Task Management for Teams and Individuals
Rock with personal kanban
This Lifehacker article has some great tips for using kanban method for your own projects, both business and personal.
Kanban is designed to give you a simple, visual look at what’s on your plate. It should help you decide your priorities and see what you have already accomplished. Make it work for you!
The golden rule of productivity is to not take too much at once. Juggling between multiple tasks at the same time might actually reduce productivity because you are not able to fully focus on one thing at a time. This creates rush and rush creates mistakes.
The kanban system lets you visualise your workflow. By adding, removing and reorganising tasks, you can also limit the number of things you have in progress. Put a hard cap on the number of things on the “doing” section. You can add more tasks but they will have to wait in the “to-do” column.
This approach works with pretty much any productivity method that uses tasks and to-dos. Instead of columns, you can also use tags, labels or colors, depending on what features the task manager of your choice is offering.
Tips and tricks for team task management
Many, many task apps offer plans for teams. Trello has a Business Class, Todoist has a Business plan, Any.do has a premium plan, and Asana is free up to 15 team members. Some apps are more expensive than others, the features differ and the setup process can take some time.
No matter what platform your team chooses to use, here are few techniques that will help you manage your tasks.
Everyone should know how their tasks are part of the bigger picture.
What are your colleagues working on? What’s happening with that project you did a small part of? When everyone is on the same page, creating plans for the future is easier and people understand and respond to each other more effectively. Furthermore, when you track your task in a visible way, each task becomes an opportunity to demonstrate effectiveness and accountability. It’s also very effective way to communicate about what you’re working on.
Remember to ask for help when you need it. Your system should enable you to bring team members up to speed rapidly on the progress up to that point. A good task management app and system lets you instantly share all related files and resources that can provide background for what you need help with. Make sure they are available! The last thing you or anyone else wants is to spend time hunting down relevant documents when you might already be delayed with the task.
Capture tasks whenever they come up. You can jot them down on your notebook, napkin, post-it notes or the memo app in your smartphone, but then you have to remember to add it later to your system. The most effective option then is to capture tasks immediately into the system they’re intended to end up.
Review records to plan for the future. Make sure you are able to review, collectively and independently, the way in which tasks were completed by your and your team in the past. Take notes of the decision-making process, suggestions, lessons learned or unexpected obstacles you had to handle with. Take time, every once in awhile, to review lists of tasks and re-assign, update and remove them accordingly.
