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Team Task Management Guide
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Task Management Teams

Team Task Management Guide

As soon as the head of the com­pa­ny real­izes that the num­ber of projects is quite large and con­tin­ues to grow, it comes to the effec­tive­ness of task man­age­ment for teams.

One of the effec­tive ways to increase team pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is team task man­age­ment. It helps to do more in the allot­ted time and pre­vent employ­ee burnout. We will tell you how to estab­lish a real­ly high-qual­i­ty task management. 

Team Task Management

A project task is a spe­cif­ic action, the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of which is a step towards achiev­ing the goal.
When it comes to team task man­age­ment, it means the man­ag­er must find a bal­ance between the work­load of the team and its effec­tive­ness. That is, to dis­trib­ute the tasks in such a way that all of them are com­plet­ed on time and in accor­dance with the tech­ni­cal require­ments, with the employ­ees work­ing with­out over­time and too tight deadlines.

The Impor­tance of Team Task Management 

The impor­tance of effec­tive task man­age­ment can­not be over­es­ti­mat­ed. The suc­cess of indi­vid­ual projects and busi­ness in gen­er­al depends on it.

If the com­pa­ny does not have task man­age­ment for teams, the fol­low­ing prob­lems will have to be faced in the future.
  • Tasks that no one knows about. This hap­pens when they were sim­ply talked about or writ­ten in the mes­sen­ger, but there is no record of who should do what and when.
  • Lost tasks. If there are sev­er­al execu­tors of a task, it hap­pens that they pass it on to each oth­er sequen­tial­ly. Some­thing might hap­pen that the task does not reach the next execu­tor and remains some­where in a ​“sus­pend­ed” state.
  • Lack of impor­tant com­po­nents to com­plete the task. Decom­po­si­tion is a use­ful thing in solv­ing large-scale prob­lems. Some­times it hap­pens though that at the final stage it is not pos­si­ble to get every­thing nec­es­sary to com­plete the task, e.g. a team mem­ber is not in touch, and no one knows where his work mate­ri­als are.
  • Over­due tasks. Some­times the inter­me­di­ate stages are delayed so much that the dead­lines of the tasks and the entire project are sig­nif­i­cant­ly shift­ed. It hap­pens that the obtained result is no longer rel­e­vant, needs changes and, accord­ing­ly, addi­tion­al resources for them.
If the above phe­nom­e­na are present in the com­pa­ny, the loss of cus­tomer loy­al­ty and part of the prof­its is inevitable. Team task man­age­ment is need­ed to avoid this.


What Is Effec­tive Task Management?

Task man­age­ment can be con­sid­ered effec­tive, if it allows you the following:
  1. lack of iden­ti­cal task pri­or­i­ties for one performer;
  2. a sin­gle source of infor­ma­tion for all employees;
  3. the abil­i­ty to track progress on tasks;
  4. sta­bil­i­ty of deadlines;
  5. ade­quate work­load of each team member;
  6. high qual­i­ty of work performed.

What Are 5 Key Com­po­nents of Task Management?

Depend­ing on the specifics of the project, the nuances of task man­age­ment for teams may change. But usu­al­ly team task man­age­ment can­not do with­out the com­po­nents list­ed below.

Strate­gic plan­ning The first step in this process is to assess the team’s goals and plan the action tasks that will lead to success.

Orga­ni­za­tion of resources After the strate­gic goals are set and the progress plan is drawn up, it is nec­es­sary to assess the avail­able resources. If there are enough of them to com­plete the tasks, you can coor­di­nate peo­ple’s activ­i­ties, appoint peo­ple respon­si­ble for cer­tain process­es and move on.

Sys­tem­at­ic work with tal­ents When a per­son does what he likes the most, he is much more effec­tive. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pay atten­tion to com­mu­ni­ca­tion with each team mem­ber to under­stand their aspi­ra­tions and skills. This infor­ma­tion will help you del­e­gate tasks to those who can han­dle them best.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing the tasks and moti­va­tion for their imple­men­ta­tion A for­mal order to com­plete a task is, of course, nec­es­sary. But the man­ag­er must explain in detail how this task affects the project. It is also very impor­tant to moti­vate peo­ple so that they feel that the work they do is impor­tant and appreciated.

Con­stant progress mon­i­tor­ing In the inspirable suc­cess sto­ries it is not often writ­ten about how impor­tant it is to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor the sta­tus of work on tasks, track progress, watch for bot­tle­necks, etc. When the man­ag­er sees that some­thing is not going wrong, it is pos­si­ble to adjust actions in time and learn from this expe­ri­ence for the future to avoid mak­ing sim­i­lar mistakes.


How Can You Orga­nize Work on Team Tasks?

