About the Company:
In 2007, together with Slava Balbek, we founded 2B.group — a design bureau specializing in residential and commercial projects. In recent years, the bureau has become one of the leading architectural design companies in Ukraine, receiving awards and recognition abroad.
Next, 2B.group transformed into a new conceptual foundation, which included two companies: Bogdanova Bureau and Balbek Bureau.
Bogdanova Bureau specializes in interior design, product design, and creative management.
Systematization of Business
The Bogdanova Bureau team went through all stages of manual work, where tasks and reports upon completion were submitted in analog form: orally or in writing.
The company became recognizable in the international market, and we gained the attention of clients from both Ukraine and Europe. There was a backlog in work: many projects, a need to set many tasks, and our team was supplemented with new specialists. Serious systematization became essential to keep order in projects and track the team’s work.
First Experiment
I introduced a checklist application to the company. This is a list where completed items are marked. And tables where we kept data on tasks, deadlines, and employee workloads.
Checklists are an excellent solution for breaking tasks into items and following a clear list. We recorded daily tasks in checklists, which was very convenient and understandable.
Second Experiment
I attended a training where I was offered an individually developed program for our architectural bureau. We did not go for this proposal as we knew that such development could take too much time and consume too many resources for preparation and implementation. And that posed additional risks, as the solution might simply not fit the team.
Next, I was advised to implement time tracking and recommended a Ukrainian development for this purpose. Thus, we came to Worksection — a simple solution for project management that has a built-in time tracker.
Quick Adaptation — The Key to Success
We were ready to implement a task tracker. The company had long used various applications where checklists could be created and tasks assigned to each other. When we started to implement Worksection, the team calmly accepted the innovation.
Now we can use one service instead of tables, checklist applications, and chats for correspondence.
We still use tables and chats, but for simple purposes — chats for correspondence, to quickly say or ask something, and tables for reports.
Not all employees know English, and most solutions in the project management market operate in English. This becomes a dead end for the simplest tasks. Worksection works natively in Russian and Ukrainian, and is also translated into English, German, Polish, Spanish, and even Chinese.
We can engage clients from around the world in projects and work through Worksection.
How Worksection Helped in the Early Stages
The specifics of our work include constant client contact and working with a large number of tasks. As the perception of design by a person is subjective, it is necessary to keep clients informed about what we are doing and what has already been done and to respond quickly to feedback. In Worksection, a client can be added to the project, allowing them to see the progress of tasks and participate in discussions. The client can access and see how things are progressing. Next, we established the following:
- Organized tasks.
We always kept the entire work process orderly, even when setting tasks orally and through checklists. But we only remembered the existence of tasks. In the Worksection task list, everything needed is immediately visible:
Now we leverage all the advantages of the system in task setting. We always input a deadline, priority, responsible party, and when necessary — time and financial expenditures.
- Accounted for all processes in the company.
It is important to understand what your team is capable of. If the company has no system for measuring productivity, the simplest approach can be implemented:
Labor Productivity = time divided by the number of completed tasks.
In other words, you should understand how much time a particular task will take your employee or team.
To calculate average time, Worksection has a timer:
Currently, we are just implementing the timer feature. Each employee, upon starting a task, starts the timer. We hope that in the future using the timer will become mandatory. What is convenient is that expenditures can be entered post-factum. This is especially convenient in emergency situations:
Why Time Tracking is Necessary
There are probably no completely problem-free projects. In the field of design, sometimes unforeseen moments occur. Worksection helps to record deviations from “Plan A” and switch to the saving “Plan B”.
The entire chronology of actions and completed work helps to understand where delays occurred, and time tracking helps to identify at which stages the team faced difficulties.
Now we always know where to allocate more time and discuss details with the client more thoroughly, and where the team can work autonomously.
The timer helps to calculate team productivity and see the fact of rework, to set an additional charge for the client in case of unplanned amendments.
Flexible Access for Every Person
Worksection has become a place where we manage not only client projects but also the administrative affairs of the company and store important documents. We needed to hide internal tasks from clients and restrict access to administrative documents from regular employees.
We also connect people on a remote basis, so it is essential that they only see the tasks they are involved in.
In Worksection, visibility is set up easily. For each project or individual task, visibility can be configured for departments, teams, clients, or selected individuals.
Work Correspondence in Chats and Messengers Creates Noise
In messengers, live communication remains, but most work chats turn into a dump for non-work discussions. Most people are too lazy to switch to personal messages, so correspondence about household chores and pet food sometimes leaks into work chats.
Worksection eliminates informational noise in chats and allows correspondence directly in the system. The chronology of events and people’s thoughts always remains under a specific task.
By working through Worksection, the team gets rid of unnecessary stress, and management can establish transparent work for both employees and clients.