Many small business owners spend a lot of time in meeting after meeting, never getting anything accomplished. If you really want to stop wasting your time and start completing your projects it is important to understand what exactly project management entails.
According to Wikipedia, Project Management includes, “… Planning, organizing, securing, managing, leading and controlling resources to achieve specific goals.” By reading the definition, it’s easy to identify areas where time wasting is more likely to occur.
While you cannot manage time, since time is a finite resource, it is important to identify potential time wasters and eliminate them as much as possible.
Some examples of potential time wasters for project management are:
Meetings
Instead of having planning sessions and meetings, empower each team leader to develop a plan of action on their own. Incorporating a Wiki or some other type of cloud-based project management system can be a far more effective form of collaboration than a face-to-face meeting.
Not Having a System
Setting up a project management system that enables asynchronous collaboration is especially effective if team members are contractors, or freelancers, who reside in different time zones.
For example, creating a video message for members to see whenever they wish, allowing comments within a certain time frame, and then finalizing issues in this manner allows for far more freedom for all parties.
Using Meeting Time Well
If you must have face-to-face meetings address issues that are important to the project’s success such as risk, opportunity, and issues of confusion.
Asking each team member to give a status report is a complete waste of time during a face-to-face meeting. Tasks and status updates can be addressed by using task focused systems such as a cloud-based project management system where each member can check off completed tasks, or provide status updates in writing.
Getting Personal at Meetings
If an issue is personal, or only affects one person, the meeting is not the place to handle it either. Putting online project management tools to full use can avoid most, if not all, face-to-face meetings, but sometimes it is important to have a one-on-one meeting with certain individuals. If you must have any meetings have an agenda, and stick to it.
Reading everything you can read about project management can go really far in helping your business achieve success.
Project management involves so many issues that it is easy to get overwhelmed. You may not even realize that you are managing projects every single day.
Once you realize that you are managing projects you’ll become better organized and less reactionary in completing the projects that need to be completed to run your business. Learning Simple Project Management for Small Business from this eBook which is completely free to download without providing any data whatsoever can help you get started managing projects more effectively. You can download it and share it with your entire organization if you wish.
Image © Ben Chams, © Minerva Studio – Fotolia.com
