Starting Your Business

1. Starting Your Business

2. At startup, most IT projects become so concerned with funding and development that all other issues get sidelined • Set up the right environment and guidelines at the start • Creating an atmosphere that others want to be part

3. Eight key areas particularly deserve consideration: 1. People 2. Company ethos 3. Communication 4. Working environment 5. Staff relationships 6. Spreading the benefits 7. Corporate stability 8. Freeing the human spirit

4. People

5. When you begin to take on other people you have to choose with even more care • The interview technique • A person’s motivation for wanting the job and what people they have previously worked for say about them may be the most positive indications of their future performance

6. Inspiring, enthusiastic people make for a great working environment. • You don’t want all yes men or the pros and cons will never be properly debated • Drop a sourpuss into the mix and suddenly everyone’s trying to get another job.

7. Conclusion • Taking on people is similar to “perimeter security.” You control who is allowed into the firm. • Careful screening increases the chances of newcomers being net contributors to the team • You want people who will enjoy the challenge, get along with the others, and add to the environment

8. Affirm the Company Ethos • Firms with destiny have a buzz about them • They know where they’re going, the staff know the route, and everyone pulls in the same direction • What Mission Statements did do was make firms think about what they really did • Founders normally have vision, guts, and a sense of destiny

9. It is highly desirable for the founders to record their aims at the outset so that everyone who comes on board afterwards knows where the firm intends to go • These may help you to differentiate your firm from others

10. Mission - To provide TIME services with excellent quality and competitive price. - To be the role model as the best-managed Indonesian corporation. • Mission • To provide and develop innovative and quality products, services and solutions, which offer the best value to our customers • To continuously grow shareholder value • To provide a better quality of life to our stakeholders

11. Communication Speaking the Same Language • Managers and marketing people rarely use the same vocabulary and idioms as programmers, and vice versa • Each sometimes assumes that this separation in word use conveys some kind of superiority born of exclusive knowledge. However, silence born of bewilderment on the part of the recipient is not the same as understanding.

12. Always use the vocabulary of the lowest common denominator in your audience so that everyone understands • If you have to use words exclusive to your specialty, accept that the onus of education rests on you • Explain what the technical word means before you bring it into the conversation.

13. Meetings • Analysts have found that companies that manage to hold regular meetings are more frequently successful than those who don’t. • In small companies and teams, everyone is so busy doing everything that the hardest thing to arrange is often a meeting. • Two aborted meetings and you’re lost

14. The solution is to set in stone, on the highest authority, regular, group, or company-wide meetings, once a week. • Always have it on the same day, always at the same time, always in the same place—then no one can say they didn’t know the venue • Once people get used to internal meetings having priority, it is amazing how deftly they are able to schedule outside appointments around them, switch off their telephones, and let their faxes pile up.

15. Circulate the News • If you don’t communicate with staff at reasonable intervals they soon feel left out • This demotivates them, their focus wobbles, they start to gossip, have time to grow two heads, and so on. • Efficient project managers often find it useful to circulate notes of what is going on and indicate the progress achieved each week

16. Working Environments • Place plants in a healthy environment and they blossom. Place them in a poor one and they wither. • People are a software firm’s largest single investment and by far its most important one • it is vital to do everything possible to encourage your staff to give their best.

17. Creative people need to be somewhere where the lighting is pleasant, they are sufficiently warm and comfortable, and it’s quiet enough to concentrate without external distraction. • When it comes to planning your office space it may help to employ a technique used by interior designers.

18. Designers categorize working spaces into the following four types: • ✦ Hives • Found in call centers where people are undertaking intensive, routine work, need little room to work, and social interaction is considered counterproductive. • ✦ Cells • Often used by lawyers and accountants (and ideally suited for programmers) where intensive work is undertaken in small mutually supportive groups.

19. Dens • Group larger numbers of people by function, such as sales or accounting teams. They used to be called departments. • Club • Environments are not owned by anyone. Clubs are found in communal areas such as meeting rooms and refreshment areas

20. If, like many software firms, you are starting from home, it is a good idea to differentiate between home and work by making the color scheme and the feel of your study, office, or work corner different. It’s easier then to disassociate the two and not let work and home merge.

21. Programmers need peace and quiet to work. • The best way to ensure productivity is to give programmers their own enclosed workspaces.

22. Staff Relationships • Some people are born managers. Others are able to manage with training and support. Most prefer to be led. • If you don’t have the time or inclination to deal with your staff, appoint someone who does. • It leaves you free to concentrate on what you do best and, if you have chosen your partner(s) wisely, it strengthens your project.

23. People who are natural managers have one thing in common. They like and respect the people they work with • the manager intuitively understands what makes people tick and can tap into a common bond between your needs and theirs and, with a deft touch, generally bring out the best.

24. Sharing Success • Companies that work well perform as teams • Bonuses (for completion ahead of schedule or sales targets met) need to be clearly separated from salary • In most instances bonuses are more productive than a pay raise. • It’s your task to choose the right balance between the security of guaranteed income and the reward of the further financial benefit

25. Corporate Stability • As soon as you see that finances are beginning to dwindle take the matter seriously. • Have the cash flows presented to you daily or weekly so you can take the earliest counteraction.

26. Once your staff gets a hunch that there are problems (imaginary or true) they’ll understandably become worried. • Their work will start to fray, • their timekeeping will become erratic as they embark on a series of job interviews, • gossip can grow from embers into a bushfire in a matter of hours.

27. every software project will hit financial uncertainties at some time during its lifespan • You’ve got a good product. The real problem is completing the development on time. • work out in advance how you will deal with the cash ups and downs. • The best defense is to shield your staff from • everyday management issues and provide the stability they need to get on with their job. It’s your job to protect them and their job to deliver the product.

28. Freeing the Human Spirit • In the process, everyone should get a raise in funds and self-esteem. Everyone in some way or another should grow. In other words, your business activity should be an enriching experience.

29. Managers get better results and much less stress by assuming that their staff are responsible adults and by addressing them as equals. • The management time required to monitor responsible people diminishes.