Bantter Blog
Start-ups are spearheading innovation in today’s business world. Entrepreneurs are taking on well-established corporate giants in every industry and shaking up the market. They consistently offer a more lean, responsive, innovative alternative to their more established competitors. And in this battle, it’s the consumers and investors who are always the winners.
Start-ups start small and intentionally remain small. But, just like ants that can carry up to 5000 times their body weight, today’s start-ups carry a surprisingly large workload. And the only way a small business can carry a big workload, is through efficiency and high productivity.
Enter good management.
Time management. People management. Project management.
As a start-up, if you’re in the process of choosing the right project management system, or looking to migrate from the one you’re using, remember to choose a system that allows you to:
- Define your goals and measures of success
- Break each project into a list of deliverables/tasks
- Define scope, budget, and time through proper baselines
- Identify project risks
- Set up progress reporting
- Set project milestones
- Assign tasks based on team members’ calendars
- Visualize project data for stakeholders
- Easily communicate with everyone on the project
Alongside this, you’ll need to decide what project management methodology works best for your start-up. If your projects involve tasks that need to be completed in sequence (i.e., you need to complete one before moving on to the next one), then the Waterfall Approach is ideal for your team. On the other hand, if your team works on tasks in cycles (like planning, executing, analyzing, repeat), then the Agile Approach is the way to go. There are a few more aspects to consider, so read up more about these two approaches before setting course.
Start-ups offer many opportunities for project management to be effective.
● Quick decisions with big impact
● Short development lifecycle, which means things get done fast
● Easy to adapt or pivot
● Fluid processes
On the other hand, start-ups have to overcome a few project management hurdles too.
● Team members wear many hats and responsibilities are not always clearly defined
● Weak bargaining power in terms of timelines and budget
● Shortcuts create legacy problems
Having an efficiency-inducing project management system will help you effectively manage the day-to-day tasks, while creating the right communication and productivity systems that become the norm as your start-up grows. We know that every start-up juggles the desire to invest in the right tools that will hold them in good stead both now and in the future, while being constrained by limited resources. Which is why, at Gantter, we give you a 30-day free trial to explore the full range of our project management capabilities. And if you join the other 3 million Gantter users worldwide, it won’t burn a hole in your pocket. At just $5/month/user, Gantter is being used by students, faculty, individual professionals, start-ups and entire corporate divisions. Try it yourself!