When I started my first software development company (It was SoftroniX in 1995), I had to start everything from scratch. I did not know much about the Project Management. I did not have skills and managing a firm. I knew almost nothing about keeping accounts and running a company. I was thriving to be an entrepreneur and thats all. During last 13 years, I have worked in many in-house, offshore and international projects and handled varieties of situations in project management.

When you start a new project, most of the firms don’t clearly designate roles and responsibilities among project members. Most of the projects fail when team members don’t understand their role in the project. Project activities should be assigned to each of project members and let them know that they are accountable for those activities. Clear accountability is important, specially when firm is undertaking large, complex and multi-stakeholder projects. Each and every member of the project should be accountable to the activities they are assigned and they should be project manager for their own. One of the reasons of project success is the feeling of responsibility and accountability of project members to their tasks assigned.

What do you do to make project members realize accountable to their job?

I suggest to assign the tasks in writings. First divide the project into logical parts and describe each part in detail. I know, this is the most challenging job and we end up with abstract division of project. Don’t be lazy at all, learn to be precise to details. Project members always try to stick with the points listed in the documents given to them. So be specific and describe in much details where ever needed. Clearly assign name of the team member who is accountable for that part of the project and mark the project milestones. Never assign a task open ended. In many firms, I have seen that Project managers get documents signed by the members. You will see team members perform in more responsible and accountable manner if you assign their name against each task. If their roles and accountability is clearly defined, they will be able to focus more on their assigned tasks. They will not have to do research on the problems by themselves and project goes smoothly.

I am sure, most of the team members may feel this approach more strict, but believe me, with this you will improve the project output comparatively much better. To make team members more comfortable with the project and tasks assigned to them, involve them in project design, time estimations, dividing the project into modules, feedback on project problems, critical problem areas etc. If they are asked for their suggestions, they feel more relaxed and feel more accountable to what they are assigned.

Make each of team members feel themselves the Project Manager for their job regardless of the project size and duration.

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Estimation is the calculated approximation of a result which is usable even if input data may be incomplete, uncertain, or noisy.
-Wikipedia

How many projects you have delivered on time? How many projects canceled because of missing agreed schedule? How many clients you lost because of your inconsistency is delivery in terms of time, cost, resources? Have you ever calculated, how much you loose because of re-work, time extension, under-estimation or over-estimation? Do you remember which of your projects was completed on time with customer satisfaction or even exceeding client’s expectations? How many times you have fired your employees because of missing schedule? Have you given bonus to employees, who completed your assignment before schedule?

Don’t get lost with my questions…

We estimate everyday and many times a day for so many daily activities. We estimate time needed to drive to office, time required to complete an assignment, time and resources needed to complete a house, schedule and cost required to complete a software project and so on. Sometime we estimate purposefully and sometime its automatically done in mind. If we need estimations in detail and accurate, we spare some time and try to be more analytical. If the kind of estimation is more frequent and/or critical, we try to come up with some sort of template, best practice or widely adopted
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In my last post- “What you need to become an entrepreneur?“, I discussed about the different forms of “capitals” essential for business venture. Today I am trying to put forward few other fundamental things that you should really understand for successful entrepreneurial venture.

Your every move is the deciding move. Every move makes impact on your result. Your first move should be even more important, on that move you decide where you are heading towards? So you should make a thoughtful, well-informed decision to succeed. When I look at the successful, failed or “growth trapped” businesses, in general, I see three success pillars that decide their fate.

Three Pillars for Successful Business Venture

Work with Right People

Follow the Customer demand

Control your Finance

You must start with right people with required skills, experience, attitude and drive. And another essential is that you must know the mystery of your business.

You may have many crazy ideas and may be you are extremely capable but if those ideas are not doable or not achievable in short length, you can not win so easily. You must produce or deliver something your target customers really want, its
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If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
Alan K. Simpson, former U.S. Senator

I have learned over the past several years as an technopreneur, working as offshore outsourcing service provider that integrity and only integrity help you achieving business excellence. If you ask me what is the most important in regard to the success of a business, I would tell you, in my experience as an entrepreneur - it is the “consistency of integrity”. Without integrity, business can not last longer, can not make everyone feel its presence. If firms can maintain its consistency in integrity, and make the integrity as its culture, it will surely will succeed and will be easier to prove its excellence.

What does it take to be a winner in the marketplace? There are many firms doing the similar things, providing similar services. If you search “Web Development Companies” in google, you will get millions of results. All of them competing for
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