Digg it UP - Business

Start Up a Business That's Sustainable
Starting a business is about creating value. Creating value involves making a sustainable contribution. If the business is going to last, then you must think about its sustainability from the startup.Beliefs and Values Make SenseYour belief system and values will be at the heart of the enterprise. It is vital to be clear what they are and to be able to sum them up. This statement will be your business lodestar, or the guiding principle that you want the business want to follow.Without this firm direction, your business will be soon off track and put survival at risk. Business startups are notorious for not lasting. One third will not last two years; after four years only half the startups will remain; at the end of six years only four out of every ten startups will still be in business.Sustainability Is Good for BusinessThe Sustainable Business Institute calls business sustainability, "the opportunity for business to improve its profitability, competitiveness, and market share without compromising resources for future generations." More than that, sustainable business practices willimprove customer loyalty and acquisition rates,consume fewer resources and improve operating costs,insulate from risk of tightening regulations,enhance business reputation and employee attraction,facilitate faster decision-making through clearer criteria. Sustainable Business PracticesTake a look at the list below and produce your own, under the headings of Ecology (the natural environment that you operate in), Equity (the social environment upon which your business depends for its survival) and Economy (the financial and commercial environment in which your business continues to trade).Ecology: reduction, recycling, recovery;Equity: fair employment, fair-trade, fundamental human rights;Economy: product integrity, positive perfor

erational due to May's 2006 FA Cup Final and that is the primary target. However, the increase of cost "that has thrown the management's calculations out of kilter" (Evans, 2005) was not a big issue at that time. The size, value of a project and it’s uniqueness of activities can be a puzzle for the project manager who is used to planning and co-ordinating common and simple activities (Belassi & Tukel, 1996, p144).

4. The organization

Top management support is the principal success factor for many independent research groups (Tukel & Rom, 1998, p48) (CHAOS Report, 2001, p4) (Cleland & Ireland, 2002, p210) (Tinnirello, 2002, p14) , which means that no project can finish successfully unless the project manager secures true support from the senior or operational management. It is extremely difficult to work in a hostile environment where nobody understands the benefits that the project will deliver to the organisation. "Stakeholder management and contract strategies (number of and size of the contracts, interface between the different contracts and the management of contracts) are separate success factors which are also considered part of organization issues" (Torp, Austeng & Mengesha, 2004, p4).

5. The external environment

External environment can be the political, economic, socio-culture and technological (PEST) context in which the project is executed. Factors like the weather, work accidents or the government’s favourable or unfavourable legislation can affect the project in all of its phases. "Note that if a client is from outside the organization, he should also be considered as an external factor influencing the project performance" (Belassi & Tukel, 1996, p145). Competitors should also be accounted as external factors which can undermine project success because the original project could be overshadowed by a more glamorous and successful project launched by another organisation.

Conclusion

32 Words That Can Change Your Life
We all have ways of testing opportunities that enter our lives. Some of us just dive right in based on feeling, others walk straight into what they know is right by a gut feeling or intuition. And if it’s not gut feelings or emotions that are the tests of opportunities, it is the logical mind persuading us to ignore those feelings and emotions and test it with our reality of reason.Most of us do not have a predetermined strategy for testing opportunities, or even more generally to test the actions we take and the choices we make in our lives.There is an easier way to determine if our choices we make and the opportunities we receive ‘pass the test’. This simple 32 word statement of business ethics was first created in the 1930s and used to turn around a failing company. These four questions were applied by each employee to each and to every minute detail of the company’s workings. This little list of four questions from Rotary International, a humanitarian business organization, is the most widely printed, translated and reproduced piece of business ethics today:“Of the things we say, think or do:1. Is it the TRUTH?2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?”If we built businesses and our lives based on these very simple 4 questions we would be coming from a place completely the opposite of the competitive mind and the lack mentality. As you can see, these questions prompt you to choose what is true, fair, and good, making choices that can build friendships and goodwill. It helps us to see how the choices we make can be beneficial to all concerned.Because of our societal influences, we most often are inclined to make choices and act based on a competitive mind. This comes from the perspective of lack, scarcity, and ultimately greed.Any opportunity based on the model of competition and lack will simply not pass the test. Competition promotes strife. It embodies winning one spot, taking it away from all the other people who want it. It misle

We often hear or read about various success stories. But what is success and what criteria should organizations use to identify success? What factors lead to a successful project? The purpose of this article is to define project success criteria, clarify their difference with success factors and analyse their importance in project management methodology.

