Markus Winkler from the website Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/white-printer-paper-beside-silver-laptop-computer-Q2J2qQsoYH8

1. One way to think of a business in project management terms
2. Pros and Cons of thinking like a Project Manager
3. Summary

Last week I found myself at home more than normal with too much time to think. It’s time to make lemonade out of lemons. Instead of complaining about my Windows machine slowing down for the thousandth time, I decided to convert my system to Linux from a gift my employer gave me for volunteering as a Director of the Board for the Project Management Institute Western Idaho Chapter (PMIWIC.org)

I’ve been studying Linux systems for about 1.5 years, since I did it more as a hobby:

Learn Linux on MX Linux (a distribution of Linux) > Insert and format a new Solid State Device (SSD) into my Windows machine > Partition and install Debian (a distribution of Linux)

This process is described as progressive elaboration. Since the time frame wasn’t known, I used a simple version of agile methodology for the project and progressively elaborated each step, not moving forward until I understood it better.

1. One way to think of a business in project management terms

The most important thing is to find out your customer’s pain points and understanding your target market like a child. Using the same progressive elaboration, you can start a business or any other project where the goal is not exactly clear.

Discover something that solves a pain point > Learn about business (SCORE, Zions Bank Resource Center (https://www.zionsbank.com/business/business-resource-center/, etc.), online research about business formation > who, if any, is in this market (benchmarking) > what is the overhead > what kind of funding (bootstrap, loans, etc.) > understand your target market like your child.

2. Pros and Cons of thinking like a Project Manager

One of the pros of thinking like a project manager is you do all your upfront research before you sell your product or service. One of the cons is the person may use that as a stalling technique and never get it off the ground.

I would split your goals or tasks into a bullet list and run a series of experiments to see if your business is valid. Otherwise, you might be making a business for one, meaning you. This outline is an example and not the actual tasks.

• Discover something that solves a pain point.
  • Understand your product, what is it going to solve.
• Understand your target market like your child
  • Does your idea have feet, will it have the interest you need to start a side business?
  • Don’t go past this point, or you may have a business for one.
• How are you going to take care of your customers?
  • Leads
  • Sales
  • Retention
  • Information Management
• Learn about business (SCORE, Zions Bank Resource Center (https://www.zionsbank.com/business/business-resource-center/, etc.)
• Online research about business formation
• Who, if any, is in this market (benchmarking)

Sometimes you may need to lead first then figure out what just happened, as the only way you’ll understand the item is by doing it.

3. Summary

You can use more than one methodology to solve this problem. If you are an action person, it might help you to slow down and think about your business. If you are a thinker, like me, it might help you to do some action first. Action makes the business but solving the problem will make it sustainable.

I used this process to change my Windows machine to a Linux machine. You can use it to start a business or a hobby, or whatever.

Fear is the reason most people don’t start something. Fear of failure and fear of rejection. People might look at you, make in fun of you, degrade you, and you will be right. Stop giving your agency to someone else. If they don’t get it, they are not doing it, so they won’t get it until you are successful. Most often they are jealous or feel shame they didn’t do the same thing and judge themselves as failure, which isn’t true of course.

Don’t make yourself broke. Don’t quit your job to prove a point, it can be successful. Success takes longer than expected, and seldom does it look like the results you’re looking for originally. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” That nugget of wisdom realizes when planning for something it is helpful to think about it to identify the possible risks and responses to those risks, but the plan itself isn’t very good at predicting the future.

As good as you are at being a project manager exactly 0% goes as planned, yet as long as I’ve been doing projects, the vast majority are successful or put on hold or shelved for another year, etc. not an actual failure to provide a deliverable to the product owner. You can do everything right and the project still might die due to circumstances beyond your control (regulations change, market profitability changes, etc.). The fruit dies on the vine.

Thanks for reading!