August 8th, 2010

Sometimes the most difficult part of running a small business is that overwhelming feeling of having so much to do, but breaking down project management tasks into smaller, bite-sized steps can really bring the enjoyment back to your business workflows and send that overwhelming feeling packing. The process of breaking down project management tasks is known as “chunking.”

Project Management Plans

The first part of the chunking process is to set up your project management plans. A virtual project manager can help you create project management plans that will suit your business perfectly. Once these project management plans are in place, you can begin to break each part of the overall plan into several action steps.

Operations and Process Management

One of the most important things to think about when breaking down your project management tasks is operations and process management. It only makes sense to break all of these project management tasks down if it helps create a smoother project methodology. You’ve heard it said that there is a method to the madness, and this is certainly true in all cases of operations and process management. A virtual project manager can help you determine where the project management tasks can be cut down into steps, and which tasks must be part of the same step within the action plan.
Just think of your business as an assembly line. Your project management plans require specific tasks to be taken to complete them, and each task can be broken into specific steps. However, an important part of breaking these project management tasks into action steps is figure out where each break should be. For example, if Suzy has always taken care of two parts of the assembly line, it may be difficult to see why she should cover two different parts. Maybe it makes more sense for Suzy to cover two parts of the assembly line that occur concurrently, rather than one piece in the early part of the process and a second piece in the later part. A virtual project manager provides an unbiased opinion of business workflows that can see past the reasoning of “We’ve always done it that way.”