The Art of Managing

As an technology entrepreneur, you will need to manage a lot of things. This will include, not only the technology (programming and software development), but also administration, management of team, Human resource, sales and even writing business plans/marketing plans and what not. Yes, not only this but a lot more.

This will not be easy and who said entrepreneurship is easy. It will test your endurance and will push you to your physical limits. But in the end, you are responsible for everything.

So here is my guide of what one needs to do to manage his/her time while launching their enterprise.

• Short Meetings
• Schedule project meeting with staff. It should not last more than 10 minutes and at max 20 minutes. Discuss what needs to be done. Make quick minutes. Schedule and set deadline to the team. Use a collaborative project management tool and assign them to the team. 
• Keep these meetings short and regular. Even meeting daily will be great.

• Use Technology
• Information Technology is not there to build solutions for your clients, it is there as the best tool for you to make yourself and team more productive. Use technology to the maximum. Here are a few recommendations
• Redmine for Collaborative Project Management
• Google Apps:  for email, document sharing and intranet based services
• GoogleTalk Chat: Collaborate more online. You can ask a lot of questions through google chat than in person. Do it regularly and Google will even keep track of your chat in your email account.
• Wordpress: For a quick way to make and manage your company website. And do not forget to use its plug-ins. You will be surprised by the power it offers.
• GNUCash: For maintaining your financial accounting. Its a great alternative to paid accounting packages.

• Hiring
• Do not hire too many folks. Hire only the essential. That will keep your enterprise cash flow positive. And if someone is badly needed, see if you can do with a part time individual rather than a full time resource.

• Seek a Mentor
• As an entrepreneur, you WILL make mistakes. No doubt about it. So get yourself a senior and experienced person to assist you. Ask him a lot of questions and take his advice. I am sure you will grow much faster than without him/her.

• Office Space
• Scott McNealy (former Sun Microsystems CEO) once commented after the 1990s bubble burst that they acquired too much retail office space in too short a time. It's always good to show off a big office and a big team. But can you really afford them? So start off by sharing office space. Find other small enterprises and see if they can give you office space. Do not spend your precious little money on renting/leasing/buying big offices in anticipation of new hirees.

• Work Hard/Play Hard
• You will be expected to work 70 hours a week or more. You will also be expected to lead by example. You will be needing to be there for everything. But dont take work to your head. Go and have some fun as well. Take up some physical activity. Like hiking, playing cricket, racquet ball/squash, jogging. Anything. It is the secret for a healthy lifestyle. Without it, you will inevitably run into many health problems as you advance in life. So avoid the obvious health hazards and do the right thing. Get yourself in physical health.

So if you can do the above, you have a better chance to succeed.

How vital is work experience?

So the burning question for many wanna be entrepreneurs is always:

How vital is work experience before starting my own enterprise?

We let the experts answer this one. And there were many but really good responses listed on this Career Advice forum run by Personforce.

So check out the cool responses and maybe ask one or two of your own questions to the experts.

Ignore the Nay Sayers

If someone calls your idea “crazy” then you are onto something. If they declare you “insane” then you are moving in the right direction. And if they “write you off” then you are half way there to achieving your goals and successes.

Whether you agree or not, but history shows that almost all great men (and women) were declared “crazy”, “insane” and were “written off” while they were in the midst of their greatest adventure.

Einstein's theory of relativity was not only controversial but was deemed “crazy” at the time of its publishing. Thomas Edison first phonograph was considered an “insane” idea. New York times wrote off Goddard, the father of rocket science, as someone who had an insane idea of going to the moon using some crazy rockets.

The list goes on and on. Steve Jobs defied the naysayers with his “insanely great” products for the past thirty years. Google was advised to let Yahoo acquire them as the search market was already saturated and their product would never take off. Ebay was considered a wacky and unprofitable idea when it was originally launched in 1995.

In my personal life, I have been advised dozens of times that my ideas are unsound and I cannot make money and am crazy to attempt them. But each time, I have ignored the naysayers and then gone ahead and done something that I always wanted. And, by Grace of God, succeeded each time.

