Why should we manage a project? You might think. Can’t we get a group of smart people and give them a list of tasks and a deadline and assume that they can deliver the results at the end of the timeline without anyone managing the project?
The answer to the above questions is yes, If, someone in that group of people stepped up and understood that they could not deliver the tasks as expected without clearly understanding, accurately organizing and tracking the progress.
Project management is not only for business activities. It applies to your personal life as well. For example, if you are throwing a birthday party; you need to start with the guest list, food, and drinks, who is having food allergies, decoration, music, and so forth. Most importantly, when to get things done before the start time of the birthday party. Most of the time, if you manage these tasks well, you’d be done before the guests arrived. But I am sure most of the time we are still not ready and probably got help from your guests to finish the tasks up so you can get the party going.
There are no significant consequences for a birthday party. But now imagine getting your startup product done on time to onboard your first customer, who you have been building a relationship with, and working on closing the sale for over six months. Can you afford it to get delayed? Probably not. If you don't close the deal, you may lose the opportunity to launch the product.
Over the last ten years, we have invested in training our team on new technologies, best practices, and project management. All our project managers are learning from the Project Management Institute (PMI), so they understand the science of project management. Additionally, we have invested in state of the art tools to manage projects at Venturit. Together, this helps us build cross-functional teams from different cultures and countries working together to deliver a project on time and budget.
We decided to explain how we manage projects at Venturit in five series of blog posts. This post is part one of the series, and it covers “what is project management?”.
The Secret to a successful project is understanding the scope of the project. Often the scope is overlooked, hence why many projects tend to fall apart, which results in missing deadlines and milestones.
Scope:
When you take on a project, it is a must to dig deep and find every single detail about the product at hand— understand the problem that your product is trying to solve. Once you have understood the scope of the project in detail, research for its potential competitors, find methods to solve the problem better. Competitor Analysis is vital in having a competitive advantage over any product that is already out in the market.
Team:
Now that you know your product like the back of your hand, lets plans resources, get your team together. Your team needs to be on the same page at all times, any change in the course of action; your team must be notified. If you fail to do so, well, then you are in for some unmet deadlines.
Project Planning:
Is your team up to speed now? Ok, time to plan your project roadmap, where you will have many Milestones to signify the completion of phases allocated to the project. Sprint planning in between phases is essential to break tasks down to smaller chunks. Usually, a typical sprint is two weeks long, reason being, it is easy to fix errors at the 2-week point rather than a more prolonged period where it might not be as easy to fix any bugs.
Maintenance:
As we keep meeting our deadlines one by one and completing are project milestones, you will soon be at the end of your project. Your tasks might be all ticked out, and all your milestones have been met. But, this is NOT the end of your project. Why? Simple, there is always more room for improvement and growth. Now, you have to keep maintaining and researching for the next innovative feature you want to implement.
Sustainability:
For a sustainable project, it is key to keep evolving with time because the next hot product is around the corner, and you need to ensure you are ahead of the curve at all times.
In the next post, we will explain how we adopted the Agile Software Development Process into our project management.
Have an idea you have been waiting to create? Come meet with us; we can help turn your idea into the next big thing!
