Does Project Management Matter for Your Small Business?

As a small business owner, you face unique challenges in managing your daily tasks, unexpected challenges, and growth goals. It can be overwhelming to juggle everything and keep track of progress. In this article, we explore how project management can help you organize your work, stay on track, and achieve your goals.

The Challenges of Managing Small Business Tasks

The way that businesses deal with tasks might be similar to how Dr. Rob Gilbert deals with nerves. He said: “It’s all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.” Tasks can feel like clouds of butterflies, each a singular entity flying around out there. It feels overwhelming at worst, and a bit scattered at best.

This is where projects usually enter the picture.

The Role of Projects in Small Business

Projects provide frameworks for creating a focus on the outcome you want and organizing the big-work items into strings of tasks.

Another way to think about it is to imagine that your tasks are like kindergarten children that you need to move from room A to room B. It's relatively easy to manage two children, but when you have more than that solutions start to get clunky and/or difficult to manage. How do you keep your kindergarteners from going ‘rogue’?

Tasks in your business can be really similar to kids - they develop lives of their own and if they aren't monitored carefully, they wander off.

What’s the common solution to managing all these little independent variables?

A rope.

The teacher holds a rope and asks each child to hold onto it while they walk. Each child has a place and is connected to the others and they all reach their destination together.

The project is the rope that gives each task a place and separates it from your operational work. It helps you understand your progress and keep track of your activities.

The Problems with Projects: Overcoming Project Challenges

There are common challenges with project management that small business owners face.

1. They drift (taking too long)

2. They don’t get finished (they get abandoned - pushed out by other things)

3. The experience can feel very disorganized with disappointing results

If you’ve ever thought, “There has to be a better way to do things”, then read on.

Let's explore them and how a project manager can help

Drifting Projects & How a Project Manager Can Help

One of the most common challenges with projects is that they drift. A project “drifts” when it stops making progress toward the goal. This can happen for two main reasons, first the objectives are unclear and second the project fails to respond to unexpected delays.

Unclear Objectives

Projects are born out of a mix of need and inspiration. The spark hits and it’s easy to want to start right away and figure things out as we go. We start with an ‘idea’ of what we want (or don’t), and a general direction but few measurable objectives or clear goals.

Here’s the thing:

It’s hard to get specific results from vague requirements.

Starting a project without clear goals and objectives is like setting off on a road trip without a map. Sure, you might have an idea of where you want to go, but without a clear plan, you are likely to get lost, waste time and resources, and miss out on valuable opportunities.

What is the antidote to drifting projects?

Start with clear goals

Articulating exactly what you want the outcome to be and what you want it to do for your business informs all the approaches you’ll use to reach the goal. A good project manager is invaluable as you do this work - she can help ensure that the activities you’re considering is anchored to your strategy and supports your goals.

Use the right rope

There are all kinds of different project management frameworks and tools and each one has its uses. Each approach is suited for particular types of projects. A good PM brings tools, techniques, and experiences that can save you time and frustration and put your work on the fast track to completion

Regularly measure your work

Evaluate what you’re doing to make sure that you are still on course. It is key to make sure that the work you are doing will result in the value that you’re aiming to achieve.

Unexpected Delays

No one likes delays. Some are avoidable and others aren’t. A project that feels like it is dragging on forever presents some real risks to your ultimate success - including loss of motivation, declining morale, and paying for “re-work” (redoing work you’ve already done). We’ve all been there.

Did you know that there are things entrepreneurs do that can actually cause delays? It’s easy to favour a bias toward action and jump into projects.

Planning looks like a lot of work for little return.

But “quick-start” projects often lead to more problems down the line, including “surprise” red tape, that can waste time and money. Discovering that the work can’t proceed until a missed step is rectified can break a project’s rhythm and cause it to lose momentum.

That's why project management is essential for any business. By putting realistic plans in place, you can ensure that the work is manageable, people are available to do the work and have what they need. Good project management helps make sure that the right things are done at the right time so that you and your team can keep moving.

Unfinished Projects & How a Project Manager Can Help

Delays are costly, not only in terms of time and money, but also in terms of morale.