In 2001, I was told that it was crazy to expect Pakistanis to use the internet to do recruitment and job search. But we believed that such a market not only existed but will be the only way recruitment will be done in Pakistan. We launched, BrightSpyre, Pakistan's first online Job Search portal. Within two years, we were the first Pakistani company to be profitable from online business and were also the first to register 100,000 unique users online. Today, BrightSpyre has over half a million unique users and receives millions of job applications annually. Our model is copied and replicated by numerous copycat job sites in Pakistan and who owe their existence to BrightSpyre as we created the original market.

In 2004, when we decided to build a rural Tele-health network in Pakistan, we were told once again by all our peers and friends that it will not work and such an idea is outright crazy. Today, under UM Healthcare Trust, we run probably the only sustainable tele-health project in the country. Our services are available at near zero cost to the poor and needy in rural Mardan. Once again, we defied the odds to achieve our goals. I was also recently advised that my healthcare facility will not be successful and no one will ever use it. Today, we treat over 3,000 patients/month in rural Mardan and yes, we are probably the most successful rural clinic in the whole district of Mardan with a population exceeding 1.6 million people. Now, we are planning to take this project national and expand to other districts of the country.

In 2006, when we launched our international office in United States, we were told, no Pakistani company has ever been successful abroad without seeking investment and partners. We defied the odds and today, as a Pakistani startup we have customers in four continents with thousands of recruiters worldwide using our system to find the best talent.

All this time, I am told that there are no successful startups which do not have some source of financing. I remind them that none of my enterprises ever raised funds. We generated our revenues from our own products and services. We are profitable without the need to raise funds.

So my advice to all entrepreneurs out there. Never say Never. Do not listen to nay sayers. Believe in yourself and in your idea and just do it. The rest will be history.

It's the Team, Stupid!

Great companies always have a great team behind it.

If you are starting out, make sure you form a strong and well balanced team. Choosing a room mate or a good friend is never good criteria to form a startup team. Evaluate the strengths of each before making the final decision.

Most of us out there believe that having a great product is enough and the team does not matter. It may seem like that for people starting out, but in reality, only those companies go the distance which have an exceptional team behind them. The others just simply fizzle out. Investors understand this phenomenon and therefore, make it a point to always meet up with the team and do a thorough evaluation of individuals behind the idea. They understand the power of a strong team which can even make a mediocre products become sensational.

Employees tend to look at their managers as role models. Having a weak leader would mean dissatisfied employees or even worse creating a culture of under performance. Just like investors, even customers tend to shy away from companies with weak team players. No one likes to do business with companies that may not be strong enough to work with them. Therefore, make sure you do not let the weak linger on for too long. The longer you have them in your team, the more it will hurt you.

Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Cisco, Sun Microsystems are just some of the examples of companies with a great team starting out. The stories of their founders are told and retold all over the world, not because they were exceptional individuals, but that they worked together as a great team to deliver on ideas and innovation which were far ahead of their time. All of them had competitors starting out and companies that mimicked their design and philosophy. But decades later, they have survived as market leaders in their areas of expertise while others with mediocre teams have fizzled out.

So when starting out or hiring individuals, make sure you have the right mix of the team. That is one important decision that you will make to lengthen the time of your company. Remember, you are as strong as your weakest member.

Some Things I Expect From My Team

I have been asked many times what do I expect from my team. Here is a quick snapshot.

1. Don't just work hard, work smart.

2. Act like a leader not follower.

3. Don't just promise, deliver.

4. Don't be reactive, be proactive.

5. Don't let yourself be ruled by excuses. It'll get you no where.

6. Suggest solutions rather than just point out problems.

7. Make it a point to contribute positively. Too much negativity will cause productivity losses.
   

8. Stand up and be counted, especially in times of crisis.

9. No one will mouth feed you, so get up and and get it done.

10. If you wake up in the morning and dont feel like coming to work, then it is time to quit. No need to drag yourself around.

