Project Management

Project Management Tips for Launching a Startup

Ancient Romans had a saying that a leader who is a lion has the ability to turn his recruits into lions as well. Roughly translated, you should never underestimate the power of project management when it comes to large projects.

Nonetheless, managing a massive project can be a particularly difficult task, especially when you are new in the business yourself. With this in mind, here are few project management tips for launching your first startup.

Start On Time

Regardless of how humble your initial idea may seem; you would be surprised at how quickly things tend to get complicated. The earlier you start with your planning process, the greater are your odds of pulling all of this off.

As a business owner, you will soon see that running a startup is not a 9 to 5 job. Your work starts when you wake up in the morning and it ends when you go to sleep. Well, if this is so, why not give yourself a bit of a head start.

Set Your Milestones 

One of the greatest things about being new in the business is a fact that your own personal assessment of how things are going will not be that accurate. In order to rectify this, you might need to set some milestones along the way. For example, on the first day you need to: a) develop a prototype of your product; b) sign a lease for the office; c) test new markets; d) release a product or at least start the very first round of seed capital funding. As time goes by, your milestones need to become a bit more ambitious, so you will be able to measure them in daily growth rate percentages and minimum viable products.

Monitor Your Staff

Even though there are some exceptions to this general rule, most startups operate on a skeleton crew. If your sales team consists of five people, a slacker will make 20 percent of your entire workforce. This is why you need to closely monitor your staff and see who is really trying and who is not. In the first case, be sure to follow up with an adequate reward ( the one you can afford), in the latter situation do not hesitate to fire or at least penalize persons in question.

Utilize Technology

As mentioned, your manpower in the early stages of your startup will not be as impressive, which means that you will have to look for other ways to boost your efficiency. One of them lies in boosting your own productivity through technology. You see, there are a lot of tools that can help you manage your startup at greater success.

So, if you are still wondering which one of them might be perfect for your specific needs, you might want to check out a project management tools comparison and look at their individual features. Keep in mind that there is no right or wrong here, only right or wrong for your business.

Get Some Help 

A lot of people simply love to micro-manage everything. The bigger your company gets the more difficult will become. People who plan far in advance tend to get someone to help them in these administrative tasks from day one.

In this way, you will not only unburden yourself but also groom someone to one day to assume your position (or at least a similar one). In the case where you are reluctant towards the idea of training your future competition, it might be much safer to simply hire a virtual assistant.

Do Not Give Up

Even with the aforementioned five tips, managing the launch of a startup will be a difficult job. Still, the more burden you manage to get off your shoulders through these five steps, the more focused you will be on the tasks at hand. Furthermore, starting a business may be a daunting task, but it still steps one of this incredibly long journey. Exhausting yourself during a launch is bound to backfire sooner or later, so it is always a good idea to save your energy for battles to come.



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