Project management process in early stage E-businesses: strategies for leading and managing teams

E-business start-ups continue to grow despite market turmoil and consolidation. E-commerce is projected to grow to $1.3 trillion by 2003 (Forester Research, 2000). Innovative business models, significant cost-savings, immediate global access, and speed of transactions continue to attract venture capital and entrants across industries. This paper presents preliminary results that (1) identify project management process problems and opportunities early stage e-businesses experience; (2) summarize drivers and barriers for leading e-project teams; and (3) offer insights from our findings and recent literature on e-project facilitation processes. Our preliminary results show: (a) projects can impact the entire company because of size and revenue impact, (b) the company and senior management are (or are part of) the project teams, (c) project processes in chaotic, extreme time and deadline compressed environments are as important as methods, (d) because of these factors, project leadership and processes must incorporate, balance, and satisfy external market, stakeholder demands, with project team work. cCopyright Joseph W. Weiss 0-7695-0981-9/01 $10.00 (c) 2001 IEEE 1 Proceedings of the 34th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2001