11. Blaming others will get you nowhere. If you see a problem, fix it.

12. Set goals that you want to achieve and then work like a maniac to achieve them.

13. Don't expect others to tell you what to do. Figure it out and do it.

14. Don't wait till someone asks you if you have done the task assigned. Just do it and let your superiors know.

15. Leave your personal issues at home. You are not the only one with personal crisis.

Entrepreneurs Should Embrace Linux

Entrepreneurs should embrace Linux. Now, this may seem like a powerful statement. And it is. I have nothing against Microsoft or Apple or any other operating system out there. However, I do believe that among them all, Linux currently favors the biggest advantage to a budding entrepreneur.

With Microsoft Vista and XP persistently scanning for counterfeit copies of their software (God knows what else) on your hardware, a small time entrepreneur in a developing country like India, Pakistan or Kenya will probably never be able to afford the licensed software. In Pakistan, Microsoft charges upward of PKR 150,000 annual license fee just to use their basic OS for a small enterprise. This price is equivalent of almost 6 months of salary of a fresh IT graduate from a good university in Pakistan. And then, the cost for all other softwares including IDE like Visual Studio or Dreamweaver and database servers can push the entrepreneur close to bankruptcy. This is acutely true due to lack of Venture Capital/Fun of bank financing for IT related companies in developing economies.

Instead of seeking out the pirated editions of these robust softwares, my suggestion for budding entrepreneurs is to embrace Linux. Not just on the server side for launching applications, but also on the desktop where the actual development happens. The cost of ownership for all the software and applications will be zero. Yes zero, provided you stick to open source. In fact, most of the Linux applications are now owned or supported by large corporations including Linux by Red Hat, Oracle etc, MySQL by Sun Micro Systems among others. The development environments (IDE) are also improving including Eclipse, bluefish etc. Besides, chances are you will be using PHP, Java, Apache, MySQL and Sendmail on the server side for publishing your web application. All of them are native to Linux and come pre insalled and totally free. And did I mention, that viruses don't cause as much havoc in linux as they do on Windows. And an industrial strength firewall software is also included free with the OS.

Another major advantage of Linux OS over others is that it is not a CPU or memory hogger. Yes, my Ubuntu linux desktop uses on average 512MB of memory at any given time, even though I am running MySQL, Apache and a Firewall service on my laptop. This is a far cry from Vista (my laptop is dual boot) which uses a minimum of 1GB of memory for basic OS that does not even include any web or database server. Further, the CPU clock cycles are also consumed less by Linux. Hence, you do not need a top of the line system to do your programming or run a server. In one of the companies that I co-founded, Cogilent Solutions, we routinely run Linux on three year old systems and laptops with little or no glitches or upgrades required. So the cost of ownership of hardware is also lower.

So don't wait around, embrace linux in your enterprise and start seeking the benefits of the OS that can hold its own in front of Microsoft Vista.

My favorite Linux for desktop and servers is Ubuntu. You can download your free copy today from Ubuntu

A-Players Bring the Best

When you have lots of B and C players in your team, chances are your organization is not likely to achieve greatness. It will live out its life in mediocrity.

So what defines an A player and how do the players differentiate themselves from others? Jack Welch and other such leaders have their own opinions, but for young entrepreneurs and startups, it has a very different definition and meaning. Here is what I think are the characteristics of an A player for a startup:

• Allround Personalities: The top of the class student is usually bookish and probably has avoided any other activity (social and extra curricular) among his/her peers, considering it “waste of time”. Such graduates are great for, may be, large and established enterprises, where work is defined, but are of little value to startups. The startups are better off hiring all round personalities, are street smart and can handle situations that are not pre-defined for them and can make crucial decisions in crunch situations.
  
• Should be active on social and club level (extra-curricular activities) on campus: This trait is extremely important. Once a person goes through the grind of managing an event, say, a music concert or running a student body/club, he/she learns things that are usually never taught in class and it better prepares them for the real life. These events create lots of opportunities to hone one's skills including communication skills, crisis management, people management, time management and relationship management among others. At times, these issues and skills are exactly what one encounters in their job. Therefore, this experience really helps.
  
• Should have played some active sport at a competitive level: This will bring out the competitive factor in a person. This really helps if you are competing hard against an established company as you will not wilt under pressure and can deliver the goods against all odds.
  
