Internet Marketing Project Manager

Initiating A Project – The First Process

January 16th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

In the corporate world, there is usually a lot of pomp and circumstance that goes into this particular process group. There are project approval committees, reports, business justifications, and often lots of politics to boot. However, I think this may be the most often overlooked process for entrepreneurs who understand the project management process. And that’s a shame, because it can prove to be vitally important.

Allow me to explain. First, I’m going to make a couple of assumptions. I assume that you have only a limited amount of time to work on your projects. Further, I assume that you also have limited other resources, such as money, to use in your projects. If neither of these assumptions applies to your situation then you may safely ignore the initiating process. However, if even one applies, you should take this process very seriously.

The reason this process is so important is precisely because it allows you to make a more informed choice before committing your limited time and other resources to a project. It gives you a structured process in which you can compare the different potential projects competing for your attention.

If initiating is usually justifying a project to a committee to get it approved, how can you use this process in your small business? Set up a somewhat formal process for choosing the next project. Write down all the projects you have on the table, the reasons why you want to work on each one, and the benefit it will bring to your business. Then use this information to compare them to help you choose the project that will bring the biggest benefit to your business or that has the greatest pull for you to work on it.

You can make this process as formal as you want it. For my projects, the first question I ask is if it can be expected to make immediate cash flow, or if this will take time. The next criteria for me is how much of my time is required, followed by how much money investment. Once these criteria narrow down the projects to just a few, I look for the one that looks to be the most interesting or the most fun.

I keep an active list of projects I will consider working on. Along with this list I keep the information to answer the questions above. Therefore the only time I really spend on this process is the time to decide which of the top few I want to work on most. However, especially if you are just starting to use this process, you may find that it takes you some time to get the list with your chosen information, then it takes some additional time to decide. This is to be expected in the beginning, but once you are using this process for a while you will get to the point where you are just choosing from the top projects on your list, and each time you come up with a potential project you will add it to the list with the necessary information.