Project management is a term that a lot of small businesses are afraid of. They think that it means dealing with large expensive projects that they can’t afford. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that. Project management refers to any business aim that has a clearly defined beginning and end. Effectively completing projects, even the smallest ones, is one of the best ways to make your business grow, so being scared of it is only hurting you. If you’ve strayed away from projects in the past, here’s how you can make them work for you
You aren’t going to make any progress with your projects unless you’ve got experienced and qualified project managers. You might already have people in the company with these skills but if not, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can just make do. Hire new employees with a Graduate Diploma in Project Management, that way you can be sure that they’ve got all of the necessary skills to run and complete projects. When you’re looking at their experience it’s tempting to go for the people that have run massive projects for large corporations. While they’ll have good management skills, they’ll be used to working with a huge team and lots of resources so when it comes to making projects work on a shoestring budget, they might struggle. It’s far better to hire somebody that has been a project manager for a company of your size and can show that they’ve run projects that added value to a small company.
If you’re struggling to find good managers or you just think that they need a little extra help, think about investing in some project management software. This software can help you to keep track of the project and ensure that everything is running on time. Active Collab is one of the best ones for small businesses because it’s easy to use and it does everything you need it to but it doesn’t clog itself up with loads of extra features. If you find that you’re outgrowing it, there are plenty of great add-ons that you can use to beef it up later.
Simple projects that you should use as a starting point are the introduction of processes across the company. Small businesses tend to neglect processes because they think it’s only necessary for larger companies but setting up processes for your employees helps them to complete tasks more efficiently. The creation and implementation of these new processes is a project that will seriously streamline your business operation.
The first thing you should have your project manager do is speak with employees and identify things that are slowing down their day to day work. Most of them will be small projects that you can take on but the difference it will make is astronomical.
The most important thing to remember when you’re creating projects is not to overstretch yourself. It’s easy to think that a huge, expensive project is going to make you lots of money because it works for bigger companies. That’s not the way that it works because you won’t have the resources to carry it through and you’ll just end up wasting time and money.
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