• Good schooling: This is extremely essential. I have hired from the best of the schools and the worst. I have worked alongside Ivy leaguers as well as community college graduates. In the end, I have always found the top schools produce the best students and hence the best colleagues. If you hire someone with mediocre educational background, you will spend more time teaching them the ropes to do things as compared to someone from a better school. In other words, the productivity of the organization would suffer. So hire smartly.

So can the B players deliver? They will, but will not be able to contribute significantly in keeping your organization as the best in class for that industry. A-players have thrived on being the best all their life and will bring the same attitude and mind set into your organization. They know what it takes to be the best.

There are lots of other characteristics that these individuals should have, but if they have the above background it will really make them stand out from the crowd.

If you are seeking a job or a business relationship with a company then check out its top management closely. See their profiles on Linkedin or google them carefully. If they are not part of the A-team, chances are you are setting yourself for up for disappointment. The top leadership defines the company's vision, policy and work ethics. If they are mostly B and C players, then the company is not likely to grow beyond a certain point and your career or project will go nowhere anytime soon.

So think wisely and hire smartly.

Lessons for Budding Project Managers

Over the past many years, I have worked with numerous project managers and team leads. Some of them were really great and I learned a lot from them. However, others suffer from what I call, “Jaldi kya hay” syndrome and usually are below par at their performance. They tend to make the most common mistakes one can think of and yet do not see anything wrong in doing so.

So for all those budding project managers, I have put together a list of things to be mindful of. Use it as a guide and as your rule in your organizations.

Martial your solders: Have the whole team involved during any major project, especially during the critical days before the release of any software product. And if you find someone sitting idle and not doing any task, assign them something to do. For example, let them do research on a particular topic. It is better than doing nothing.

Delegate Responsibility: The bulk of the work should be done by the team members hired to do the job. Many managers think they are better software engineers than their team members, therefore end up doing last minute work themselves by pulling all nighters. If the manager is doing it, then what is the purpose of the rest of the team? It cannot be emphasized enough that this is not your job description to code, rather you are expected to manage and coordinate with the team and get them to deliver the tasks at hand. If you believe that the current team members cannot deliver, then you must also consider the fact that you have hired the wrong people. Therefore, learn to delegate or let them go.

Plan ahead: There could be a time, when certain team members take short leave or call in sick at the critical juncture of the project. Unfortunately for you, the client does not care about that. Therefore, plan ahead and let the team know that they must be present to meet the deadline. Send them a car (or a taxi) to pick them up if they cannot come to the office for some odd reason, treat them to a lunch/dinner if they sit late or come over the weekend or whatever in your power to keep them motivated enough to get the work done on schedule. Otherwise, it is your neck on the line, not some junior programmer's. Also make sure that the team knows the deadline schedule clearly. Post it on their notice/electronic board or send them an email reminder. Just make sure that they know it that they cannot miss the deadline and it should definitely not be something they find out at the last minute. Learn to plan ahead and monitor the progress.

Learn the art of transitioning: There will be times when certain team members are moving out (quiting the team) or moving into the team (joining the team). Make sure you have a plan to manage this transition, especially during a major launch phase. All assignments have to be done before such a transition can take place. And if that is not possible, then make sure that there is ample time spent by the outgoing person with the new team member (replacing him/her) in passing on the knowledge. Creating an excuse for not doing work because you did not have the right resources will not win any sympathy from anyone. Not even your boss let alone the client. Therefore, learn to transition between players especially during tight deadlines.

Manage time: Do not schedule any unwarranted meetings when you have a major launch pending. If you cannot allocate time for the most critical project that you are managing, certainly, your team will never make time for it either. Use project management softwares and other similar tools more diligently. If you are not going to use them to assign and manage tasks, the team will never use them either to manage their tasks.

Be Stern and Strict: There is no free lunch, especially in a deadline oriented software company. The whole team should be there taking it as seriously as you are. It is not really worth the effort if two people out of twenty work while the rest take it easy. Learn to be stern and strict but gentle at the same time.

