Overwhelmed by the Chaos of Running a Startup? Try this Project Management Approach

When you have an innovative idea, loads to do, and a small team, there’s no time to sit down and plan things. You have to act. That’s how a lot of early-stage startups function. To put everything on wheels, you have to be active, enthusiastic, and push through. Everyone knows where they’re going; everyone’s motivated.

But as the team starts to grow and processes start to scale, everything changes. From my experience, this turning point happens around the time you move past 30 people on the team.

At this point, you see more differences in people. It’s getting much harder to get everyone on the same page. As a result, everyone wants to be effective, but “effective” means different things to people.

So, what do you do as a founder when everything seems overwhelming and chaotic?

Step 1. Apply These Six Principles for Everything

For my team, it started the same. As we reached 30 people, intuitive management practices still worked; however, moving towards 100 employees made it impossible.

We realized we needed a lot of time to sit down and talk over basic managerial rules. Meetings on vision, plans, and goals consumed the most resources. It was the time to create a reliable company-wide system. That’s how we discovered NUPP, “6 Nearly Universal Principles”.

How Does NUPP Work?

NUPP is not just a framework. These principles can be applied, no matter what framework you use, including Scrum, PRINCE2, and PMBoK.

NUP1. Prefer results and the truth to affiliations

We’re all social creatures, and feeling like we belong is a natural need. However, when it comes to growing the company, it’s important to find the balance between affiliations and getting the results. What it basically means is encouraging your team to remain open-minded, learn from the outside of their usual group to avoid getting stuck on one person’s opinion. Belonging to the group is a valuable feeling, but it shouldn’t be more important than speaking your mind, speaking the truth, and bringing outside perspectives.

NUP2. Preserve and optimize energy and resources

As ambitious and driven human beings, a lot of founders, especially at the beginning of their journey, have one enormous misconception: they believe they have unlimited resources. Well, I don’t necessarily talk about the financial ones, but also about the mental load of themselves and their teams. We all know that 80% of results come from 20% effort. Think how many times it proved to be true in your life.

Learn to look at each person on your team and each project through the lens of optimization: how can you help them achieve more with less time/effort/funds? Sure, sometimes you have to go all in. But while growing my team to 500 people, I’ve noticed multiple times that the 80/20 rule is the best way to go.

NUP3. Always be proactive

Imagine this: you’re driving in an unknown area and take the wrong exit. To save time, you probably won’t drive around. The much smarter approach would be to stop for a minute and reset your navigational system to show you the most efficient route. Being reactive is not enough. Planning and strategizing before acting should be the reflex for your team. The same goes with large businesses; don’t just react, plan ahead.

NUP4. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link

Scaling a company means scaling your focus, looking for new projects, opportunities, and ways to do things around your business. And as you scale each chain of your business, each new project needs attention.

There’re always some things we, as founders, tend to put on the back burner. Some projects always seem more important than others. However, you need to remind yourself constantly that you’re building a system, and in the system, everything is linked.

NUP5. Don’t do anything without a clear purpose

Before putting any decision or team offer into motion, ask yourself how your company can REALLY benefit from this. I saw many startups doing things just because their competitors were doing them, or some other people from the field advised them to.

But the truth is, while it’s great to get the outside perspective, you should analyze how to apply this to your case or see if you need it at all.

NUP6. Use repeatable elements

Our brains love patterns. When we come across something familiar, we tend to turn it into a routine. This saves energy and helps us avoid starting from scratch every time. The same idea works for businesses. The best way to keep things running smoothly is to use repeatable elements, especially if you can turn them into repeatable cycles. For example, make simple checklists for tasks your team does all the time.

Step 2. Add a Practical System

Once we adopted the NUPP principles, we needed a practical project management system to make these ideas actionable. We needed a simple, easy-to-understand system of project management to avoid overloading ourselves with useless processes. We started testing a new methodology — P3.Express on one team in our company. That’s how we created a guide with clear instructions and scaled it to the whole team.

P3.express offers a well-defined management system, while NUPP assists in keeping growth in focus. They were designed to go well together.

How Does This Work?

P3.Express breaks down project management into seven simple activities: project initiation, monthly initiation, weekly management, daily management, monthly closure, project closure, and post-project management. This gives you a clear process from start to finish, so you’re never left wondering what comes next.

It also comes with a flexible team structure you can easily adapt to fit your company. Here’s how it works: every project has a management team, led by a project manager who keeps everything running smoothly.

On the production side, your internal teams have leaders who report both to their functional manager and the project manager. If you’re working with external suppliers, they’ll have their own project managers who coordinate with their teams and yours. This setup ensures everyone’s on the same page and aligned toward the same goals.

To Sum Up

Implementing all these processes might seem a bit daunting, but after we did it, the life of the company changed. Now, we’ve got our strategic goals and plans in place, we know who’s responsible, the risks we’re facing, and the steps we’ll take to minimize them. We’re also clear on when meetings will happen, who’s involved, and what will be on the agenda. Thanks to P3.Express, new hires know what’s expected of them from day one.

You don’t have to make the whole company do it right away, start with one team, and see how it goes. Talk to your team about why all these changes matter and make sure they have everything they need to use them.