5 Tips For Starting Your Projects.

Hi

When you're starting a new project, it can be a confusing time. Everyone is trying to set priorities and get the work moving. It doesn't have to be hard if you follow these...

Tip 1: Develop the Project Charter
The Project Charter is a document that includes high level information about the project including key milestones, an overview of the budget and of course, the aims and objectives of the project. You will be key in preparing the document, but it should be owned by the project sponsor who takes responsibility for the project overall. Oh, and if you haven't already, make the time to meet your project sponsor! Ideally you should work on the Charter together so that you have a common understanding of what is to be done.

Tip 2: Identify Stakeholders
Who is going to be involved on your project? The project initiation phase is the perfect time to identify everyone who will have an input to your project or who can influence the work. The Charter gives you a starting point as it will help you see which areas of the business are going to be affected by the new project. You can also talk to your project sponsor to make sure that you don't miss anyone out.

Tip 3: Select the Project Team
The next thing you need to do is to get some team members to work with! Think about the skills you will need in order to be able to complete the different project tasks. Most projects need a variety of different skills from subject matter experts. Then match these requirements to the skills of the available individuals and put together your team.

If you don't know how to start selecting suitable candidates you can ask other project managers or line managers for their advice about who would be able to contribute to the project.

Set up your team members in ProjectManager.com. Then give them access to the right information for this project. Once that's done you can begin to allocate project tasks to them as the schedule is created.

Tip 4: Check the Business Benefits
Why is this project being done? It's important to understand the benefits and the rationale behind doing this project. Talk to your project sponsor if you aren't sure. Understanding the ‘why' will help you explain it to the other team members. You'll find that the team is more motivated if they understand why they are working on something and how it contributes to the business strategy and plans overall. If you can share a common understanding of the project's objectives this is a major step towards getting everyone on board.

Tip 5: Get started!
Now the preparation work is complete, you can get started working with your team and putting together your project schedule. Create a list of all the tasks that need to be done (with input from your team) and then add dates and milestones to form your schedule. You can then allocate tasks to the people who will be doing the work and instruct everyone to get started! Remember to set up your processes for monitoring and controlling the project work too so that you can keep on top of project status at any time.

Starting a new project can be a hectic time. However, it doesn't have to be difficult. If you are clear about the roles and responsibilities of the project manager during this time, you can start your project off perfectly.

Setting up a new project and managing the team is easy. You can use the features in ProjectManager.com to create perfect task lists, allocate work to individuals and share schedule information from anywhere with internet access. Give it a Free Try.

Ten Crucial Questions for Your Business Future.

