Would you hire a project manager?
Hi guys,
So I’ve been a freelance project manager for small businesses and brands for a few years and I’m curious if there’s any possibility of expanding to serve indie hackers/entrepreneurs.
Would you consider hiring a project manager? Why or why not?
Here’s what my services usually cover (but I’d absolutely willing to change or add things based on need):
-Determining project scope and creating strategy plan - this includes budget and scheduling.
-Finding and managing quality freelancers.
-Creating and updating project management tools (basecamp, asana, really whatever platform you usually use)
-Working with freelancers/team members - making sure they have all assets they need, answer questions, get various approvals, etc.
-Provide weekly reports (basically a quick roundup) with updates to various parts of the projects, any relevant steps we’ve made, issues on the horizon, etc.
So, clients tell me what you’re looking to build - brand, app, website, etc. and I make it happen. Within their budget and time frame.
I’m thinking this may be great for IH'ers who have many side project ideas but don’t want to invest a ton of time into them yet. Also it’s an opportunity to hand off parts of your business that run fairly smoothly but need management regularly. I don’t know, I guess I’m just thinking out loud right now.
What do you all think? And what about pricing? Flat monthly fees seem to make the most sense to me, broken down into tiers based on the number of projects? First consult call is totally free.
I would love any feedback. Thanks!
IndieHackers need to be able to do a dozen different things: product management, product development, product design, sales, marketing, legal, accountancy, recruitment, management, vision and much else besides.
Each of these tasks requires a degree of competence in project management. I find it difficult to imagine an IndieHacker getting a project off the ground without this underlying skill.
So I tend to think that it wouldn’t be until a much later stage that an IndieHacker would consider hiring a project manager. Other things are simply a higher priority: hiring software developers if you’re not a technical founder, or sales people if you are.
So I don’t know, but I think you’d have to find an especially disorganized IndieHacker who’d consider hiring a project manager!
I'd consider hiring a PM if your project's team and other processes outgrows what you can manage. You need to be picky about hiring PMs since they need to be competent enough to understand developers during diffculties mid-sprint and such.
But if you can still manage the development team by yourself, then do it yourself which will save you operational costs but increases your load since you run the company behind the project and you have to manage them personally.