One of the vaguest concepts of project management is project success. Since each individual or group of people who are involved in a project have different needs and expectations, it is very unsurprising that they interpret project success in their own way of understanding (Cleland & Ireland, 2004, p2). "For those involved with a project, project success is normally thought of as the achievement of some pre-determined project goals" (Lim & Mohamed, 1999, p244) while the general public has different views, commonly based on user satisfaction. A classic example of different perspective of successful project is the Sydney Opera House project (Thomsett, 2002), which went 16 times over budget and took 4 times more to finish than originally planned. But the final impact that the Opera House created was so big that no one remembers the original missed goals. The project was a big success for the people and at the same time a big failure from the project management perspective. On the other hand, the Millennium Dome in London was a project on time and on budget but in the eyes of the British people was considered a failure because it didn’t deliver the awe and glamour that it was supposed to generate (Cammack, 2005). "In the same way that quality requires both conformance to the specifications and fitness for use, project success requires a combination of product success (service, result, or outcome) and project management success" (Duncan, 2004).

The difference between criteria and factors is fuzzy for many people. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary describes a criterion as "a standard by which you judge, decide about or deal with something" while a factor is explained as "a fact or situation which influences the result of something". Lim & Mohamed applied those definitions to project success and illustrated the difference as show in Figure 1. It is clear now that critical factors can lead to a series of events which ultimately meet the overall success criteria of the project, so they shouldn’t be used as synonymous terms.

Success Criteria

Many lists of success criteria have been introduced in the previous decades by various researchers. Primal success criteria have been an integrated part of project management theory given that early definitions of project management included the so called ‘Iron Triangle’ success criteria – cost, time and quality. (Atkinson, 1999, p338)

Atkinson continues that "as a discipline, project management has not really changed or developed the success measurement criteria in almost 50 years". To meet the urgent need of modernizing the out of date success criteria, he suggest the ‘Square Route’ (figure 3) success criteria instead of the ‘Iron Triangle’, where he groups the criteria that other academics have proposed. The main change is the addition of qualitative objectives rather than quantitative, namely the benefits that different group of people can receive from the project. These benefits are seen from two perspectives, one from the organisational view and one from the stakeholders view. It is obvious that each part will have benefit differently from projects. For example one organisation can gain profit through achieving strategic goals when a project is completed and at the same time these goals have a serious environmental impact in the stakeholders’ community. This means that a successful project must bargain between the benefits of the organisation and the satisfaction of end users. The fourth corner of the ‘Square Root’ is the Information System which includes the subjects of maintainability, reliability and validity of project outcomes.

One of the "Square’s root" corners, organisational benefits, drew much attention because of it’s significance and it was further analysed. Kerzner (2001, p6) suggests three criteria from the organization perspective in order for a project to be successful. The first is that it must be completed "with minimum or mutually agreed upon scope changes", even though stakeholders constantly have different views about projects’ results (Maylor, 2005, p288). Second, "without disturbing the main work flow of the organization" because a project has to assist organisation’s everyday operations and try to make them more efficient and effective. Finally, it should be completed "without changing the corporate culture" even though projects are "almost exclusively concerned with change – with knocking down the old and building up the new" (Baguley, 1995, p8). A project manager’s main responsibility is to make sure that he delivers change only where is necessary, otherwise he is doomed to find strong resistance from almost all organisational departments (Kerzner, 2001, p158) which ultimately could lead to project failure.

A more structured approach to project success is grouping the criteria into categories. Wideman (1996, p3-4) describes four groups, all of them time dependent: "internal project objectives (efficiency during the project), benefit to customer (effectiveness in the short term), direct contribution (in the medium term) and future opportunity (in the long term)". The characterization of ‘time dependent’ is based on the fact that success varies with time. Looking at the future benefits of the organisation can be really difficult, because in some cases they don’t even know what they want, yet is vital to know what the project is trying to achieve after completion time so that success criteria are clearly defined in the early stages. This is quite a different approach, because the focus moves from the present success criteria to the future, in a way that a project can be unsuccessful during execution if it is judged by criteria like cost and quality, but in the long term it can turn to be a thriving story. A good example of this hypothesis is hosting the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, which received mass criticism both during the planning period, due to delays in construction time, and when it was finished, due to huge cost. But the benefits that Greece will gain from the Olympic Games can be fully understood after 5 or maybe 10 years from the hosting year (Athens2004.com).

All the above success criteria "should be simple and attainable and, once defined, they should also be ranked according to priority" (Right Track Associates, 2003). Straightforward criteria are easy to understand by everyone involved in the project and therefore commitment is guaranteed. Unrealistic criteria can put a ‘failure’ label on many projects because of the unreachable standards, can generate low team esteem and team performance in future projects and finally generate unfair disappointment among stakeholders. As for priority issues, it is inevitable that things will go wrong and the project manager will be in a tough situation where he must make the right decision having in mind that he has to sacrifice the least important success criterion.