As a business coach I specialize in asking questions. The right question asked at the right time can effect your business future more than you can imagine. It has the power to completely and instantly shift your mental activity, your entire thought pattern, and ultimately the actions you take. Over the last fourteen years I've asked hundreds of small, medium and very large business owners endless questions which have helped them achieve far greater levels of success than they would have had thinking the way they were -- only moments before. While the following may not be the only ten questions -- or even THE ten questions, they are ten questions that you must answer if you want your business to flourish. The right answers are critical to your company's future. 1. How many un- or deserved prospective clients are in your target market? The number of prospective clients - prospects -- available to you relates to two key considerations: the total revenue possible from this client base, and what kinds of marketing tactics will be most cost-effective. If yours is a 'mass market,' advertising will almost certainly be part of the your marketing mix. By contrast, if your market is very small (I once sold software to the top-50 international banks) you can contact each and every prospect individually. 2. How large do you envision your business? Does your vision include being a Fortune 500 company? If so, check question 1 above, and make sure you've got a whopping market. On the other hand, many of my clients would be completely satisfied generating $5MM with a staff of 50; pocketing $1mm per year and selling the company for $10mm when they are ready. How you answer this question governs the kind of markets you can enter, whether you are vertical or horizontal in nature, mass market or niched, as well as the kind of management structure your organization requires. 3. What important changes are occurring (or have recently occurred) in your market and what is their impact on your business? The answers to this question may govern changes to your product, your product mix and your marketing campaign. Big changes generally signal big opportunities; however if you aren't prepared for them, they can also signal the demise of your business. Dramatic increases in new housing created significant opportunities for a client who sold estimating software and brought a field-ready, cost-saving product to market just in time. 4. Who is your competition and why are you clearly a better choice for your prospects? It may shock you (on the other hand, it may not) how many CEOs cannot provide a compelling answer to this question. Recently, I was at a meeting for Microsoft Business Solutions Partners, and spoke to a number of the VARs who came to improve their marketing programs. When I asked about their competitive advantage, three separate resellers answered telling me how long they had been in business, and how well they understood their customers. Yeah? Well, so what. If you don't want to get blindsided by your competitors, you need to understand their capabilities. And if you want to outflank them in turn, you'd better have ammunition more powerful than your length of service. 5. How important is "service" to your clients, and how do you plan to deliver it? Some markets require high service, some do not. What about yours? If you are playing in a market where customers expect to get their hands held, you need to be geared up for it. A software company client of mine implemented a large and effective sales push, only to have their Help Desk swamped with new customer service requests. Ultimately we fixed this with a set of new support policies, a knowledge base, an active user forum, plus effective staff training -- but it almost sank the company. 6. Is your business model scalable? In other words, could you grow your business by 50%, without your expenses growing by the same ratio? If not, you can never be any more profitable -- in percentage terms - than you currently are. You may sell more, and earn more in absolute terms, but for each dollar you sell, you will make the same, and probably less, money. This means a potential acquirer will not pay a financial premium for your business, because adding money to your business won't make it more profitable. 7. What are they 3-5 critical factors for your business' success and how would you rate your company in each factor? Where do the profits in your business come from? What are the areas where you beat the pants off your competitors? Why do clients seek you out? These are the critical areas of success -- and you'd better be damned good at them. Rate yourself on each, and create an improvement program wherever you are lower than an 8. I've done this exercise with many of my business coaching clients, and it has probably created more value than any other. 8. What portion of your business operations have documented, repeatable, scalable systems? Are there systems which cover the critical success areas? This is the solution to the problem raised in question 6. It is also your ticket to a well-earned vacation. Ask yourself, if you left for four weeks without voice mail or e-mail, would your business be better than you found it, about the same, or a smoldering ruin? You may think that not all areas of a software company lend themselves to systemization, but all the important ones do. Sales? Marketing? Product development? Customer service? Consulting? All systemizable. 9. How good are your finances? Your financial picture and your market share, analyzed in the context of a growing or shrinking market determines the future of your company. If you've got lots of surplus cash you can weather anything. You can create completely new products if you have to. Next best thing is strong cash flow out of which you can pay for development, buy a competitor, or expand revenues with new technology. (One of my clients recently reinvigorated their business by buying a non- competitive player selling products to their legal clients.) But if your bank account is poor and your cash-flow weak, you are in a tough place -- particularly if your market is shrinking. My Grand Strategy Model would tell you to sell your company for whatever you can get, and invest the proceeds in a healthier market sector. 10. Is your market growing or shrinking, and what is your current market share? This is the other key to the Grand Strategy. If you dominate your market is there enough room to grow? And if not, who can you steal business from? If your market is expanding there may be years of growth left, but if it is stable or shrinking, the forecast may not be so good. This is where cash balances and cash flow come in. With them you can develop new products and services to expand the size of purchase transactions or increase the frequency of repurchase. If there is just no room for increase, think about how you can tweak your product to redeploy it in an adjacent market space. At a time when a client's customer's just wasn't buying their old products, (and recently, whose customer's were?) we shifted much of their resources into providing interim services, and thereby saved the company until the new products came out. If you are concerned about questions 5, 6, 7, and 8 above, I have developed a new, comprehensive and first-of-its-kind program to help: The Turnkey Your Business Home Study and Mentoring Program. (http://www.turnkeycoach.com) This is a twelve month hands-on course, containing step-by-step how-to manuals, audio CDs, CD-ROMs, monthly conference calls and personal mentoring and is the only program of its kind in the world, designed to help entrepreneurs and executives create detailed, documented systems and processes to "turnkey" their businesses. This is the one guaranteed way for you to create duplicable business processes for those things that matter most, and then optimize those same things getting the greatest return on your efforts and your time. You can find out more about the Turnkey Your Business Home Study Program by linking to http://www.turnkeycoach.com. And we've just added a monthly payment program, as well. Best regards, More Profits and More Life for Entrepreneurs, Guaranteed. To get your copy of our free report with detailed steps to grow your business at least 40% faster, go to www.fastergrowthnow.c

5 Simple Steps To Lower Cholesterol.

You can lower cholesterol without drugs by following some basic steps that will not only change your cholesterol readings, but also improve your health today and in the future. So often we use a prescription drug and hope it will magically cure whatever ails us. The truth is prescription drugs for lowering cholesterol do work. The problem is both the short term and long-term side effects. Even more dangerous than the side effects of prescription drugs to lower cholesterol is not getting cholesterol under control. Over time, high cholesterol can lead to numerous conditions of the heart and arteries, not the least of which are atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), stroke or heart attack. Here are 5 steps you can take today to lower your cholesterol without prescription drugs. Eat right. May sound simple, but diet has such a significant impact on lowering cholesterol that it should be the number one factor you look at in determining if your high cholesterol is hereditary or a matter of dietary choices. A low fat and low cholesterol diet is the first step toward lowering cholesterol. Exercise. Improving cardiovascular health is a step toward reversing the effects of high cholesterol. Exercise itself doesn't directly lower cholesterol, but will strengthen the heart and entire circulatory system. Quit smoking. If you smoke, the plaque build up in the arteries due to high cholesterol is accelerated. When plaque blocks the flow of blood to the heart, the muscle has to work harder to get oxygen. This can lead to a heart attack. If the arteries get completely blocked with plaque from high cholesterol then a stroke can occur. Relax. Chronic stress can affect cholesterol levels. If you are constantly stressed and eating a low cholesterol diet, you may not seen any improvement in cholesterol readings until you learn to relieve stress. Talk to your doctor. Not all doctors are quick to prescribe medications. In fact, the more enlightened doctors will help you form a diet and exercise plan that is suitable for your current overall health and abilities as a first step toward lowering cholesterol. It is always important to ask your doctor if your decision to follow a specific diet or exercise plan is right for you. In addition, do not stop taking medications before consulting with your doctor. You can lower your cholesterol with diet and exercise, and under the care of your doctor, see about removing drugs from the process. It does not take long to see significant improvements in your cholesterol. Lower cholesterol can be yours in just a matter of weeks. If you would like to understand more about cholesterol, the prescriptions most often used to treat it, and what you can do to lower cholesterol naturally and without prescription drugs, visit one of the Internet's leading resources on cholesterol: http://www.60daystolowercholesterol.com

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