If you’ve ever worked in an office, you’re probably familiar with the inefficiencies that come with it.
For starters, endless appointments waste your time while providing little benefit. Sometimes, a two-paragraph email would already suffice instead of a two-hour conference.
Consecutive meetings waste time.
Maybe you’re always looking for results and deadlines. No more. Perhaps you’re always looking for results. Meetings are awful. Planned time lost must be made up for in crunch time. Each new conference attendee increases the inefficiency.
Business Project Management Practices Have the Potential to Ruin a Startup
Due to the intricacy of large companies and the many layers of administration that everything must pass through, it is difficult to prevent this degree of operational inefficiency.
It is not lethal for businesses since they often have a well-defined product match. The company’s direction is apparent, and it has sufficient means to cover for its poor use of them.
Though, this is opposite to the fact of startup projects:
To begin, companies are determining their product-market fit, a procedure that demands tremendous adaptability. You must be ready to make the correct decision nearly immediately. While corporations strive to prevent errors, startups strive to produce them quickly and cheaply since preventing them is unrealistic. The best way to determine if your latest concept version is a solid one is to execute it, thus pausing at each step to verify that it is the correct one is counter-productive.
Additionally, startups have limited assets, and squandering any of them may be catastrophic. In the first phases of startups, spending hours of the founders’ time may equal losing 50% of the organization’s production for the day. So, what is then the practical project management approach for startups?
Lean and Agile Project Management Practices are Ideal for Startups
Efficiency in communication – attending conferences should be reserved for formal strategy discussions backed by facts.
Project group chat, for example, must be done faster. However, top-level assessment meetings are critical for startups because they must undergo frequent revisions and possibly swivels. And as such, we need to address operational concerns since it can obscure the project’s long-term path.
Creative collaboration through cloud folders is essential.
Using shared cloud folders and cloud project management software can help keep data organized and accessible to team members.
Finally, project management methods must be agile. Market feedback requires the team to abandon activities, concepts, and even entire projects quickly. Due to limited resources, the team must also prioritize effectively. It’s OK to allow 80% of “nice to have” items while completing 100% of essential tasks.
Scrum and Kanban are oftentimes the most effective project management approach for startups
In this regard, agile project management methods like Scrum and Kanban are often the most effective project management approach for startups. One must not be a fanatic. For a small early project where people work part-time, Scrum’s regular standup meetings may be redundant.
Finally, while the specifics of your project management techniques must be tailored to your project’s needs, the fundamental concepts must be adhered to. Your project management software should be flexible. If not, you may fail.
