Business owners wear a lot of hats. Entrepreneurs often start a business all by themselves running operations, doing accounting, and creating marketing collateral. It’s exhausting! How can everything get done that needs doing?

Project management (PM) introduces systems for companies to streamline work. Much of the work done in the corporate world today is completed as project work. One of the key benefits of using PM in business is following a given process to strategically execute and complex tasks.

PM systems come in several “flavors”. I’ve been covering some of these different methodologies in my author read-alongs for The Innovation Process Book. About 20 years ago, the Agile methodology gained popularity to implement software projects. This process was built on recognizing that change is inevitable. Agile advises that customers are to be involved in project definition and conversation is more valuable than contracts.

Agile PM offers several advantages over traditional waterfall processes. These include transparency, delegation, and flexibility. Business owners can take a page from the Agile playbook to streamline their own operations. Implementing these three ideas will help any entrepreneur catch their breath in the whirlwind of successful start-up!

Transparency

Leaders must be transparent to earn respect. Business owners need to be transparent with employees, vendors, and customers. Authenticity of Christian business leaders comes across naturally by showing respect and humility to all people.

Certainly, putting the customer first is one way to adopt Agile principles into your business. Another way is to use a Kanban board to track activities. A Kanban board can be digital or physical. This tool builds transparency among team members because everyone sees what tasks need to be done, which ones are in progress, and which are falling behind.

Because business tasks are interwoven, a Kanban board alerts a project manager, the owner, and the team to potential problems before they happen. Displaying tasks in a public place encourages transparency and authentic communication.

Delegation

As a business owner and project manager myself, I know personally how challenging it is to balance the myriad of tasks necessary to keep the business afloat. Even though my dad was a CPA and I used to joke that “I bleed green,” I really don’t get a thrill out of bookkeeping or accounting tasks.

Aside from knowledge of how to do bookkeeping, my true skill as an entrepreneur is better spent doing what makes my business unique. Typically, new business owners try to do everything by themselves. The idea is to save money by not outsourcing.

Yet, Agile PMs know that assigning specialists to specific project activities is more efficient. In a project, we give creative tasks to people who are creators; we assign research tasks to people who are analytical; and we assign cost accounting tasks to the people who love bookkeeping.

Delegation is hard. You don’t know if the assigned party will do the task the way you do it. Be sure to establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) in your business. Then, delegate the experts on your team to do the work do best.

Here’s a dirty little secret: They might even do the task better than you!

Flexibility

Dictionary.com defines agile asquick and well-coordinated. The Agile PM philosophy acknowledges that change is inevitable and to be successful the PM and team must be flexible and adaptable, quick and well-coordinated. Learning to creatively adjust the project scope, schedule, and budget when hiccups occur generates new opportunities.

Business owners also must be adaptable when hiccups occur. There’s no if obstacles and detours appear. It’s a guarantee that changes will be necessary. Plans are wrong in the base case but allow the PM and team to set expectations. Risks (we’ll discuss in another post later) are better managed when projects are planned. Even with errors, planning is a far better approach than attacking work in an ad-hoc way.

Entrepreneurs typically encounter the same issues as PMs: too much scope is promised in too short of a time without enough budget. Traditional PM systems balance the scope, schedule, and budget up front with a tool called the triple constraint. Business owners can borrow a tool from the Agile PM toolkit that allows even more flexibility for project planning: the prioritized product backlog.

Product Backlog

In a prioritized product backlog, the PM, the team, and the customer representative rank each product feature. Those that are most critical to customer satisfaction are usually designed and implemented first. However, each feature on the prioritized product backlog is also scored for relative effort. The Kanban board captures dependencies of features requiring sequential development.

Some people feel that planning is not an acceptable Agile practice. Unfortunately, history is littered with business ideas that failed due to a lack of planning. Small business owners can adopt some loose, flexible planning (like Agile) that will allow us to determine boundaries for scope, schedule, and budget without being overwhelmed.

The 3 Take-Aways

Business owners can learn from Agile PMs. Agile is a project management system that focuses on the customer and accepts/expects change. Both of these concepts are beyond true in every business!

First, be transparent. Business owners can build trust with their staff, vendors, and suppliers by explaining what’s coming next. The Kanban board is an excellent visual tool to share openly and widely.

Next, you can’t do it all. If you try, it won’t work. Entrepreneurs can take direction from Agile PM processes and delegate. A business owner needs to manage the brand and the strategy. Any other task should be assigned to the most cost-effective, capable resource (in-house or external).

Finally, Agile teaches us that change is inevitable. Planning the next phase of work is not stifling your creativity. Instead, a loose level of planning, like in Agile PM, helps you to recognize risks and to be able to quickly pivot when change does come along.

Do you want to know more about managing your business as a Creative Christian Leader? Email me at info@globalnpsolutions.com for additional resources or to schedule a 30-minute chat.

** This article was written with no AI content.**