Every day a new start-up business is being launched by people who have had enough of working for someone else and decided to try living their ideas as they start their entrepreneurial journey. It sounds like a relief, but it isn’t easy, and it isn’t for everyone.
Entrepreneur stands for a specific mindset, genius ideas and being drawn to innovation and opportunity. In this age of digital business and information overload, it also means being capable of staying extremely focused on things that will actually help your business grow, instead of wasting time on constant learning without any real action taking. Being a successful entrepreneur requires a lot of courage and proper management follow-up.
How do these two combine?
When entrepreneurs are aware of the idea, only living it and nurturing it is not enough to keep their business from failure. But, if entrepreneurship and project management go hand in hand there’s no doubt about business’ success. Because making ideas isn’t the hardest part, but keeping them.
Successful project management
Think quality. It means making sure to make the right mix of planning, work, energy, controlling and time it will take to ensure your business growth. Project management is often left out of business growth strategies by mistake when believing that it is just for big companies, when actually it doesn’t have to do anything with the size of the business as long as the right kind of project management methodologies and tools are being applied. Project management adds value to implementation of the idea and keeps organization on the right course.
Planning
After all the brainstorming and identifying concepts of project idea, this is the most challenging step and should be taken with precision given that it is crucial to diminishing project risks. This phase covers:
- requirements
- scheduling and milestones
- resources
- defying the desired results
- approach
- and cost.
It also outlines specifically what work needs to be done, how, when and by whom it would be realized. After naming players, making sure they know all the steps and having them confirm they understand everything, cuts down chances of misunderstanding in the later stages of project. Also, using project management tools ease things up, and provide a smoother project flow.
Keeping work on track and providing direction
As the project is starting to unfold, it’s important to follow the pace of each segment and how it’s relative to its completion date. Scheduling periodic discussions and keeping everybody up to date is a must, given that there will be changes and reassignments on the project. Keeping everything documented plays a major role here.
Once again, it’s important to stay focused – since entrepreneurs can see opportunity in many different things, and their creativity seems infinite jumping from one idea to another, it may be a problem working on just one project, and losing touch with it along the way, may lead to projects failure. This is exactly where project management processes are needed, because they provide structure, and insights on the impact of one’s efforts.
Keeping control and leading the project doesn’t mean dictatorship and having to manage everything, but instead being aware of how the project is growing, monitoring, watching for troublemakers, and sustaining team’s morale, along with being open to advice and ideas from others who work on the project.
Nurturing work-life balance
Major ideas and projects flow often consume a lot of entrepreneurs’ time which leads to overlooking their personal life, family and health. Being successful also means having time for nurturing relationships, exercise, intellectual growth and other important aspects of life. So another goal of project management is to take advantage of the framework and schedule in time for personal life.
So basically what entrepreneurs get through project management is:
- a well organized system
- adequate time managing
- productivity maintenance
- high level efficiency
- better work-life balance.
Conclusion
In summary, concepts of project management can be considered a winning strategy for entrepreneurs whether they’re a long time players or fresh starters. It helps in gaining well structured quality knowledge, establishing and growing business, enabling flexibility and finally reaching desired goals.