It’s easy to fear that what starts as a delay will end in an incomplete project. Too many “incompletes” can create a belief in your business that “at business x, we never really finish what we start.” People will reserve their judgement on new initiatives, holding back their effort and commitment while waiting to see if this is something “serious” or just another idea that will “blow over”. No one wants to associate too closely with failure or failed projects.

And this leads to the first reason that projects don’t get finished - lack of buy-in.

The First Reason Projects Don't Get Finished: Lack of Buy-In

You have a clear vision of where you want to take your business and what you want to achieve. Even if you are a solo-preneur, it is unlikely that you can do all the work to get there on your own. Your team needs to see the value in the project and commit their talents and energy to completing the work as well.

How to get Buy-In

A project manager can help you create a shared vision for achieving goals. He or she will assign ownership and help the team see the progress they are making.

The Second Reason Projects Don't Get Finished: Lack of Oversight

Projects have moving parts - activities that need to happen in order and that need to connect to other work being done. Some activities are dependant on others. For instance, a developer can’t code a website until a design has been created and approved.

In projects, it is key that at least one person knows who is doing what and when. S/he is responsible for assigning work, following up and making sure that it meets your standards. All too often, if work isn’t expressly assigned, it doesn’t get done because “it’s not my job”.

In most small businesses, each employee has specific responsibilities that keep the business going. It may not be possible for an employee to take on coordinating a project while still maintaining his/her regular work tasks. If that’s the case, no one is responsible for the outcome of the project. Without clear ownership, projects are much more likely to end up in a "project graveyard”.

How to get the "birds' eye view" and "news from the underground"

A Project Manager (PM) can help to overcome these challenges by tracking all the work being done so that tasks don't fall through the cracks. A PM is a connector between all the different aspects and people involved in the work, and with clear authority and responsibility, provides oversight and order to all the tasks. They can also identify changes that will help the team be more successful, and ensure that each team member is accountable for their tasks, by assigning ownership and following up to ensure completion.

Don't let your projects fall into the "project graveyard" due to lack of ownership and follow-up, assign a PM to your team and see the difference it can make to the success of your projects.

Disappointing Projects & How a Project Manager Can Help

Projects Disappoint When They Don’t Deliver the Value/Results You Hoped

This happens for two main reasons:

The value/results keep changing

One of the risks to completing your projects and reaching your goals is a never-ending to-do list. Each additional item moves the finish line - just a little. But sometimes the addition of “good” things are exactly why projects go unfinished and goals go unmet.

Moving the finish line can lead to decreased morale, increased costs, and an increased risk of disappointing results. It can feel like you’ll never get to the end and your team may feel that they will never be successful.

A project manager can create a sense of momentum, help limit distractions and keep you and your team stay focused on the value of your project. Acting as a sounding board, your project manager will make sure you have the information you need to make the best decisions and prioritize the work that matters most.

Poor communication

The other common reason projects disappoint is that team members, stakeholders and customers all have different ideas of what is expected.

What will this task or product look like when it is done?

What is this thing actually supposed to do?

What is the goal this project is meant to achieve?

For example, imagine the project is to build a website. Is the new website going to function like a digital business card, is it designed to collect warm leads a sales team can follow up on, serve as a way to educate people and demonstrate thought leadership or do you need it to sell the products in your warehouse?

Defining what it means for your project to be “done” is essential to meeting expectations and avoiding disappointment.

A skilled project manager will know how to ask questions that will help you articulate your goals and expectations. We often have no way of knowing what we don’t know. And no way of seeing our own blindspots and assumptions. By using tested frameworks, researching, negotiating and management skills, project managers unite the people who are bringing the project to life with the people who will actually use the end result. By making these connections as soon as possible, they help the project reach greater success by avoiding things the clients and users don’t want and helping all sides clarify what they do want.

Conclusion

The challenge with snappy quotations is that they make complex activities sound easy. Making things “fly in formation” involves having a lot of individual parts moving at the right time. It is intricate.

Managing a small business requires careful orchestration of tasks and goals. Just as a conductor unites a group of expert musicians to create beautiful music, a project manager can help small business owners bring all the moving parts of their projects together to achieve success. By providing clarity, structure, oversight, and communication, a skilled project manager can help you overcome the common challenges of drifting projects, unfinished projects, and disappointing results, ensuring that your small business reaches its full potential.