Every project has a goal that usually means the solution to an important problem. For a project to happen, it’s necessary to set not only a start date, but a conclusion date either. And in the middle, you must monitor the resources used, both in number and hours of employees, and also the costs. Because of this complexity it’s essential to adopt a professional task manager. Here I give you some fundamental tips for your project management to succeed. Get to work!
1. Priority
Early in the project, make sure stakeholders are aligned on what will determine whether it was successful. A date should not be the only criterion. Clearly define some measurable goals such as increasing the market share of X%, achieving a certain sales volume or cutting expenses. A good task manager allows you to set clear priorities – and the priority will be greater the greater its impact to reach the ultimate goal is. This will prevent team members end up working on tasks without much importance, frustrated and stressed.
2. Customers > Projects > Tasks
By breaking large tasks (projects) into several smaller ones, you can estimate more accurately the time, the effort and invested costs. In addition, you will have to break large problems into smaller, understanding the details of the work to be done. A task manager is important both to organize tasks in a hierarchical manner and to measure the results.
3. Task types
When planning a project, you must know the types of tasks the team will work on. Then, compare how long it should take and how long it actually took. Use this at your cost control and inform your customers.
4. Briefing
Tell clearly the responsible for each task what they should do, mainly to avoid rework. And not to send several emails every time details arise, adopt a system in which you can enter reviews on tasks.
5. Teams
Who will be allocated to work on this project? To avoid bottlenecks and delays, it’s necessary to know how many hours each employee has available and also of whom your employees can receive and to whom they can delegate tasks. Using a software, you can create a hierarchy in the workflow. Team work is only complete with good management and good technology.
6. A task at a time
Working on multiple tasks at the same time makes our productivity drop dramatically. It’s a myth that multitasking is a guarantee of efficiency. Moreover, how to measure the effort and costs of each stage of the project, if various tasks were done at the same time? A task manager can help you with that, but you need to pause to start or restart another.
7. Schedule
When the tasks must be delivered and when they were actually delivered? You will need this information without making so many follow-up meetings. The software you hire should estimate these terms automatically.
8. Data Repository
If you keep a history of what happened today, your future decisions will be based on facts rather than guesses or vague memories. With a repository of shared files and comments, the intellectual capital will be safe, even if a key employee is absent from the team or a beginner needs to learn. And if it’s a repository within the online task manager, even away from the office you can have access to data.
9. Reports
The tool you get should help achieve the goals, monitor performance and also make team communication easier. To build all the necessary reports by hand is nothing productive at all. The more automated, the better.
With reports’ help, make a retrospective with the team to reflect on whether the project or the newly completed step succeeded. Rate, review goals and risks and analyze the obstacles found. Don’t use this moment as an opportunity to blame. This is a time to share the lessons learned, so that everyone can benefit. Use Runrun.it, a task manager software, to help you with that. Try it for free: http://runrun.it
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