Grade with a Teacher's eye: The work performed by the team needs to be graded, bullet by bullet and point by point as defined and agreed when assigning tasks. As a manager, you should focus on making sure that the team does what it is assigned and does not do what it wants and when it wants.

Do one thing, but do it right: In a typical software house, one will find the team doing a lot of work. However, if the manager is not careful, then the team will do work in a disjointed fashion, using different servers/platforms, messed up coding techniques and half hearted attempt at meeting client requirements which they poorly understand or visualize. There is no point in showing the client 500 hours of work that makes no sense and nothing seems to be totally complete or working properly. Five hours of focused work that meets all requirements for a particular sub task is much much better and appreciated by everyone. Make your team start one thing/task and make them finish it properly before they move to the next task. Learn to focus on the task at hand, and your results will improve dramatically.

Murphy's Law: During a major release, what can go wrong will go wrong. There is no question about it. The server will crash, the software versions will be incompatible, the libraries will be missing on the deployment machines, the code will not run on deployment server and so on and so forth. Therefore, anticipate ahead and expect the unexpected to happen. Test everything in advance, try things out differently and have a fully functional version running on a mirror machine somewhere. The client will not care about new issues that popped up right there and then. They only care about work done on time and on schedule. So no amount of excuses will get their confidence back.

It is not done, till it is actually done: Never claim that it can be done in a few hours without first analyzing the problem at hand based on the available resources. Sometimes, working on a few simple pages could take dozens of hours to code. It could be the complexity of the problem, or the team could be stuck on some software bug. Therefore, never commit or claim it is complete or you can do it in so many hours/days till you have thoroughly discussed the problem with the team and your client.

Communications 101: This cannot be emphasized enough. Sometimes, managers are shy of speaking to their customers or even communicating with their team members. At other times, they simply never inform anyone, including their bosses, the issues they are facing or progress they are not making. It could be lack of resources, or even lack of time to solve a certain problem. In short, inability to share information and keeping everyone abreast of the latest development could mean disaster. When everything is honky dory, no one notices and all is well, but when things begin to go bad, then everyone starts pointing fingers. And when something does go wrong seriously, and the client and your boss find out the hard way (missed deadlines, angry client, etc) your neck will be on the line. So make sure that any news, especially bad, that comes out regarding the project, comes from your mouth.

Successful Strategy

Good strategy is the key to success of any enterprise. Failing to create or execute one could mean disaster, regardless of the size of the company or the qualifications of the people leading it.

Tips to Formulating a Good Strategy

• Primary Focus: A well formed question as to what is the strategy of the company. For example, how do we expand nation-wide in the next 6 months? How do we increase our revenue by 30% in the next year? How do we make our new product number 1 in the market by 2009?

• Understanding Current Situation: One must know what is going on around the enterprise. For example, know what the competitors are doing. Are there any new players in the market. Has anyone become more aggressive in the market? Where the market is heading. Is it moving to on line purchases from stores? Is it slowing down as compared to last year? Customers. Are they satisfied with the services or are considering choosing others.

• Timeline and Targets: Must be clear of what you want to achieve in which steps in a fixed amount of time. There is no point in having an open ended strategy with no targets. Every target and strategy should be absolutely time bound. The goals should clearly be defined. For example, that the six billboards for our new product shall be up in the city by the end of February 2008. Similarly, the new product release shall hit the shelves of retailers before the Christmas shopping season begins.

• Understanding the Future: Must know where the market, customers, suppliers (and other critical factors like economy, political scenario etc) will be when the strategy is executed successfully. Say, if we are going to launch a new desktop software in 2 years that is slated to capture a niche market. But will the penetration of Internet based products eliminate the desktop software market? Would Google or Microsoft also get into this market with their cheap or free web based products? Will the political instability cause an economic shakeup?
  

• Measuring the Performance: Must gouge and measure your strategy every step of the way. For example, have the revenues increased significantly in the past two quarters to show that we shall achieve the targets by the end of the year? Is the product development meeting the milestones on schedule so that we can achieve our target of launching the new release by Christmas?
  

Factors to failure

• Lack of Communications within the team: Communications within the various departments in the enterprise. One of the most common reasons for failure in strategy is breakdown in communications and not sharing and seeking critical information from each other.

