Helpful tips on project management, free investor readiness assessment & much more...
CTO Advice Of The Month
Managing projects is a notoriously difficult thing to do. There are many articles and books on the topic, certifications that you can take and of course, there are hundreds of consultants and experts that are willing to help you for a fee.
This week I talked with Tim Davies, the co-founder of Projekt Rising, a company that runs projects on behalf of other companies. Their model is interesting in that no matter the size of project or sector, they use a proven methodology that they have used over many years to ensure successful delivery.
Not all companies will have the budget to outsource projects so here are some basic pointers to help you when you are looking to manage your own internal projects:
Ensure you have a clear project mandate i.e. why are you undertaking the project, what are the goals you want to achieve, what are the implications to the business if the project is successful / unsuccessful
Make sure you stick to the mandate: as time goes by, it can be easy to lose sight of why a project starts so make sure that you refer to the mandate regularly to ensure you are still on track
Changes happen but understand why they are occurring: business environments change and if you're running a long term project then some of the goals you were looking to achieve may no longer be relevant. Change within a project is OK but make sure that the change is necessary to achieve your goal and is not a "nice to have"
Create ownership within your business with regards to the project: make sure that those that are involved in the project have real responsibilities and understand the consequences of them not delivering
Breakdown the tasks into manageable pieces of work: there is often a tendency to generalise when creating project tasks - be specific, the more specific the task breakdown, the easier it will be for you to see if that task is really a priority
Tie rewards to milestones: no matter if you are using internal or external resources, ensure that any rewards or payments you might be making are tied to key milestones that need to be delivered
Monitor your project regularly and expose issues or blockers early
These are just some high level things you can do to ensure the success of your project, we have many more tips that we can give so feel free to reach out if you would like some help managing projects
Founder's Spotlight
In this month's edition of Founder's Spotlight, we talk to Tim Davies, Founder of Projekt Rising.
Tim talks about providing project management as a service, how taking away the pains of project management can help a business in many ways and much more..
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Bhairav Patel
Managing Partner
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