Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Anthony Stevens
Mention the words “project management” to most entrepreneurial types and an involuntary shudder runs up and down their spines. Project management, as it has typically been practiced, implied lots of things that are anathema to startups: Bureaucracy. Rigidity. Documentation. Formality.
Gantt charts.
Scary stuff! But I’m here to make two key points: 1) Your startup needs some sort of project management process and 2) it doesn’t have to be a burden. Done the right way, in the right doses, and when aligned with your business, project management can actually help you get to market faster with the right feature set.
First, what’s the purpose of project management within a startup? Hint: it’s not to “manage projects”, whatever that means. Two people in a garage don’t need any extra management, thankyouverymuch. The main purpose is to keep your daily activities aligned with your big-picture goals. Second, project management should get your to-dos out of your head, where they compete with 1,000,000 other things for attention, and onto some external system which you can refer back to, when you need it. Third, project management should provide a way for all the people involved in your startup – even if it’s just two of you – communicate the essentials of what you’re working on, without having to ask.
If you have the luxury of working in the same physical space as your cofounders, your best project management tool will be a whiteboard. Even a small, cheap 2′ x 3′ whiteboard from Staples will give you a huge boost. Write the name of your product at the top. Write down the features you’re working on. Leave room for notes, arrows, frowny faces, and keep an eraser handy. You’ll be cycling through this list at a fast pace – or you should be. Keep your tasks short and granular and most importantly TESTABLE – so you know when you can erase each item.
If you’re operating in virtual space, a spreadsheet can do wonders, if kept simple enough. The problem I’ve seen with spreadsheets is that they bring out the inner Macro Devil in each of us – and what starts simple ends up being a seven-headed hydra, hard to understand, hard to maintain, and full of arcana that an outside advisor will find hard to interpret. I repeat: Keep it simple.
Other tools are available, for free, or nearly free. Pivotal Tracker is one that I’ve used and like. Trac is another. There are lots of other PM toolsets out there, such as Unfuddle or ProjectLocker that you might use.
My strong recommendation: prove that a whiteboard or spreadsheet DOES NOT meet your needs before you spend time researching and investing time into a more specialized project management tool. Keep it simple. As your needs grow, you’ll naturally feel pulled in the direction of slightly more powerful tools, but let it be a pull – don’t push it. By all means don’t use a heavyweight toolset like Jira or Rally when you and your cofounder are sitting across from each other at the coffee shop every day.