The expe­ri­ence of lead­ing com­pa­nies shows that the opti­mal way for orga­niz­ing work with team­work task man­age­ment. It deals with a num­ber of issues:
  1. A sin­gle work­ing space. All lev­els of the com­pa­ny, from top man­agers to junior spe­cial­ists, will col­lab­o­rate in a com­mon envi­ron­ment. This will allow man­age­ment to clear­ly see the project sta­tus and orga­nize an effec­tive task man­age­ment planning.
  2. Estab­lish­ing coop­er­a­tion. When team mem­bers across the com­pa­ny are work­ing on tasks to an agreed stan­dard, the align­ment increas­es, pos­i­tive­ly affect­ing productivity.
  3. Clear pri­or­i­ties. The task man­ag­er clear­ly indi­cates which tasks are the most impor­tant right now and require a pri­or­i­ty solu­tion. There­fore, there will def­i­nite­ly be less con­fu­sion at work.
  4. A time-sav­ing automa­tion. The soft­ware allows you to quick­ly plan team tasks, using, for exam­ple, tem­plates for typ­i­cal and/​or repet­i­tive tasks.
  5. Opti­miz­ing remote team­work. Wher­ev­er employ­ees are, they have access to tasks and can work on them. This is espe­cial­ly con­ve­nient for teams that have a time difference.

Best Task Man­age­ment Tools

To effec­tive­ly man­age team­work tasks, you can choose one of the pop­u­lar and proven tools. 

Work­sec­tion

Plat­forms: Web, Win­dows, iOS and Android.

Fea­tures: A flex­i­ble tool for group task man­age­ment. It allows you to work effi­cient­ly even when man­ag­ing mul­ti­ple projects. Built-in inte­gra­tions with Google­Docs, Slack, Telegram, Viber, CRM sys­tems attract users. The plat­form also offers Kan­ban boards, a time track­er, and Gantt charts. Visu­al Dash­board allows you to get an overview of the most impor­tant indi­ca­tors of the project on one screen.



Draw­backs: Not all users are sat­is­fied with the per­for­mance of the mobile app, as well as the lack of the offline-solution.

Pric­ing: For $29 per month you can man­age 10 projects, with a team of up to 10 mem­bers. $49 per month allows you to work with 20 projects, with up to 20 users. Unlim­it­ed project num­bers with up to 50 users will cost you $199 per month.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.9 of 5.

Asana 

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Windows.

Fea­tures: Sim­plic­i­ty, visu­al­ly attrac­tive inter­face, task assign­ment, dead­lines set­ting, pri­or­i­ty lev­els, files attach­ments, etc.



Draw­backs: User expec­ta­tions regard­ing the cost/​functionality ratio are not always met. Email noti­fi­ca­tions are not always correct.

Pric­ing: A free ver­sion is avail­able for up to 15 users. Paid tar­iff plans will cost between $13.49 and $30.49 per user/​month. A 30-day tri­al ver­sion is available. 

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.5 of 5.

Wrike

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac.

Fea­tures: Main­ly, users like the visu­al­iza­tion fea­tures that this tool pro­vides. There are Kan­ban boards, Gantt charts, graphs. Work­flows, real-time ana­lyt­i­cal reports are also available.



Draw­backs: Users often have to con­tact tech­ni­cal sup­port, because it is not easy to han­dle the set­tings with­out spe­cial training.

Pric­ing: A free ver­sion offers a lim­it­ed num­ber of tasks. Paid tar­iffs cost between $9.80 and $24.80 per user/​month. A 14-day tri­al peri­od is available.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.2 of 5.

Mon​day​.com

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux.

Fea­tures: There are boards that you can copy, assign sta­tus­es to, as well as many set­tings for work­ing with tasks, such as dead­lines, sta­tus­es, pri­or­i­ties, per­form­ers. Pos­si­bil­i­ties for automa­tion are available.



Draw­backs: Quite expen­sive, not the eas­i­est process of cus­tomized setup.

Pric­ing: For up to 2 team mem­bers a free ver­sion is avail­able. Paid tar­iffs cost between $8 and $16 per user/​month. You can use a 14-day tri­al ver­sion to see that the cho­sen tar­iff is good for you.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.6 of 5.

Click­Up

Plat­forms: Web, iOS, Android, Win­dows, Mac, Linux.

Fea­tures: Users like the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the tool and the avail­abil­i­ty of var­i­ous fil­ters, for exam­ple, by time­lines or cal­en­dar. Inte­gra­tions with Google Work­space, Drop­box, Zapi­er are pos­si­ble. Wiki doc­u­ments and chats facil­i­tate teamwork.



Draw­backs: Mobile app needs improvement.

Pric­ing: Using up to 3 boards is free. Start­ing from $5 per user/​month you get a more advanced ver­sion. You can also choose a 14-day tri­al ver­sion of a par­tic­u­lar tar­iff plan first.

Rat­ing at Capter­ra: 4.7 of 5.

