Project management
Project management is planning a piece of work that has a deadline and a budget, following it through and closing it: who does what, by when, and with how much time and money.
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What does Project management mean?
A project differs from day-to-day work in having a start and an end and a concrete result to deliver: a website, a renovation, a rollout. Project management holds four things together: the tasks, the milestones, the time spent and the budget.
A small company rarely has a dedicated project manager; usually the owner or the most experienced colleague runs the project next to their own work. So what matters there is seeing at a glance where the work stands and whether the budget is used up.
Why does it matter to a small business?
A small company makes or loses money on its projects: if the hours spent quietly outgrow the quote, the project runs at a loss, and that only shows at invoicing time. With tasks, time and budget in one place, an overrun shows while something can still be done about it: telling the customer, or narrowing the work.
What does it look like in practice?
Details
Suppose a small web agency is building a customer's website. The project gets an hours budget and a net budget, three milestones (design, build, handover), the tasks go to colleagues, and everybody logs their hours on the project. When the budget nears its end, the manager sees it before the handover.
How does HelloCRM handle it?
Details
HelloCRM's Projects module holds a piece of work for a customer together: milestones, the project's tasks (the same tasks as everywhere else), the time logged on it, a budget in minutes and a net amount that warns at 80 percent, and the time spent goes onto an invoice with one press. Progress is read from the milestones where there are any, from the tasks otherwise.
Module: Projects (paid module, price coming soon).
A CRM for small businesses in Hungary
HelloCRM is an online CRM made in Hungary for small and mid-sized businesses there, in Hungarian and English: the core CRM is free for good, with no time limit and no card, and it can be tried without signing up in a demo company full of example data.
Questions
What is Project management, in one sentence?
Project management is planning a piece of work that has a deadline and a budget, following it through and closing it: who does what, by when, and with how much time and money.