Success Factors

As mentioned earlier, "success factors are those inputs to the management system that lead directly or indirectly to the success of the project or business" (Cooke-Davies, 2002, p185). Some project managers "intuitively and informally determine their own success factors. However, if these factors are not explicitly identified and recorded, they will not become part of formal project management reporting process nor they become part of the historical project data" (Rad & Levin, 2002, p18). Belassi & Tukel (1996, p144) classified these factors into 5 distinct groups according to which element they relate to:

1. The project manager

Having a project manager is not going to guarantee the success of a project. He must have a number of skills to use during the project to guide the rest of the team to successfully complete all the objectives. In the 2001 CHAOS report (The Standish Group International, 2001, p6), business, communication, responsiveness, process, results, operational, realism and technological skills are mentioned as some of the most important skills a project manager should have to deliver success. However, more resent research by Turner and Muller (2005, p59) has concluded that "the leadership style and competence of the project manager have no impact on project success". It is very interesting to investigate why a highly respectable professional body for project managers published such a contradictive position. A possible answer could be found in the fact that project manager’s results are difficult to prove and even more difficult to measure. If the project is successful, senior management will probably claim that all external factors were favourable. On the contrary, if it turns to be a failure, project manager easily becomes the scapegoat.

2. The project team

Project managers are very lucky if they have the option to choose their project team. More often, their team is inherited to the project from various sectors of the organisation. It is vital to have a good project team to work with, with core skills that can be evolved to core competences and capabilities for the whole organisation. All members of the project team must be committed to the success of the project and the overall mission of the company. Apart from their skills and commitment, project team members should have clear communication channels to access "both the functional manager and the project manager within a matrix organization. Effective management of this dual reporting is often a critical success factor for the project" (PMBOK Guide, 2004, p215).

3. The project itself

The type of a project underlines some factors that are important to success. For example, if a project is urgent, the critical factor in that case is time. The Wembley stadium is expected to be fully operational due to May's 2006 FA Cup Final and that is the primary target. However, the increase of cost "that has thrown the management's calculations out of kilter" (Evans, 2005) was not a big issue at that time. The size, value of a project and it’s uniqueness of activities can be a puzzle for the project manager who is used to planning and co-ordinating common and simple activities (Belassi & Tukel, 1996, p144).

4. The organization

5. The external environment

Conclusion

Avoiding Accidents At The Workplace With Safety Tags
Some alarming workplace factsDid you know that everyday more than 12 U.S. workers on an average lose their lives through workplace accidents? Yet another 10,000 are hurt so badly, they end up losing sizeable work time or are placed on restricted duty? Startling? These are the facts as reported by OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.Typical accidents encountered at workplacesPeople have fallen from elevations, got caught in explosions, body parts have been crushed in machinery, men have been electrocuted by defective electrical equipment, and trenches and walls have caved in on workmen…this list is by no means complete and only illustrative of the hazards many workers are exposed to.What can be done to reduce the accident rate?Reducing workplace related accidents is a fight that needs to be fought on many levels, a few measures that should be taken are:* Imparting safety information and training Basic safety training is inadequate or non-existent in many workplaces. Safety gear is not worn and safety procedures are not followed. Simple safety training courses could take care of this shortcoming.* Not ignoring inspection routines Before an employee uses a potentially risky piece of equipment or machinery, it must be inspected rigorously and regularly. If defective, a safety tag should be put up as a warning flag and employees should be informed. Training in inspection procedures must also be imparted.* For long drawn processes, a written safety manual or guide must be in place Safety procedures if put down in writing serve as ready reference to employees and also help train them to watch out for accident triggers and take care of them right away.An easy way to minimize accidentsSafety training and inspection routines, though imperative, take time to implement. One of the simple ways to start minimizing accidents is to use safety and caution tags in the workplace. These are also convenient to use since they are commonly available and simple to attach.<

searchers. Primal success criteria have been an integrated part of project management theory given that early definitions of project management included the so called ‘Iron Triangle’ success criteria – cost, time and quality. (Atkinson, 1999, p338)