Step-by-step: start­ing to man­age team tasks efficiently

First of all, note to your­self that what­ev­er team task man­age­ment strat­e­gy you choose, at the ini­tial stage of imple­men­ta­tion, things will def­i­nite­ly not hap­pen as eas­i­ly as you imagine.

So, the main thing is to under­stand the mean­ing of col­lab­o­ra­tive task man­age­ment and the ben­e­fits it will bring to the busi­ness in the long run. But approach­es and meth­ods can change. Exper­i­ments are a per­fect­ly nor­mal tool on your way to success.

These may be the first steps to effec­tive team task management.

Describe busi­ness process­es and dig­i­tize every­thing you can

Even if it seems to you that every­thing is already clear, and the com­pa­ny is not large, it should be done as ear­ly as pos­si­ble. The main things to fix are
  • orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture;
  • work goals;
  • roles, respon­si­bil­i­ties and tasks of employees.
When every­thing is described, you may have to look at the com­pa­ny in gen­er­al and cer­tain teams in a new way.

After you have a com­plete overview of your busi­ness, start mov­ing towards the dig­i­ti­za­tion of process­es. For exam­ple, get rid of paper note­books and reports in favor of doc­u­ments on Google dri­ve, that is, imple­ment a kind of dig­i­tal transformation.

Choose the task man­age­ment tool which suits you most 

Above we have giv­en exam­ples of tools that are effec­tive for teams. Each of them needs to be test­ed by the man­ag­er who will be respon­si­ble for inte­grat­ing the sys­tem into the teams’ work. This is impor­tant because:
  1. a per­son must under­stand the advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of track­ers and choose the tool consciously;
  2. after the choice deci­sion is made, it is nec­es­sary to con­vince the employ­ees, i.e., explain what advan­tages the soft­ware offers.
If the com­pa­ny has sev­er­al teams, it is pos­si­ble to involve their lead­ers in the test­ing and final selec­tion of the tool, this will great­ly sim­pli­fy the fur­ther imple­men­ta­tion of the task manager.

Out­line the short-term goal for task man­age­ment tool integration 

Above we have already talked about the impor­tance of task man­age­ment. But not every employ­ee may be close to these glob­al goals, besides, they are some­times dif­fi­cult to grasp. There­fore, it is bet­ter to describe the results of the imple­men­ta­tion that should be aimed for in the short term, for example,
  • 100% of tasks are record­ed in the task track­er, not in chats, mail, etc.;
  • all com­mu­ni­ca­tions and file shar­ing on the task are done in the task manager;
  • three months after imple­ment­ing the tool, we have clear indi­ca­tors of the time spent on solv­ing typ­i­cal problems.

Imple­ment the func­tion­al­i­ty step-by-step

It will be bet­ter if the team first trans­fers the tasks that were treat­ed ver­bal­ly, in mes­sen­gers or on paper to the task man­ag­er and starts work­ing with them: cre­at­ing accord­ing to the tem­plate, del­e­gat­ing, chang­ing sta­tus­es and closing.

Once every­one under­stands the process, you can move on to addi­tion­al fea­tures such as pri­or­i­ti­za­tion, time track­ing, bud­get­ing etc.

There is anoth­er imple­men­ta­tion option: first some indi­vid­ual employ­ees (or one of the teams, if there are sev­er­al) go all the way. And then the process is scaled to the entire company.

Impor­tant! It may seem imprac­ti­cal to pay for all of a pro­duc­t’s fea­tures and only use some of them. In this case, first­ly, you can use the free tri­al ver­sion, avail­able from many devel­op­ers of task man­agers. Sec­ond­ly, why not pur­chase the basic func­tion­al­i­ty of the ser­vice first? It can be expand­ed over time to suit the needs of the team.

Make inno­va­tions to a con­stant top­ic of discussion

This is the only way to get detailed feed­back from employ­ees. Don’t lim­it your­self to for­mal month­ly ques­tions like ​“Hey, this task track­er is cool, isn’t it?”

At the begin­ning of the task man­age­ment sys­tem inte­gra­tion in the work of the com­pa­ny, it is worth start­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about it reg­u­lar­ly. For exam­ple, in dai­ly and week­ly meet­ings, you can have five min­utes to dis­cuss the impres­sions of work­ing with the task manager.

If some­one wants to make detailed com­ments that require more time, dis­cuss a time that is con­ve­nient for all, but in no way dis­re­gard the judg­ment of the employees.
There­fore, man­ag­ing team tasks has a notice­able impact on work effi­cien­cy and busi­ness suc­cess. In order to imple­ment this tool in your com­pa­ny eas­i­ly you must:
  • under­stand what spe­cif­ic ben­e­fit it will bring you;
  • choose a task manager;
  • step by step inte­grate it into dai­ly activ­i­ties, get­ting con­stant feed­back from the team.
We wish you pro­duc­tive work!
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