• Being reactive rather than proactive: Spending too much time in firefighting, resolving issues, following up on opportunities and not allocating and spending time on strategic thinking.

• Thinking short term, rather than long term: Most of the time, we think of a few months ahead and not worry about where we will be in the long term. Short term is usually reactive, focuses on doing and is customer driven. The long term is where you want to see your company and what you would like to achieve by that time. It also sets a clear direction and vision for the company.

See a Problem, Seek a Solution

I was taking this class one time at my University which had an elderly gentleman as the guest speaker for the day. The subject under study was the first things any startup would do to get things going. For some reason, the professor decided to ask me a few pointed questions right from the get go which I had to answer right away. Among those many questions, he was trying to inquire what would one do at the start of the setting up their organization. Naturally, I responded, as any business major would do with buzz words like, visions and mission statements, the goals the objectives and yada yada yada. And the professor would studiously jot all my points down on the white board asking the whole class to comment and add. Everyone started contributing and building on what I was saying. Suddenly, the guest speaker stopped us all. He went to the board, and crossed out everything that was written and looked back at us all with a stern look and said,

“This is not what you do. This is not how you start off with. You are all wrong!”

Everyone, including me were taken aback and had confounded looks on our faces. You could hear the pin drop in the room. Is this not what we are taught day in day out? What does he mean?

“You see a problem, and you try to find a solution to that problem. That is how you start. And that is how you build your company. These visions and missions come later, way later.” he replied in a quiet and gentle manner.

That elderly guest speaker was no other than, Andy Grove, the co-founder and ex CEO of Intel Corporation.

“When we started Intel, we had seen a problem. We worked towards finding a solution to our problem and we built our company around it. That is how successful companies get built and run.” he added while gazing at our empty and confused faces.

He was so right. I began to think back. In 2002, when I co-founded BrightSpyre, it was based on a problem that we had seen. There were no websites for job advertisements in Pakistan. We built our company around solving that problem and later that idea spawned a whole industry in the country. Today, five years later, a new job portal gets launched every few months in the country.

Moral of the story. Find a problem, something that needs a solution. Once you have identified it, then build your business around it. And you shall see your ideas will have better mileage than blindly following someone who spends lots of time on documents, business plans and presentations. These things are important and will definitely be required at some later stage. But during startup, they are not as helpful.

Positive Energy

Always bring a positive attitude towards work. Always smile even in adverse conditions. It is better not to say anything than to say something bad. Thinking negatively contributes very little to the organization. If you are a manager with a negative outlook, you are more likely to cause your team to slide downwards.

Always contribute positively

If you are given a task to do, give your 200% and nothing less. Take every task, no matter how trivial, as a challenge and accomplish it to the best of your abilities. If you lack in some area, always seek guidance from your peers and superiors. But never say never.

Be Proactive

Never wait for your supervisor to ask you on follow ups of the already assigned tasks. Never give them a chance to run after you and pester you for results and updates. Get reports in early and have your communication channel open, and keeping them abreast of all updates on the project and tasks assigned. Do not procrastinate on tasks and work.

Fix issues do not just point them out

Whenever an issue arises, try to find a solution or work towards one. There is no point in pointing out lots of problems and excuses for something that has gone wrong. It is very easy to point out issues, problems and mistakes within an organization, but very difficult to suggest solutions. The best of the lot are those who have suggestions and solutions to issues. If someone continues to point out issues, he/she will soon be branded a “whiner” within the organization. Also, the management will never consider that person for leadership role as he/she is more likely to fail.

Small minds find excuses. Great minds find solutions.

Starting Out

When entrepreneurs start out, they usually like to do it with in small teams. Usually, a fews guys and gals will get together to do something really interesting and innovative that will change the way things are done.

It is easy to start out with a bunch of friends, but it is quite difficult to last the distance. Especially, when the going gets tough. Here are some basic traits to look for when starting out.

