Deadlines Creeping Up On You? Make A Difference By Simplifying Your Work Process

These 3 factors are essential for the success of your project

Over the course of my career, I’ve seen blinding differences in the ways that various companies approach project management and delivery, but 3 key things have stood out in every instance: simplicity, consistency, and speed. These 3 factors appeared to be fundamental to the success of a project with many roadblocks eventually tracing back to a problem in one of these areas. So let’s do what it says in the tin and simplify it all in this post so you can see if your organization can make any adjustments to enhance your project management process as a result.

Why’d Ya Have To Go And Make Things So Complicated?

I can tell you one of the massive differences that can occur between a small startup and a bigger corporation right off the bat. Bear in mind that this won’t apply in every instance, and I’m simply talking from experience, but I didn’t have the time to knock out a peer-reviewed report before writing this blog post. So with that in mind, let’s take into account that this difference in project management processes can of course apply to companies within both types of organizations also.

And the difference is this: too much talking the talk before walking the walk. Do you really need to discuss your next move for 6 months before actually getting started? Is there any single step you can take right now to get the ball rolling? Imagine how much time you’d save by doing a lot less ruminating and a lot more doing.

In a growing startup, everything is actionable. You need to get things done and you need to get things done now, so you find the most efficient way of doing so by default. Goals are identified, actions/tasks are set out and assigned, and deadlines are applied to take the process from start to finish. It’s methodical, but that doesn’t mean it’s not messy. We’re human, after all. And in a startup, a heck of a lot of things get started that never actually get finished, but they get started. The point of the project management process is to identify what those things are sooner rather than later and quickly move on to plan B.

Things move fast. Employees and freelancers are working long hours, business owners basically never switch off, and everyone knows they need to work as efficiently as possible by always focusing on the most important thing on their task list at a particular time. In this project management process, the focus is on getting the work done rather than on the time spent doing the work. And this is where the discrepancy between this style of project management and that of larger scale multi-departmental companies comes into play.

When a company grows it will naturally expand into various departments and teams that all have their own systems in place. In addition, the number of employees grows and the personal investment of employees in the company is arguably lesser than that of the founder and startup employee mentality, as they can’t directly see the impact of their work and therefore don’t feel a direct responsibility or indeed pride in the outcome. New roles and management structures are put in place, new departments are created, and the link between many team members and the front line is severed. Instead of focusing on the customer first, the company starts to focus more on processes. And this is when things start to get tricky. This is when you see “busy work” start happening. But you’re thinking it’s great to be busy, right? You want your staff to be busy, it means they’re working hard. And you’re right, they’re working hard. But are they working on the most important thing?

“Complexity is the “silent killer” of growth, creeping in unnoticed as companies expand into new geographies and lines of business.” — Ron Kermisch and Jed Fallis

This is when project management processes start to form cracks, especially if they weren’t very solid to begin with. Deliberation between different departments often means an increase in non-essential meetings to talk about what needs to be done without leaving with an actual plan in place to get the work done. Employees can lose touch with why they do what they do and what they want to accomplish and get stuck in a cycle of repeating the same processes day in and day out even if they don’t work. The “startup” ideas are still there, but instead of being executed they get lost in a haze of brainstorming sessions and departmental meetings, and paperwork sign-offs until they’ve simply become irrelevant by the time they get the go-ahead. The manpower increases, but the growth is stunted by the complicated task management system the project management process evolves into.

Project Manage Your Project Management Process

You want your company to grow, but you don’t want to leave the systems that helped it to grow behind. And that’s something you need to watch out for because it can happen very easily if you don’t have a clearly outlined process in place that remains consistent and can be adapted to meet your needs throughout your growth. The best way to manage this from day 1 is to have a universally effective project management platform that can ensure everyone in your company is working as effectively and efficiently as possible at each stage of its development. There’s no point in having 5 different project management systems all doing the same thing but not delivering any actual results at the end of the day. It adds an unnecessary complication to your work process that will both frustrate and slow down your team. But if you’re only getting on board now, you can still get ahead of things by creating a singular system that works from where you’re at now and can evolve with your business as it grows.

The Buckets project management platform can help you to create this system with a zero-training environment that will enable you to build a successful project management process for your company at large, with minimal downtime spent “learning” how to use the highly intuitive features within the platform. Rather than having x3 daily conference calls about what to do next (potentially eating up 2 hours of your day), your team can simply create systems in Buckets that give everyone a clear roadmap to follow and instead retain those conference calls for more essential discussions. Want to brainstorm? Engage with other team members by setting up a Card in the designated Buckets Project to outline and provide documentation for your idea and invite others to comment to offer their input. Get the plans laid out in Buckets and then arrange a meeting, if it’s even necessary at this point, to discuss it all and you’ll find that your time is spent much more effectively.

Identify The Time Wasters And Remove Them

Once you have your project management system in place, your initial setup will likely still have some hangers-on from your previous efforts. So you need to sit down and assess what stays and what goes. Look at your Buckets Cards (tasks), can any be merged into one? Are you repeating discussions about the same activities in one Card as another? Where are the roadblocks? What steps in your road towards project delivery slow you down every time? Can you improve them or can you eradicate them?

“If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.” — Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Low-value activities such as presentations that need to be reviewed more than once before being performed, or items that need multiple sign-offs/ approval to move forward are examples of items you may want to remove to improve the speed and efficiency of your project management process.

Moving Forward

As you start to streamline and simplify your workflows, automate tasks where possible, and engage your team with consistent communication and feedback, you’ll start to see your project delivery times speed up. Navigating cross-departmental communications (and miscommunications!) will become much easier, greater work visibility will improve productivity, and any unnecessary tasks will be removed. Rather than having lost the founder’s mentality that once drove your business forward, you will also instill it in each member of your team by giving them clear, visible, and achievable goals to work towards with tangible outcomes that they can take pride in.

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