Sometimes teams have a situation where someone works at their best and does the lion’s share of the work, while someone is minimally loaded. To avoid such cases, you should implement systematic and reasonable task management.
Task management is a multi-level process of working with tasks: from planning and description to acceptance of results, work on mistakes, and, if necessary, repetition.
Task management involves managing all components of tasks: time, money, people, equipment, etc.
Task management is an important part of project management. If the team doesn’t know how to manage tasks effectively, then the question of how to meet deadlines and ultimately complete the project with a decent result will certainly arise.
We can also say that project management is about the ability to see the big picture, and task management is about working at the micro level, which then builds global success.
Task management is very important because many things depend on it:
- a consistently high level of team productivity due to the fact that the workload is distributed evenly;
- project progress according to the schedule, because everything is planned and it is clear which task takes how much time, and it is also clear whether everything is done on time;
- building cohesion even in large teams. This is facilitated, among other things, by the so-called cross-team tasks, when employees from different departments work on the same task;
- optimization of decision-making. This is facilitated by the fact that well-structured task management allows you to understand the situation in the project as a whole at any time and make decisions based on up-to-date data.
Task management skills and ways to improve them
Essentially, task management skills are what are called soft skills. They may differ for different specialists, but there are also universal ones, such as time management. However, it is still very important for a project manager to be able to set priorities, delegate, control several tasks simultaneously, and communicate well, resolving conflicts if necessary.
Other task management skills that are not quite obvious at first glance include the following:
- The ability to say no. This will allow you not to do work that does not bring you closer to your goal, but which you are forced to do for another person.
- Giving up habits that kill productivity. For example, trying to do perfectly when it’s enough to do just fine. There’s a chance that when you finally do it perfectly, you won’t need to.
- Controlling procrastination. Almost everyone is prone to it to one degree or another, and if procrastination doesn’t happen often, it doesn’t pose a threat. But when it gets out of control, tasks pile up on you like an avalanche.
- Realize that you can’t control everything. No matter how conscientiously you plan your work, there will always be some kind of force majeure. So just set aside extra time to complete tasks.
- Ability to make decisions and take responsibility for them. The success of not only one task, but also the project as a whole depends on it.