Project Management and Entrepreneurs

"Every entrepreneur must have a notion of project management and every project manager has the potential to be a great entrepreneur"

When I decided to be a mentor and consultant for enterpreneurs I had  a clear understading of how the lack of project management was affecting them. At the end your venture is a project.

I was invited by a non profit organization to do a conference about time management and I really wanted to use the space to talk about projects and how time management is a piece of the entire puzzle of managing projects. The big challenge was how to deliver a clear and simple message without being too technical or too boring.

The audience was going to be full of people who where going to learn about project management for the first time. I did a first draft, based on PMI best practices, explaining about the 5 process groups, how to break down work and estimate resources.

After reading it myself, it was clear to me that people were going to be clueless.

I decided to do a little research on those enterpreneurs pain points and present some real data and real facts that will lead me to introduce them to the importance of managing their projects with project methodologies.

I found 4 main areas of focus in Panama: 55% of enterpreneurs have time management issues 40% do not have a plan 60% do not estimate resources 80% work by themselves without a partner or a team.

All of the above leads to poor execution. After gathering this relevant data I worked on putting together the information in a simpler and common  language.

I put myself in front of some friends and collegues with my presentation to get honest feedback about how understandable it was. After my 4th version of the presentation I was ready.

My conference was a success. It was rewarding when I started to receive compliments and comments like: "I always thought project management was only for big companies" or  " Thank you for helping me to understand what is project management about"

One of my colleagues went to my conference and he later told me: "I would have never been able to compress the PMBOK in a simple and easy version as you did". That day I met my first client and I validated what I have always known: "Projects are everywhere".

Biggest lesson learned: Always know and understand  your audience, your customers and your stakeholders.