It is an unavoidable fact that anyone working for a small business, or freelancing, will be required to wear multiple hats. You will be responsible for many aspects of the day-to-day workflow outside your own core competency. When a business is comprised solely of a small team or individual, things like time tracking, task management, and project management become shared responsibilities. This becomes especially true for smaller businesses who can not afford, or do not require, the luxury of a dedicated project manager.
At our web development & design agency, Pelago, this is true of every one in our office. Our project manager must sometimes trudge through pages of HTML to update a web site, or open a terminal into the inner directories of our Linux servers to troubleshoot a failed backup drive. Our developers are expected to track their time accurately, and to interact with clients to resolve smaller issues in an efficient manner. And myself, I’m a designer by training, a developer by trade, and have had to acquire a few project management and system administrator skills to keep our team balanced.
The peripheral responsibilities demanded from us can sometimes be overwhelming, and we’ll look up from our computers to realize it is already 5pm and we haven’t yet had a chance to touch that design comp or write that bit of code. In other words, our day was robbed from us, consumed by the business of running a business.
Our small band of web-savvy mercenaries has struggled with this issue for all of the nine years we’ve been together as a small business. And every freelancer we’ve encountered has grappled with the issue as well. Is there such a thing as freedom from project management? Can we get a break from all of the peripheral duties that take up our time?
There is no bottled elixir for professionals in our same situation, but we have had great success with adapting our workflow to Intervals, our web-based project management tool. If your day-to-day struggles sound at all similar to ours, you may find Intervals to be a good fit. In fact, adapting any web-based productivity tool into your workflow is the first step. It’s what allowed me, an introverted developer, to manage projects. And it helped our designers, developers, and freelancers all track their time more accurately.
Our goal with a product like Intervals is to help ease the pain of running a small business. We want for our hosted software to take on your burdens and lighten your workload, so that you, too, can focus on the business of your business. Whether you are a designer, developer, writer, system administrator, or engineer, let Intervals handle the miscellaneous responsibilities that keep you from getting things done. Find freedom from the responsibilities of running a small business, and let Intervals manage your distractions.
