structure that matches their representation in our billing system, client systems, and file storage systems.
  

Templates and Forms: Repeatable, But Flexible

We’ve built a library of templates for our most repeatable video types - each with a predefined set of tasks that follow our proven production process. These include timelines, dependencies, and task assignments by role. Our goal is to only have as many templates as are absolutely necessary as to not overwhelm our producers with the multitude of projects they’re juggling at any given time.

Templates are built less around the type of creative or deliverables, but more around the process that a project needs, so that when we kickoff a project we have the baseline tasks set. Rather than starting from scratch, we can start with a draft.

To add further customization we use custom forms to tailor each project with the right information - things like:

• Deliverables required (audio only, video only, high-volume content)
  

• Locations
  

• Contributors (Freelancers, internal team members, etc.)
  

Task Assignments & Dependencies

Each template includes role-based task assignments. This makes assigning work extremely easy.

For example - All producer owned tasks are pre-assigned to the Project Manager role - when the PM role is assigned to someone on our team, all of their producer tasks update accordingly

But more importantly, we use task dependencies. A task doesn’t notify the assignee until all prerequisite tasks are completed. That means:

• Producers aren’t overwhelmed with tasks they can’t yet act on

• Editors aren’t pulled into projects before they’re ready

• Everyone works in a clear, logical flow

• A task will never be left unchecked on our to-do list for a project
  

Setting it all up at the start is complicated, but when you've got your teams used to doing everything within Workfront, it's as easy for them as logging in and seeing which tasks they need to get done.

File Management & Integration

Our Workfront setup integrates directly with Dropbox and Adobe’s Creative Cloud tools in ways that streamline both access and communication.

Each project includes a dedicated Dropbox folder that’s linked right within the Workfront project itself.

Editors and producers alike know exactly where to find footage, scripts, voiceovers, or other assets without digging through emails or shared drives. These links are aligned with our file naming and folder structure, so nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

Even better, our editors use the Adobe Workfront plugins for Premiere and After Effects. This allows them to see Workfront task assignments, pull in documents, and view timecoded revision notes directly within the editing environment. That means an editor can be mid-cut and see exactly what the client or producer commented.

This level of integration removes friction and preserves context. Everyone is working from the same source of truth, inside the tool they’re already using.

Approvals Made Easy...ish

Workfront’s proofing tools let us create dedicated approval stages right within the project. Every project goes through an internal approval before going to the client for approval. We regularly set up approval flows for more stages - including internal reviews, creative approvals, compliance checkpoints, and client feedback. Each round of feedback is time-stamped and attached directly to the relevant deliverable or task.

It also allows for different approval types like "Approved with changes." This helps (but nothing can entirely stop) the 'too many cooks in the kitchen' problem. This helps us keep projects moving while still respecting internal politics.

That said, Workfront’s proofing tool isn’t perfect. The interface can be unintuitive at times, and it often requires redundant uploads that interrupt the flow of an otherwise streamlined system. We’re looking forward to the eventual Frame.io integration (which Adobe has assured us is coming).

Reporting

We use Workfront’s reporting tools primarily to monitor bandwidth and project-level profitability. Right now, we track team utilization - aiming to keep everyone at about 75% capacity. If that rises above 80% for three consecutive months, we treat it as a signal to start planning for additional support or headcount.

We’ll be the first to admit that reporting is still a weak spot for us. We’re not yet fully leveraging the more advanced reporting possibilities within Workfront, but we know the potential is huge. Over time, we’re hoping to build more standardized metrics around timelines, profit margins, and team efficiency to help us make smarter business decisions. For now, we’re keeping it simple.

Trusting the System

Back to our first rule of Workfront - everything goes in Workfront. Adopting Workfront wasn’t easy - it can be an unwieldy beast and this is probably our third iteration within it, constantly making changes to improve the system we’d already set up based on our team’s needs.

The biggest challenge was getting the team to fully commit - they were used to the old system!

At first, we still saw Slack messages or side notes being used to communicate about projects. We had to do our part to remind everyone

"send this in Workfront instead."

Now, the rule is simple: if it’s not in Workfront, it didn’t happen.

Every update, file, comment, and decision lives in the platform - attached to the relevant task or project. It’s searchable, auditable, and always accessible. No more “he said/she said,” no more digging through threads. Once this is done, you can trust the system - but your team has to be all in or it doesn't work.

The Big Picture

We’ve only been using Adobe Workfront for about a year, but it made sense for us because we already had strong systems in place. Workfront didn’t fix our processes - it just gave us one place to house them.

For in-house creative teams looking to scale without chaos, Workfront can be a powerful backbone. But it is expensive. Our recommendation - build the system first, find cheaper tools to make sure it works, then invest in something like Workfront once you know it best suits your process and will pay off.

For us it pays for itself by replacing about 5 other pieces of software and helps with a large number of our clients who were already users.

Stay tuned for more of our thoughts as we continue using (and improving how we use) the platform.