Sharing the same passion:
You and your friends might be excited about a brilliant new idea. But not everyone will be able to believe in it with the same passion as you do. It is imperative that your friends and you are following the same dream, the same vision and have the same passion. Otherwise, sooner or later there will be trouble. In my personal experiences of starting up businesses, I have found on many occasions the startup teams move apart after a few months as they do not share the same passion and have different ideas of how to go about their business. This experience was also confirmed by other budding entrepreneurs.

If the partners do not share the same passion, vision and goals, there is every likely hood that the organization will move apart. Or for worse, will crash even before taking off. This must be cleared up and should be revisited on a regular basis. Visions and goals do change as the market dynamics change. But what ever the case, always discuss and get on the same page and be as inspired as everyone on the team.

Define clear cut roles:
In a startup environment, usually everyone does everything. But still, there needs to be some definition of roles and some responsibility assigned to everyone. One of the team members could take over the software development aspects, the other could manage the sales and marketing. A third could be the finance guru on the team. Defining what one will contribute will bring about major productivity gains for your startup. But make sure that the roles are not just on paper and are actually implemented. A good way to have a check is to have regular meetings and see how everyone is doing and contributing.

There will be occasions when one of the members is not contributing enough. It is imperative at the early stage for everyone to be working over 110%. Hence, help the person move ahead and help him/her understand the role. Maybe, try reassigning the person and give him new roles within the organization. See what he/she is good at and make him do that.

If the person still does not improve, it is time to cut him off. Send him on vacation or move him out. A dead and non contributing partner will only slow things down and will cause the organization to slow down as well. His contribution will not be productive for the organization and can also cause other employees to lose focus as well.

Strong Communications:
This cannot be said enough. There are times, when the teams stop communicating completely. They tend not to share their feelings, especially if they have some wood over others. It is imperative that the members communicate and share all issues and problems openly. Keeping everything inside will not help and will only bring about further cynicism.

Strong communications is the foundation for a strong and growing organization. Have regular meetings and sessions and regular exchanges of emails, phone calls etc to be on the same page. The sales team should know what the software team is doing. The software team should know what the management wants and what are the targets and deadlines. And so on and so forth.

Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies

Someone recently asked me at a conference in the Bay Area, as to how has been my experience of entrepreneurship in the US as compared to the developing economies. My answer, which astonished him, was it is far more difficult to succeed in developing economies than in the US.

There are reasons for that and plenty of them, but I list here the three most important. To an extent they are true for all economies; from Bangladesh to Nigeria, from Philippines to Pakistan, from Sri Lanka to Kenya.

Political Instability:

For one, the political instability can play havoc with your plans. Say, if you were in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or even Nigeria, chances are that the political system is heavily dependent upon military and how it reacts to the highly mischievous politicians. Chances are that there will be one political upheaval every five or so years. Enough, to not make business plans and forecasts beyond five years regularly. In fact, I recently, met up with a Chairman of a multinational corporation in Pakistan and asked him precisely about this trend. He said, they used to make a 5 year plans for the country in the past. Now, they are down to 3 as it is difficult to see beyond that.

Government Oversights:

To an extent, if you are running an IT related business, chances are the government will not interfere much. However, that is just the illusion. The governments are slowly becoming aware of what is the all hoopla about this new technology and are becoming a major roadblock in its growth. Take the example of bandwidth. If you are anywhere in Africa, chances are you are paying by the kilobytes that you are using. Yes, not all you can eat, unlimited packages as we see in the US. Even if setting up a software company is cheap, it is too expensive to connect with the outside world on high speed bandwidth.

In Pakistan, the waters are further muddled, with the paranoia built by the government around VoIP. Now, if you are a call center or a software house, and want to use VoIP then you have to first register with the government (Pakistan Software Export Board), and then get a clearance from Pakistan Telecoms Authority (PTA) and this process could take an average of four to six weeks, if not more. And once you do get this clearance, you are still not allowed to do inter office communication using VoIP. You still have to use traditional telephony for that! Imagine that! And yes, they can raid your offices, lock up your staff and do all sorts of government bureaucratic bullying in the name of protecting you against the illegal use of VoIP.

