RUNNING marathons taught Neil Miller to persevere, no matter how tough things are. "Your body will tell you to stop but you have to keep going," says Dr Miller, the founder and CEO of software developer TASKey.

"It hurts, but when you think you're tired and you think can't go on, if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other you'll get there in the end."

Dr Miller, 54, has applied the same determination to developing his project management software. He's spent more than $3 million and 10 years developing prototypes and going into the workplace to see how people work.

"Everyone said I had rocks in my head," he says. "You've just got to have belief and a clear vision. Persistence is fundamental; if you stop, you will never realise your vision."

A PhD in change management and a trip to the 1995 CeBit IT trade show in Germany led Dr Miller to realise there was a massive hole in the project management market. "Microsoft Project provides a means to create a framework but there's a critical gap - it doesn't get a team working together. It just looks at high-level tasks but doesn't interact with what you need to do. It's just designed for one person rather than the whole team. What was needed was a solution that directly helped everyone contributing to projects and tasks, not just the project manager."

As part of his PhD, Dr Miller went to Singapore, Germany, Britain and the US to find out more about the dynamics of working on projects. "The penny dropped when people said it was not the list of tasks they wanted, but a list of 'to dos'. They didn't want the high-level task list usually associated with project management software, but a list that gets down to their level of work."

A decade of talking to people in the workplace has taught Dr Miller that there is a difference between what people do and what they say they will do. "For example, people say they will keep everyone informed about the progress of a task, but usually they are just too busy and don't always do what they agreed to. Maybe an action was low priority or the people doing the actions were too busy. However, as soon as actions are not done on time, interpersonal tension arises. This is when a project starts to fall off the rails."

Dr Miller's software tracks meetings, creates personal to-do lists and automatically sends emails to people affected by changes as the list gets done.

In the 1990s, at an APEC workshop in Adelaide, Dr Miller met some of Australia's most successful software developers. "I learnt an important lesson about creating a successful commercial product. They said don't take external capital too early. If you have venture capitalists support you, and if it takes a long time to develop your product, the VCs won't get the quick return they want. The best solution is to self-fund the development so you have the flexibility to make the changes that may be required."

So Dr Miller did some consulting work and started a contracting arm of TASKey to fund product development. An important lesson he's learnt is that people buy methods, not software. "Software is just a tool to implement a method consistently. When the customer wants the method, they will buy the tool to make the method easier to implement."

To successfully start your own business it is essential to have a plan, he says. "Otherwise you will do whatever seems best in the short term. Without a plan, you will zigzag towards your goal with the strong chance that you will never get there.

"You can't do everything so you need to prioritise - without a plan it is impossible to work out what should be done and what should be left undone. Remember that the thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise."

Thirty-five years in the army and the reserve allowed Dr Miller to develop a deep understanding of how people work in teams, especially under stress. "It's all about depending on people. Teams are the key," he says. "You cannot do it alone, so you need to work effectively with other people."

NEXT LESSONS

· Persevere with your vision, if you stop you will never realise it.

· The best solution is to self-fund product development so you have the freedom and flexibility to make the changes you think are important.

· You must have a business plan; otherwise failure will come as a complete surprise.

· You need to depend on a team to get anywhere.