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Task Management - A Complete Guide To Manage Tasks

Task management involves planning, tracking, and executing tasks from start to finish to complete projects efficiently. It breaks large projects into smaller tasks that are assigned to team members. Different approaches to task management include Agile, Kanban, and Getting Things Done (GTD). Effective task management requires prioritizing tasks, scheduling, flexibility, delegation, and communication.

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111 views

Task Management - A Complete Guide To Manage Tasks

Task management involves planning, tracking, and executing tasks from start to finish to complete projects efficiently. It breaks large projects into smaller tasks that are assigned to team members. Different approaches to task management include Agile, Kanban, and Getting Things Done (GTD). Effective task management requires prioritizing tasks, scheduling, flexibility, delegation, and communication.

Uploaded by

SINI Woft
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Task Management – A Complete Guide to

Manage Tasks
Published On September 8, 2020 
Projects are made up of a bunch of tasks. Right from the development of an idea, you need to
plan, track, test, monitor, and report all the tasks that are involved in the project. Task
management comes in handy with all these, helping you complete the project efficiently and in
the most effective way possible.

What is task management?


Task management is defined as the process of handling the entire life-cycle of a task, right from
planning to tracking to execution. It helps teams track tasks from the beginning, setting
deadlines, prioritizing tasks, and assigning them to the right people. It ensures projects stay on
track and get completed on time.

Task management, a part of project management is a pretty simple idea. It’s how you break
complex projects into simple, bite-sized tasks so you can manage them quite easily.

Task management enables teams to coordinate among themselves and to effectively complete
tasks and eventually projects.

How is task management different from project management?


Projects have a clear start and end date and have milestones in the middle to know how close you
are to completion. Tasks, on the other hand, are units of work. They are actions that need to be
accomplished as the project progress. They create an ongoing process that forms a part of your
daily work.

Task management focuses on organizing tasks (that may be spread across multiple projects),
prioritizing them, setting deadlines, and delegate tasks. Project Management is far more
encompassing.

In addition to task management, it also focuses on resource allocation, budgeting, and


dependencies. Usually, task management capabilities are built within project management
software.

The different approaches to task management


Different companies approach task management differently. Some of these were developed
almost 60 years ago and some are pretty recent. They were created to help different teams; what
may work for the software development team may not work for the marketing team.
These project management methodologies and techniques help you get more things done in less
time by keeping you organized. Each of these comes with its own set of pros and cons. You can
use one or more of these in tandem to suit your team’s requirements.

1. Agile

An alternative to the more rigid and sequential waterfall method, Agile was developed in 2001
by a group of software developers. It’s an iterative approach where teams ship faster and more
often. Agile project management delivers the value sooner to a customer through quick
deployments.

With smaller teams and shorter sprints, teams are able to get more things done in less time. Also,
the wastage of resources is less because the tasks are always up-to-date.

As the Agile approach detects and patches up the issues faster, it has a faster turnaround time.
Best of all, the huge community following comes in as a great help when you hit a wall or run
into any trouble in your project.

Even though the agile methodology has a number of advantages, it falls short in some cases. Not
much importance is placed on documentation, making it extremely difficult to bring new team
members up to speed.

The constant need for communication demands more time and energy from everyone. Since
there is no clear end, projects can go on forever and ever.

2. Kanban

Kanban methodology (meaning billboard in Japanese) was developed by Toyota in the 1940s as
a system for just-in-time manufacturing. The goal of Kanban is to limit the buildup of excess
inventory during production.

It limits the number of tasks currently being worked on and this serves as an identifier for
inefficiencies when the number of tasks in the line exceeds a certain limit.

An offshoot of this framework, the Kanban system is an effective way of organizing tasks and
keeping track of them. It works in the form of cards and lists and as a simple to-do list. There are
tasks listed under each stage (like plan, to-do, doing, done).

The “digital sticky notes” can be moved around helping teams visualize the flow of tasks from
one person to another using the kanban board.

Kanban boards are an extremely effective tool to identify bottlenecks, deliver quicker results and
offer a transparent view of the task status to everyone involved. However, its loose structure
limits its application to only non-complex projects.

3. Eat that frog


This comes from Mark Twain’s famous quote: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first
thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

Eat the frog is a method that aims to overcome procrastination, something we’re all guilty of.
You start by identifying your “frog”, the most difficult task, and set it to the highest priority.
Once you have the most time-consuming, complex task complete, it becomes easier to get the
rest of the tasks done.

An Eisenhower Matrix helps you come up with the priorities classifying things based on their
importance and urgency. A “need vs. want” matrix helps you categorize your tasks into different
priorities. The frog is the task that falls under the category “you don’t want to but you need to”.

4. Getting things done

“I don’t have to write that down. I’ll remember it.”

These are the exact words that probably led to David Allen writing his famous book, Getting
Things Done. He outlined a task management methodology based on the idea that the head is for
having ideas and not holding them.

The book popularized this framework which enables people to add more context and structure to
their task management by using a task management system so they have a higher chance of
completing them. The GTD methodology has five steps:

 Capture – immediately note down ideas


 Clarify – process the ideas and check if it can be done
 Organize – add action items and categorize them under the right project
 Reflect – Monitor task lists and track progress
 Engage – Do things on the list and check them off

Skills you need for effective task management


1. Prioritization

Not everything in your to-do list requires equal attention. There are activities that can wait and
that’s really what freeing up time is–to eliminate low-value activities. Use an Eisenhower matrix
to find the tasks that are both important and urgent.

2. Scheduling

Creating a schedule is easy; sticking to it is hard. Project scheduling helps you to focus on the


task at hand and not sidetracked by the ones that come later.

3. Flexibility
The project scope can change due to numerous factors, some outside your control. You’d need to
adapt to those changes quickly and be flexible in your operations.

4. Delegation

Being a project manager involves a lot of things which also include task delegation. You’d need
to identify the right people to do certain tasks so you can focus on what requires your skills and
attention.

5. Communication

The project manager needs to have effective communication in project management both with


internal teams and other stakeholders about deadlines and task assignments to get tasks done on
time.

Task management can get unwieldy sometimes depending on the scale of the project. However,
with these tips, you can easily overcome the project management challenges that come with task
management apps:

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