The Blog - Where Business Collides with Human Nature

How to Manage Projects As a Freelancer

If you're a sole proprietor, you probably need to manage multiple projects at a time, mostly alone. You likely do not have an entire staff at your fingertips like a CEO of a fortune 500 company. Nevertheless, you must manage the projects in an organized manner so that you can get things accomplished without dropping the ball.

In this article I'll give you tips about how to:

  • Get Organized and Set Goals
  • Learn the Difference between Strategy & Tactics
  • Manage Projects Without a Project Manager

Get Organized and Set Goals -- Once you earn a new client it's time to get organized and set goals for the project. It is important to talk to the client about their expectations for deliverables, and get an accurate time table developed. If your client gives you a due date that is unfeasible, let them know and give them a more reasonable timetable.

Remember, you're the expert, the client knows what they want, but they do not always know what it takes to get there. Stay calm, and work out the time table and deliverables. To make it all easier, it is important that you use some kind of project management system to make life easier. There are many cloud-based project management systems that you can use to make organization and collaboration easier.

Strategy vs. Tactics -- A lot of times when developing a project with time tables and deliverables we stop at strategy and forget all about the tactics. Strategy is a long term move, typically costing a lot of money, where as tactics are actions that have short term objectives and can be monitored and changed as you move forward. 

In other words,  the strategy is the big picture of where you want to go and tactics are what you do each day to get to meet your overall goal. If you're using a project management system then the tactics will become tasks to accomplish each day to work toward your overall strategy. Tasks that can be checked off as you've completed them getting you closer to your ultimate goal.

Manage Projects with Ease -- As a startup, or sole proprietor it's likely you don't have a project manager, therefore you may have several projects moving forward at any one time for several clients. How do you keep track of it all? The best way is to implement cloud-based project management technologies to help you automate a lot of the process for each client and each project. You and your client will be able to access the data from anywhere, with any device.

There are many different types of systems that can help you manage projects.  There is a free eBook called Simple Project Management requiring no email address, or other information, to access that you can read to help you more with this issue.  In addition, you can search for project management and collaboration software titles with more facts in mind as you complete your search.  Always be sure to read reviews for any software that you might pick to ensure that it will work for you in the way you want it to.

This article was contributed by www.getapp.com.

Topics: Time Management Goal Setting