Growing a small business into a bigger company takes a lot of work. You won’t have unlimited time and resources at your disposal and success depends heavily on your businesses ability to pivot strategy quickly to exploit opportunities and avoid risk. 

Project managers will have to use every skill available to prevent squandering valuable time and maximize the value of what few resources they possess. Doing this requires an entrepreneurial drive, discipline, and a structured approach to project management. 

You need have a robust and comprehensive business strategy in place. Should developers lose sight of overall business objectives, they’ll lose valuable time and sustain extra, unneeded costs. Done correctly, project management assists your small company remain on schedule and ensures you see a return on investment.  

The following tips are based on tried-and-tested PRINCE2 principles. PRINCE2 is the world-leading project management strategy and offers project management solutions for organizations in every industry, regardless of size. If you’d like to know more about the PRINCE2 method, make sure to see our blog at whatisprince2.net. 

Establish a project’s purpose and scope

Don’t make the error of trying to tackle every phase of project management at the same time.  

Successful project management includes a systematic approach to problem-solving. Identify specific concerns and deduce how that specific problem might be dealt with. Gather your development teams and ask how they might deal with the issue. Once you’ve found a solution that accounts for available time and resources, implement your plan. 

Make sure not to fall into the trap of endlessly expanding tasks. If, in the process of solving one problem, you identify several other risks or opportunities. Finish the task at hand first, then create and plan an entirely new step to deal with emerging business concerns. Doing so keeps your projects narrow and focused. Mindlessly chasing each new lead can lead to serious problems later in development. 

Set schedules and budgets for each project step

Producing a clear schedule for tasks can aid in determining how much time a project will require to accomplish and how many resources will need to be invested to ensure its’ success. Project managers must be able to create a budget plan which includes an estimation of the materials, labor hours and tools which will be needed for specific tasks within the job.

Knowing how your industry works and incorporating this knowledge into a comprehensive budget plan will keep costs in check. It will also enable your developers to figure out the order in which tasks need to complete, and at which points a little inter-departmental cooperation may be necessary.   

Keep your teams informed

Once planning is completed and development has commenced, the most integral task of project management is keeping employees up to speed with all project information, tasks, status updates, and schedules. Making sure every staff member is on the same page will avoid bottlenecks, task redundancy and confusion. 

There are a lot of online tools to help expedite the process. At the very least you’ll need to employ some form of communication tool. Emails just won’t cut it. Most dedicated project management software will allow development teams to create asset dumps and work collaboratively on tasks. 

Don’t forget the importance of documentation. It may seem laborious, but if things go wrong, keeping notes can help you track down the source of problems and can also help you prevent similar issues from impeding future development. 

Reflect on development 

When your project is complete, make sure you examine the end results to determine how your objective achieved and where issue occurred in development. Evaluate whether the project progressed according to strategy or if any changes in strategy were necessary. Discuss your budget and note whether your actual expenses matched your planned expenses. Speak with your teams and ask if your timeline were realistic and whether the goals you set were achievable within time and budget constraints. 

Doing this final evaluation will help you better understand what aspects promoted your success or prevented you from achieving your goals in any way. This will help you understand what adjustments you must make to improve your methods in future projects.

By Sarah DelRosario