Financing:

Now, this is where it gets really tricky. Numerous surveys conducted by various agencies including World Bank, United Nations has indicated that Financing is one of the major issues in developing countries for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) to survive and grow. The banking systems are also quite archaic in nature and have not really developed since the colonial independence. For example, it is quite difficult for them to finance anything without “physical assets”. Now that is fine, if you are an industrialist, but what if you are an IT company? There are only electronic assets and intellectual property rights. Sadly, such enterprises can secure no funds from any banking institution on these basis. And there are hardly any Venture Capitalists out there either. That leaves the budding entrepreneur with his/her own money or rely on some angel investor.

Effective Project Management

Projects fail quite frequently due to the manager's inability to manage them properly. Sadly, many projects initiated in the IT field miss their deadlines and are usually well over their budget. Good Project Managers are also hard to come by, especially in developing countries, which further complicates the situation.

Project management is not rocket science and nor are we born with it. It is easy to learn and understand. Here is a guide to which I adhere to when managing large projects.

1. Define scope of work: Develop a preliminary scope of work. It should be an overview and not necessarily a detailed specification for work. Try to identify major limitations and constraints that need to be addressed. Establish clear goals and objectives. Therefore, be clear of what you are trying to achieve from this project. Based on the above information, create a simple list of tasks and a basic schedule for delivery. Remember, this is not a detailed analysis. It is just a preliminary scope of work so that one can get an idea of what needs to be accomplished in what time and what issues can occur during its life cycle.
2. Identify core team disciplines: Based upon the scope of work defined above, identify all the needs and resources that are required. It should include the business, technical, support and any other that may be required to accomplish the project in the given time. Once that is clear, estimate the time and skills required to accomplish this project.
   
3. Identify customer needs and wants: From the start of the project, continue to gather the basic set of requirements from the client. And use this information to define the initial scope of work. Keep the communications channel open with the client and have regular interactions till the scope of work is refined and finalized. And make sure that both sides have agreed upon mutually acceptable set of deliverables for the success of the project.
   
4. Develop plan of work: While defining the scope of work, interact and get regular feedback from the client as well as the team that will be working on the project. And based on the project requirements, finalize all key project objectives. Make sure that all tasks are prioritized and properly assigned. This will help in making sure that the team performs to its optimum and limited resources can be managed efficiently.
   
5. Approval and implementation of work plan and budget: Initiate and hold regular meetings with the client and the development team to approve and accept the work plan. Get their feedback and modify it accordingly. The feedback may affect the eventual budget and time line. Get the client and your team to agree on and approve the project timeline. Also make sure that the budget is approved with mutual agreement.
   
6. Ensure coordination and communications: This is one of the most critical and important aspect of any project. Ensure that communication channels are always open between the client, the team and all other parties involved. Have regular meetings and delegate responsibilities but hold them responsible for delivering on those tasks. And most importantly, keen an eye on the project deliverables and outcomes and make sure that they follow the schedule assigned.
   
7. Satisfy the customer: This cannot be emphasized enough. We have all heard the phrase, "customer is always right" and therefore, their advice and feedback is critical for the success of any project. Continue to hold regular meetings through out the life cycle of the project. Get their buy-in for all major changes and modifications. Make sure that all communications are documented, included changes and approvals. If there are any major modifications, get their justification as to why is it required at this time. Make sure to review the impact of changes on the project and if the work plan needs to be modified, get the client written approval for it.
   
8. Assess and adjust performance: Conduct regular internal project reviews. If required, work closely with each individual in the team to keep their productivity to the optimum. As project manager, one can improve the productivity of its team members by making sure that the team understands the scope of work (including modifications required). Keep a close check on the progress including monitoring the, actual work performed vs planned work. Make sure that you address all major issues, concerns and opportunities with your team members. Also, be quick to respond to any changing conditions. Identify them early and take prompt actions.
   
9. Indicators of success: Throughout the project life cycle and especially when it nears completion, make sure of the following questions are answered. Consider them as the guide to see if the project was a success or not.
   
1. Were the customer expectations met?
2. Was the project completed on time? Were all deadlines, milestones met?
   
3. Did the project complete within budget? And if not what were the budget overruns?
4. Were the customer's objectives and agreed upon deliverables met?