THE MOST BORING TOPIC EVER?

Time to talk about project management and your business.

Don’t  Yawn!

This is more than relevant (hopefully!) and will help make your business great.

So grab a coffee and let’s proceed.

Outside of the traditional retail outlet or manufacturing business, most of us are engaged in the provision of client services whether as an individual or part of a bigger business.

Accountants, engineers, designers, florists, landscapers, software engineers, architects, web designers, marketers.. the one thing that they all have in common is that they are all project managers.

(Have a sip of that coffee and keep going – you’re doing great!).

They don’t often call themselves project managers or indeed describe what they do as project management.

But it is!

A florist as a project manager? Get real.

Ok, I grant you that the daily operations of creating a beautiful bunch of flowers is not project management. The flowers for someone’s big day are a project though.

A florist meets the clients, designs the flowers to be used, gets the design approved, goes to the venue and gets it all setup and gets a sign-off from a client once the job is done. During this activity, the florist will encounter as many problems or hiccups that can be found in what is deemed to be the more traditional description of project management in IT or engineering.

Think about your own service delivery – especially those of you who don’t call the work a project. Does it have these standard elements (or something close)?

• Client engagement,
• planning and design,
• creating something from that design,
• giving that “something” over to the client for approval and acceptance,
• closing off the piece of work and
• getting paid.

If this describes you then you are a project manager and what you do is project management.

(Another quick coffee sip – fair play, you’ve stayed awake this long – nearly there!)

So what you ask?

So what indeed! Now you understand that what you do is project management, then there are lessons to be learnt from traditional project management that you can apply to your business.

Why? Because the processes and checks/balances that project managers put in place, when not stifled by poor business management practices, will help you deliver a better project for your clients.

Project management will give you the capability to honestly track and manage your projects so you can better understand how effectively you deliver and continuously improve.

Most service business managers don’t need professional training to be a project manager. The trick is to learn and understand the basic principles of project management that apply to your particular business. Any more than that creates unnecessary overhead.

There is a huge amount of detail to be read on project management. Take some time out and see how you could apply some of the learning to your business.

So go on all you newly identified project managers, be great in your project delivery!

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Photo(s): @John, DavidW , Navicore

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