Do you know that moment you look at your ginormous to-do list and realise there’s no way you’ll ever get everything done today? Yes, truth is there are only 24h in a day, and unless you’re a superhero with super speed powers you just can’t reach everything. When you’re a manager, it can be hard to keep up with your top priorities when you’re spending a lot of time following up with teammates and answering questions about different projects.
These Outplanr tips will help you keep your projects on the right track, your team in the loop, and save time, of course.
1. Duplicate tasks when you need multiple teammates to weigh in
You’re kickstarting a new project and you want the entire team to brainstorm and contribute with their own perspective. Instead of creating the same task over and over again, you can duplicate the task and assign the same one to several teammates (plus, those tasks will be tracked individually). You’ll not only save time but also ensure everyone will know what they are responsible for.
2. Follow tasks when your work is tied to another teammate’s task
You have a “Review Blog Post” task on your task list. But before you get that done you have to wait for Jane to finish writing the post. And how do you know that you ask? If you open Jane’s task edit panel you’ll see the follow button (just look for the eye icon 👁). When you start following the task you’ll get a notification on your Work view once she completes it, and you’ll know the post is ready to be edited. You won’t need to be constantly checking for an update with Jane and you’ll know exactly when to get started.
3. Save time on follow-up meetings
If you’re managing a project it’s crucial that you know where your team is at any time, what has been done, what they are working on, and what’s falling behind. Basically making sure nothing falls through the cracks and the project is delivered on time, on budget, and the client is happy.
With Outplanr you can reduce the time spend every week on let’s say… at times not so productive follow-up meetings, and also the number of emails asking your teammates for an update on their tasks. But how do you get status updates then?
There’re two ways for that. First, on your Work view you’ll get notified when every task you assigned or you follow changes status (started, paused, continued or completed).
Then, on the Track View you can check what is happening to your team with all task and event status recorded. Here you can also filter by Project to see only all the activity of the projects you’re involved, or by User to get an overview of a teammate’s task activity across projects or in a specific one.
4. Track your project progress
Unclear project status updates can lead to delays, poor execution, or a lot of unnecessary meetings. In Outplanr you can easily see how far your projects have come and what’s still left to do.
On the Project details page you can check tasks status, progress and time balance against time planned. On the top-right corner there’s a bar where you’ll see the % of budget already recorded, total hours recorded and total hours still planned, letting you know how far you’ve come and what still lies ahead.
5. Speed up project creation with templates
Do you run several marketing campaigns every year or write a post for your company’s blog every month? Instead of adding a new project with similar tasks, subtasks, and events, you can replicate and reuse the structure and content of existing projects by duplicating them. You’ll certainly save some time and get to work straight away.
As the saying goes, time is money, and managers have an extra responsibility to effectively coordinate teams, reach successful results, and deliver every project on time.
If you’re often fighting an uphill battle to tick off that to-do list, try using some of these tips to speed things up and increase your productivity.
What are your favourite time-saving features in Outplanr? Share them with us in the comments bellow👇 — we’d love to know. 😊
