www.frugalentrepreneur.com has posts and links to some very economical or free resources that can help entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial PM's alike.
1 Comment
Project Management Tactics For Your Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs: It’s Never Too Early3/11/2013 Below is a very interesting article that I found written Julie Anne Hoey (ww.projectmanage.com)
If you are a relatively new start up or entrepreneur, you don’t need to worry about implementing project management tactics to your processes yet, right? Wrong. The truth is it’s never too early in a small business to start incorporating project management tactics and methodologies into your workflow and structure…even if it’s just you. When launching a start up, you’re probably in the process of learning a new product or service, or learning how to market it, promote it, etc. Therefore, implementing proper PM tactics are just as important as in any organization, regardless of how much time it has been around and established. In fact, proper project management techniques used in a new start up can be just as crucial. Here are some areas where project management techniques have proven most beneficial for start ups:
Link to the article Entrepreneurs & entrepreneurial PM's share many common traits and often have to do more with less hence any free resource is always a great resource. Below is part of the article and a link to the article from Shane Robinson in Forbes about this.
Skype – If you don’t know Skype by now, crawl out of your hole. Download it on your phone because it’s great for communicating over Wi-Fi and especially for communicating with international contractors when you don’t want long-distance charges. Dropbox – Great to have on your phone for three reasons: 1) it allows you to access all your business files in the cloud right from your phone (great for meetings if you forget a presentation for example); 2) cloud storage across your phone and computer is a great way to back up all your files; 3) you can share all files in your Dropbox account with any recipient, without having to email them. Genius Scan – I can’t tell you how much time I used to waste when I first started my business and had to find a Kinkos every time I needed to print, scan and fax documents. This app won’t let you print (obviously), but it will let you take a picture of any document, or string of documents, and then send it to your recipient as a single PDF file, the same way an office scanner would. Another 30-minute trip to Kinkos, or $200 expenditure on a scanner, saved. Splashtop – Download this app, and you can actually get remote access to your computer, right from your phone. Smartr – If you’re big on networking and want a good way to remember when you last kept in touch with someone, then this app is like the analytics for your address book. It’s also an all-in-one location to get calendar events and read email, Facebook messages and Tweets from your contacts as well. Read the complete article By Megan Strand
When I was first exposed to the basic principles of formal Project Management, I wanted to run screaming. Well, actually, I should clarify. It was really when I purchased and opened the “bible” of formal Project Management, the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), that this urge to flee came over me. The PMBOK (pronounced PIM-bock) starts out simply enough, “A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.” and then quickly takes a 180 degree turn into the world of overwhelm and mind-numbing tedium. Don’t get me wrong…I’m a person who loves my projects. I mean, I really, really love my projects. Mention something that even remotely smells like a project to be managed, I’m taking a giant step forward to volunteer. My entire professional career I’ve spent managing some type of project or another. I think it goes back to the definition of a project – “a temporary endeavor”, and back to my passion about creativity. Because there is a defined start and end with parameters to delineate the desired outcome, I’m free to be creative about how that outcome is accomplished. I love putting all the pieces together in just the right place to complete that puzzle in the end. And, quite frankly, I love that there is an end. I need that sense of completion and closure so I can move on to my next puzzle. So when I first opened the PMBOK, I was incredibly disappointed and confused. How could this book, this book about projects be so…so…boring? Again, it goes back to the parameters. Whereas I enjoy working within general parameters, the “science” of Project Management was developed to put a heck of a lot more infrastructure underneath those general parameters. They call them “processes”. And there are many, many, many of them. Processes to explain how to do a process. Read the entire article Small business owners are on the forefront of entrepreneurship and hence I thought sharing this very useful article by by Nina Anthony would help small business owners and managers.
Task Management Tools: Remember the Milk With this free tool, you can manage tasks from anywhere – via your desktop, your phone, etc. And it integrates with your Google Calendar Evernote is a web-based application that allows you to save your ideas and inspiration. You can record a message, write a note, clip an article or take a picture. It integrates with the iPhone and Android, allowing you to capture your best thoughts on the go. Zotero is an easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It promotes itself as being the only research tool that automatically senses content. You can add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages to your library and Zotero automatically indexes the full-text content of into a single easily searchable interface. Doodle lets you easily schedule and coordinate meetings and other appointments, free of charge and without registration. Invoicing and Financial Management Tools: Wave is a 100% free (not just a free trial version) accounting app made for small business owners and freelancers. This free alternative to applications like Quickbooks, allows you to create and send professional invoices, track expenses, create reports, and eliminate accounting headaches. Wave was built for non-accountants so it’s super simple to use. But it also includes the kind of tools that you’d expect to pay to use. It’s real double-entry accounting, features bank-caliber 256-bit encryption and security ; there are no usage limits, it integrates with FreshBooks and offers free support and automatic backup. By connecting with your online bank and credit card accounts (optional), you can eliminate hours of tedious manual data entry: your transactions are updated while you sleep, so you’re always up to date. I signed up for this after researching apps for this post! Read the entire article by Kashmir Hill
1. Password protect your devices. 2. Put a Google Alert on your name. 3. Sign out of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc. when you’re done with your emailing, social networking, tweeting, and other forms of time-wasting. 4. Don’t give out your email address, phone number, or zip code when asked. 5. Encrypt your computer. 6. Gmailers, turn on 2-step authentication in Gmail. 7. Pay in cash for embarrassing items. 8. Change Your Facebook settings to “Friends Only.” 9. Clear your browser history and cookies on a regular basis. 10. Use an IP masker. Read the whole article |
Archives
February 2018
Categories
All
|