Tech jargon can sound like another language with all the acronyms that us techies like to use. Frankly, for non technical founders it can be difficult to understand the difference between your frontend and your backend.

So what do you do? You either dive on to your computer, trawl the internet, trying to find the definitions of these terms, watch snippets of YouTube videos, whilst trying to piece together the big picture. Or you ask your friends and they recommend their cousin who is a computer whiz, problem is they don’t have the experience to recommend the right path. You wouldn’t ask a supermarket worker for dietary advice just because they work in the food industry. It’s very common to hear people say to me, we were recommended to do this but now we’re stuck.

In my experience most projects that have gone well have had a technical project manager or a CTO for hire. That’s because technical project managers have that industry experience and not only understand the technical world but the business pains that you’re trying to solve.

Developers and agencies alike often say they have had experiences where the customer will ask for a ‘little thing’ to be done and don’t understand why it would be so expensive. This is a perfect example of where a technical project manager fits in and helps fill the gaps in your knowledge. Plus let’s face it you don’t have the time to be managing developers or agencies and that’s where the communication falls down and the product ends up missing the mark.

Remember the technical project manager is on your side to get you the best result possible. They work within your business as an extension of you to fully understand the problem and will help formulate a plan along with several different paths to achieve that plan all the while managing your expectations of what to expect within a budget.

But the best technical project managers look at what’s next in your business journey and make sure that’s taken into account so you don’t become stuck and have a clear direction of where you’re going.

So my quick win for this week is to outsource the stress to a technical project manager, even if it's just a brief chat to give you some feedback on your plans it could save you a costly investment in the wrong direction.