Success Factors

1. The project manager

2. The project team

3. The project itself

4. The organization

5. The external environment

Conclusion

Yes, You DO Have the Discipline That It Takes
Too hard to start a business, you say? Think again.Does it take sustained effort and discipline to start your own business?Absolutely.Are you capable of exerting yourself that much?Certainly. In fact, you've probably done it lots of times.You remember in school how you had to work for hours, days and even weeks on a single assignment?And for what? A good grade that would contribute to your overall evaluation at the end of the term?That's nice, but has it netted you anything?Maybe you went on to college and even graduate school...Talk about sustained effort and discipline!It goes something like this...You spend hours doing research in order to complete a project in order to get a good grade on that assignment in order to get a passing grade in the class in order to complete the semester successfully in order to finally get a degree in order to have to then start looking for a way to earn a living.Whew!!!Am I anti-education? No, I truly am not.I do, believe, however, that much of our effort is simply "jumping through hoops" that yield little if any profitable returns.So why is it that many people manage to jump through all of these hoops in order to make it through school, but not nearly so many succeed in operating their own home business?SUPPORT is the key.In school, you have professors, advisors, peers, counselors, etc. who are there dangling the tantalizing carrots in front of you each step of the way.At your job, your boss, manager or supervisor does the dangling. Or more likely threatens to withhold the carrot (your paycheck) unless you continue to perform.And so you DO perform, on time, come rain or shine, whether you feel like it or not, etc.If you're a "solo-preneur" as so many of us are, you have to find a way to either dangle your own carrots or pay a mentor who will.People balk at the idea of investing money in such a seemingly "unnecessary" expense. But IS it unnecessary?If you're capable of ge

p158) which ultimately could lead to project failure.

Success Factors

1. The project manager

2. The project team

3. The project itself

4. The organization

5. The external environment

Conclusion

Crap I Hate My Co-Workers
Attitude - Some days work sucks! But to a person that needs an attitude adjustment every day makes it that much worse, so much that you wonder if he/she made the right choice in careers. I am a strong believer in trying to limit the amount of negative things you say out in the open especially around clients. If you are always complaining, whining and criticizing something or some one, it is simple you are sucking the life out of people and making yourself a chore for anyone to be around. If you have that many things to be in a negative puddle about get a therapist or enlist the advice of a friend on your personal time. Clients, co-workers and bosses don’t need to hear about your unraveling personal life they have things of their own on their mind. So if you are one of these people please be considerate and actively try to prevent your lips from moving in the direction of being a constant complainer and whiner it makes you hard to work with and people will not want to work with you in the future.If you are the fortunate one that has to tell the annoying person off, in a positive way simply state that you do not think you have the time to be able to assist him/her with her woes, because you are working! Then lightly suggest she see a therapist, they are very in right now anyway! Clients can certainly pick up on discomfort between two co-workers as much as you think you are hiding it they are smart they know, so if this person is you stop your nonsense and be respectful to others, if you have to deal with some one like this, nip it fast your clients will thank you for it.Annoying - Well the above fits in to this category brilliantly but, I am talking about habits. This is my biggest problem – my stuff (yes I am picky about it and very territorial) I will lend anyone anything if they ask, take care of it and always put it back. Now we have all been guilty of it (even me on a busy Saturday) when you have a client and for what ever reason the comb, clip, cape is not in plain view and you just grab someone else’s. And chances are they are on lunch or some where

not explicitly identified and recorded, they will not become part of formal project management reporting process nor they become part of the historical project data" (Rad & Levin, 2002, p18). Belassi & Tukel (1996, p144) classified these factors into 5 distinct groups according to which element they relate to:

1. The project manager

2. The project team

3. The project itself

4. The organization

5. The external environment

Conclusion

Are You Wasting Time and Money Printing Business Cards?
If you use business cards, you've probably thought about printing your own. After all, you own an inkjet printer, a computer, and some graphics software. How hard could it be to save a few bucks?To check out how well this works in practice, my employees and I conducted a small experiment. We created 3 batches of business cards, using 3 different techniques.The first technique was fairly straightforward: We took the business card down to our neighborhood print shop, and asked them to print up some more. We brought a blown up copy of our logo, which served as “camera ready artwork.” The copy shop took care of the typesetting, proofreading, printing, etc. It was fairly painless, although it did involve physically getting to the print shop. Next time we'll email them a TIF file. We had planned on getting 500 cards, but the price for 1,000 was only a little higher, so we went with the larger quantity. The cards took 5 business days, apparently because they were not printed on-site, but rather outsourced to a wholesale printer.The second technique may sound unorthodox, but it worked. We used a custom made rubber stamp to create the cards. This was fun, though it took a while. We also wrecked a few cards by stamping carelessly.Finally, we created some cards on our inkjet printer, an Epson Stylus C84. There's special software available for placing the images 10-up on the page, but we opted to use Adobe PageMaker, since that's what we're familiar with. We printed the cards on Avery #8871 Clean Edge Business Card paper.All three methods have their proponents, and none of the methods was clearly the best choice for everyone. The rubber stamped cards were definitely funky looking. If you work at a bank, don't even think about it. On the other hand, if you just need a few dozen cards for your part time cookie baking business, rubber stamped cards might be just what you need to convey the “home made” impression. Art stamp enthusiasts often have fun with multiple ink colors. The more ink pads you have, the more variety your cards can have. The cost of rubber stamped cards was

