5 Simple Tips For Successful Startup Project Management
Proper planning prevents poor performance.
This is something all startup founders have heard probably once or twice before.
But what does this mean, exactly?
When it comes to project management, there are many issues that hurt startups and corporations alike. From communication to keeping the project on track to budget issues — there are plenty of ways for a project to just go off the rails.
Checkmarks become unclear, KPIs lose their meaning, and everyone seems to be doing their own thing.
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Sounds familiar?
Unfortunately, this is all too common in the startup world. The most common factor behind a project management failure has to do with having unclear goals, at a 37% rate (source).
There are several factors to consider for successful project management. These usually include internal elements (things you can control) and external elements (things you can’t control).
By taking a few steps of precaution and careful planning, you can successfully lead your project to success. That is why in this guide we’ll be looking at some of the internal factors that you can control to lead your team to victory.
1. Be consistent in communication
Consistent and clear communication is key.
Regardless if you’re a project manager or if you’re the founder of your startup — it’s important for everyone to be on the same page.
Keep a solid communication plan and stick to it. As the project manager, you’ll most likely be doing a little bit of everything. So, it’s important that everyone on the team knows where to find you, and each other.
From in-person meetings to video conferences to quick questions — make sure your communication tools are consistent and clear. Ideally, you should have one specific platform with a clear purpose for each.
For example, most startups go with Zoom or Skype for video calls and Slack or Microsoft Teams for quick real-time chatting purposes.
When deciding on a platform, make sure everyone knows what it is and how to use it.
To do this, you should pick according to your requirements. For example, if you want your chat platform to have an in-built to-do list (Is it cross-platform? Shareable? Easy to use?) you might want to go with something like HipChat.
Once you decide on a platform, make sure the whole team is in there and each department has their own channel and a general channel as well.
2. Choose an appropriate project management methodology
As a startup, if you want your project operations to run smoothly, you might want to pick a project management methodology that best suits your specific project requirements.
This step will likely depend on your project, your requirements, and your team. So, your mileage might vary here, but it’s still important to zoom out and get a bigger overview of your project.
Choosing the right methodology approach can largely benefit your project and increase productivity levels altogether. But only if you pick the right one.
But things aren’t as simple as that.
There is no one-size-fits-all methodology. Each methodology has its own distinct pros and cons, based on your project. As a result, you should pick your project management methodology based on your requirements.
So, first, take a step back and evaluate some of the main factors. Things like:
- Team size.
- Deadlines.
- Core and startup values.
- Any constraints.
- Task flexibility.
- And more.
Essentially, the idea is to get an overview of the project tasks, and how you plan to get them done.
Let’s say you have a sequence of tasks that need to be done in order to move on to the next one — then you might want to consider the Waterfall approach.
If, however, your team tackles the list of tasks in cycles (planning, executing, evaluating, repeat) — then you might want to consider the Agile approach.
Of course, there are many other factors and methodologies to consider. But when choosing a project management methodology, you should look at your end-goal, and how you plan to get there.
3. Encourage involvement
This is something that should be present in your startup as well as your project management approach.
Once you have your communications channels all set up, a clear project management methodology chosen and all your goals set — make sure all your employees are involved. Even if they disagree, the idea is to encourage them to share their views and opinions. Constant and effective communication improves work performance and helps make the project go faster.
In short: they shouldn’t be afraid to speak up.
To do this, start with the basics — your organizational culture. You should develop a work culture so great that instead of employees dreading to come in each morning, they should find it difficult to leave.
Your work culture, in turn, is a reflection of your core beliefs. Culture guides employee behavior and helps make them feel at home.
A better mood correlates to better performance.
This is why culture matters. It sustains employee enthusiasm and brings your startup principles to life. Essentially, it’s the glue that keeps everything together.
When managing a project, the culture will become a self-selecting mechanism for the employees to live up to.
To bring it back to project management, once you have a solid culture where people are encouraged to speak up and get involved — the ideation process (and the whole project) will go a lot smoother.
4. What gets measured gets managed
Think KPIs (key performance indicators).
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If you want your project to gain traction and eventually scale up, you need to be tracking and measuring the right things.
Hitting your project check marks can only get you so far. But tracking and measuring the metrics along the way can help you optimize your startup for the future.
Could things have gone more efficiently? How much money could you have saved? What was the growth rate like?
At the end of the day, if you want to know whether a certain project or a task was successful or not — you need to look at the data and the numbers.
Planning is only the beginning. If you truly want to measure progress, you need to measure the specific key performance indicator behind the measurement units.
Once you decide your key metrics for each project requirement, you can start tracking them.
This usually involves some number crunching from the financial side of things. While that might sound complicated, it’s an essential way to get ahead and see if you’re on the right track.
Don’t neglect collecting data as it can also help you out in the future. And be consistent with it as well. Tracking your process as you go can give you better feedback based on your
established goals and milestones.
One of the most important tasks of a project manager is measuring progress on each task. If you want to stay on top of what’s happening in your workforce, make sure you’re hitting your goals and have the data to back it up.
5. Prevention is better than cure
Finally, if the worst comes to worst, you should have a backup plan in case of an emergency.
And what’s the best backup plan? Prevention.
The biggest problem startup project managers face is inadequate planning within their scope. The only way to manage a scope in advance is to know what it is before the project even starts.
Many projects fail this way by going past the deadlines or exceeding the budget in one way or another. To avoid this, you should have everything planned out in advance — including the ins and outs of the project.
So, define your project and know your scope in terms of project goals, objectives, benefits, possible risks, and more. Once done, be sure to communicate this with everyone involved (from the employees to the stakeholders).
But, of course, you can’t plan everything. This is just impossible. Especially as a startup. You never know what unexpected problem might pop up tomorrow.
While you should be prepared for most problems (things you can expect at least. What will you do if you run out of money, for example?), there are just some things you can’t plan for.
What happens then?
In such a case, you have no other choice but to be flexible. Even though no two projects are ever alike, being able to adapt to new situations on the fly comes from experience.
So, the next time you start planning for a startup project, don’t latch onto a specific way of doing things. Instead, plan for flexibility and take changes into consideration in case something happens.
In other words, while you should have a plan B, it’s just as important to be able to come up with a plan C on the spot.
Wrapping up
All in all, successful startup project management is no easy task.
And there are only so many things you can plan for. While solid communication and great startup culture are the foundation of smart project manWrapping up
agement, there are many other things you need to take into consideration as well.
Once you set up clear communication channels and make sure everyone is on the same page, it’s essential to track the progress of your project management approach. From thereon, you can make decisions based on the data.
But ultimately, working in a startup usually means having to deal with unexpected problems. Problems you can’t exactly plan for, try as you might.
As such, in the worst case scenario, you should have a fallback plan and a flexible work approach.
At the end of the day, there is no single project management tool or approach to last you throughout the whole project. It’s only through a combination of a number of management techniques and the right culture that you can successfully execute a project from start to finish.
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Author Bio:
Uwe is the founder of online invoicing software InvoiceBerry. Small businesses and sole traders can create, send and manage their invoices, quotes and credit notes with the tool or use the free invoice templates to get started. In his free time Uwe travels the world and enjoys experiencing different cultures.1.
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