Are missed deadlines and poor team communication pulling you down? Yes? Perhaps, you’re guilty of task mismanagement. Efficient task management is essential to meet the stipulated quality, time, and delivery standards.
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Are missed deadlines and poor team communication pulling you down?
Yes?
Perhaps, you’re guilty of task mismanagement.
Efficient task management is essential to meet the stipulated quality, time, and delivery standards.
But more than individuals, managers with multi-player teams need to ace task management. And if your team happens to be remote, task management becomes non-negotiable.
But why?
Five reasons:
However, task management can get tricky as your team expands. But that doesn’t mean it is impossible.
In this post, you will learn about seven proven hacks that help teams of all sizes with task management.
Let’s get started.
To-do lists are a surefire tool to keep a tab on your tasks. By jotting down action items in a list, you don’t lose track of your tasks, even on busy days. Plus, you can mark task priority and make additional notes about each assignment. And you have to admit that nothing beats the satisfaction of striking outdone items.
Back in the day, we used to create to-do lists on paper. Today, there are task management apps with built-in listing capabilities, like Workiom.
Using these apps, you can organize and prioritize tasks according to due dates or projects. You can add auto-alerts and follow-ups. Moreover, apps like Workiom have native integration with Zapier, which means you can easily export your list data to 2,000+ connected apps.
What’s more?
Besides creating simple, bulleted lists, you can add annotations, voice notes, links, and screenshots. If your lists have context, they become useful and meaningful, no matter who handles them.
Not only that, smart lists raise alerts when an action item is due. You can also configure them to trigger follow-up actions automatically.
If that’s not impressive enough, check this out:
In Workiom, you can create linked lists which visually depict interrelated items in different lists, when a linked item updates in one list, the dependent lists update automatically. You can also pre-set default items for tasks that are to be performed in every project.
If all of this sounds complicated, you’re in for a surprise.
Workiom’s FREE Task Management solution makes list creation painless and straightforward.
With the template, you get two lists:
Everything on your checklist doesn’t need to be done right away. If you don’t assign a priority level to your tasks, you might end up wasting time on unproductive tasks.
Analyze the threats and opportunities associated with each task. Then, shuffle tasks so that the most important ones are at the top of your list. For instance, if you have several purchase orders to generate, you can prioritize orders basis their urgency.
In Workiom, the Quick Search and Advanced Filter features can come in handy at this point. You can find data sets that you need and narrow them down according to the parameters of your choice.
Additionally, you can save filtered results as a view to be used later. You can also save filters that are used frequently.
People are often distracted during work time. They spend almost 21.8 hours weekly on unproductive activities, such as small talk and checking phones, according to Udemy’s Workplace Distraction Report.
To keep your teams focused, assign a due date for each task. Task scheduling aids managers in time management. By assigning a turn-around-time to each task, you can plan delivery schedules and manage your resources better. Scheduling also improves employee accountability.
Workiom lets you create a Calendar View if your data has a date field. Using the feature, you can develop time-sensitive workflows and calendars. At a glance, you can assess which tasks need immediate attention and delegate work accordingly—no more missed deadlines and spillover tasks.
It’s important to be stringent about deadlines, but not at the cost of productivity. If there is a sudden change in requirements, don’t hesitate to reshuffle tasks. Agility works well if your target market, products, and processes are volatile.
Don’t let your pre-set schedules bog you down. If a particular task needs to be tackled urgently, tend to it first. Revisit your to-do list and delivery schedule and alter them as needed. For pending tasks, you can always create backlogs and assign them to a sprint.
As mentioned in the previous point, your task management should be agile. Since change is inevitable, tasks set in stone can be an incumbent to progress. That’s why efficient change management is desirable for each and every organization.
But managing change effortlessly is not every manager’s cup of tea. You may be open to change, but that doesn’t mean you understand the how-to of it. Learn how to manage changes like a pro.
But how?
Frequent scrum meetings with your team gear up members to handle unprecedented situations. If your processes tend to be staggered over a long duration or involve several stages, a delay at one step can upset the entire workflow.
Similarly, if cross-functional teams collaborate, there may be instances of miscommunication between members. To avoid these pitfalls, it’s worthwhile to invest in agile task management software solutions.
Workiom offers a free Product Planning Template that lets you track, log, and report tasks through the production lifecycle. For software development teams, the template is a boon.
Development teams can create issues and tie them to trackable sprints. By keeping a close watch on sprints, you can figure out how many issues are resolved and how many are pending. You can also document new releases and updates for future reference.
The fully-customizable template includes four lists:
Understand each colleague’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can delegate them appropriate tasks. Also, familiarize yourself with their unique challenges, especially language and time barriers of international workers.
Keep the communication channels open. Support your task management apps with tools for team communication/collaboration. Together, these tools can save you the hassle and headache that is the aftermath of miscommunication.
David Gossman, in his “The Cost of Poor Communication” survey, found that organizations with >100K employees are suffering losses to the tune of $62.5 million yearly due to poor communication between teams. Even small companies (
This means that apart from astute process/product knowledge, managers should have good communication skills. Verbal or written, your messages to the team should be clear and unambiguous.
Instructions, templates, reports, and other task inputs should be presented in standard formats. Try to create help articles, demo videos, and quick reference guides for training purposes. Use jargon-free language, which is easy to read and digest, even for non-technical folks.
According to the University of Ottawa, 33% of projects fail because of a lack of involvement from senior management. This doesn’t mean you watch your team like a hawk. Instead, be available for them if they hit roadblocks. Don’t delegate and vanish.
If a project demands regular scrum meetings, make time for them. Often, you will be tempted to skip the meetings, especially when deadlines are looming ahead. But connecting with your team in real-time can impact your project in a big way.
Whatever method you choose to manage your team tasks, don’t forget to keep key stakeholders in the loop. Inform them about daily updates and solicit their feedback. If all critical members are in cognizance, it’s easier to make business decisions.
Document key points covered in team meetings and store them in a central location. To do so, opt for cloud-powered task management apps that can be accessed anytime, anywhere.
Team task management is a breeze if you have the right tech stack and mindset.
Simplify your job by choosing a one-in-all task management platform that bundles project management with team communication. This way, you can handle your projects, tasks, and people from one window.
Also, try for a platform that is cloud-hosted to take advantage of lower operational cost, secure data maintenance, and ease of use.
What kind of challenges do you face in task management? Let us know in the comments below. We are always happy to help our readers.
And don’t forget to check out our free task management app. To use them, simply sign-up with your name and email address (no credit card required).
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