4. The organization

5. The external environment

Conclusion

It is critical for a project manager to understand what the stakeholders consider as a successful project. In order to avoid any surprises at the end of the project, there is an urgent need to identify the different perspectives of what success means before the project goes live. It is also vital to remember that success criteria are the standards by which a project will be judged, while success factors are the facts that shape the result of projects. Success criteria have changed considerably through time and moved from the classic iron triangle’s view of time, cost and quality to a broader framework which include benefits for the organisation and user satisfaction. An additional framework to capture success criteria depending on time was also described. As for success factors, they were grouped into five distinct sets and the literature views were find to contradict on the issue of how critical a project manager is to the final success of the project. A common factor mentioned by many authors is senior management support for the project and it is recognized as one of the most important factors of all. In conclusion, early definition of success criteria can ensure an undisputed view of how the project will be judged and early detection of success factors will guarantee a safe path to deliver success.

References

1. A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge, 2004, 3rd Edition, Project Management Institute, USA

2. Atkinson, 1999, Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria, International Journal of Project Management Vol. 17, No. 6, pp 337-342, [Electronic]

3. Baguley, 1995, Managing Successful Projects: A guide for every manager, Pitman Publishing, London UK, p8

4. Belassi & Tukel, 1996, A new framework for determining critical success-failure factors in projects, International Journal of Project Management Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 141-151, [Electronic]

5. Cambridge University, The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2005, 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, UK

6. Cammack, 2005, Principles of Project Management - 1st session, MSc in Project Management, Lancaster University

7. Cleland & Ireland, 2002, p210, Project Management: Strategic Design and implementation, McGraw-Hill Professional, USA

8. Cleland & Ireland, 2004, Project Manager's Portable Handbook, 2nd Edition, McGraw-Hill, USA, page 210

9. Cooke-Davies, The "real" success factors on projects, International Journal of Project Management vol.20, pp. 185–190, [Electronic]

10. Duncan, 2004, Defining and Measuring Project Success, Project Management Partners, [Online], Available: http://www.pmpartners.com/resources/defmeas_success.html , [2005, Nov.4]

11. Evans, 2005, Overdue and over budget, over and over again, The Economist Jun 9th 2005, [Electronic]

12. Kerzner, 2001, Project Management - A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, 7th Edition, John Wiley & Sons, New York

13. Kerzner, 2001, Strategic planning for project management using a project management maturity model, Wiley & Sons, New York, page 158

14. Lim & Mohamed, 1999, Criteria of project success: an exploratory re-examination, International Journal of Project Management Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 243-248, [Electronic]

15. Maylor, 2005, Project Management, Third Edition with CD Microsoft Project, Prentice Hall, UK, p288

16. Rad & Levin, 2002, The Advanced Project Management Office, St.Lucie Press, USA, page 18

17. Right Track Associates, 2003, Defining project success, [Online], Available: http://www.ittoolkit.com/cgi-bin/itmember/itmember.cgi?file=assess_pmsuccess.htm , [2005, Nov.5]

18. The official website of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, [Online], Available: http://www.athens2004.com/en/Legacy , [2005, Nov.6]

19. The Standish Group International, 2001, Extreme CHAOS: The Standish Group International, [Electronic]

20. Thomsett, 2002, Radical Project Management, Prentice Hall, USA, page 16

21. Tinnirello, 2002, New Directions in Project Management, Auerbach, USA, page 14

22. Torp, Austeng & Mengesha, 2004, Critical Success factors for project performance: a study from from-end assessments of large public projects in Norway

23. Tukel & Rom, 1998, Analysis of the Characteristics of Projects in diverse industries, Journal of Operations Management, Vol 16, pp43-61

24. Turner & Muller, 2005, The project manager’s leadership style as a success factor on projects, Project Management Institute, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp 49-61

25. Wideman, 1996, Improving PM: Linking Success Criteria to Project Type, paper presented to the Southern Alberta Chapter, Project Management Institute, Calgary Symposium

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It’s the commonest concern people have about their careers. Where am I heading? Is this the right direction for me? Making good career decisions doesn't have to be agony if you clear away a few misconceptions.

Selecting a product or products and setting up a business takes work and perception. Some guidelines are presented.

As a part-time consultant in the carwash industry in my retirement, often one gets approached by would be entrepreneurs who want to start a truck wash business.

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