Project planning is essential to maintain control of your team and delivery of work output, and at the core of any project plan will be a task list. The task list lets you know what needs to get done, and just as importantly, who needs to get it done.
Project planning will devote a large part of planning resources to creation of the tasks list, so here are HighGear’s top five tips for creating a better task list and improving team work performance:
1: Involve Your Project Team
The Factor X that determines success or failure in any major project will be the attitude and buy-in of your project team. A poorly conceived project with weak leadership and poor resourcing can still become a success with great people and the same applies in reverse: great projects can founder because of poor staff buy in.
Bring your project team into the process at the earliest stages of planning. Not only will you apply the brain power and combined experience of your team to the issues, you will also increase staff buy in as they work out what they themselves need to do to get to where you’re heading. Instant accountability and instant motivation.
2: Impose Task List Structure
After brainstorming and review meetings to create the task list, you now have a disassembled pile of things to get done. Now is the time to impose order and get some structure into the mix.
HighGear is an excellent resource for creating order from raw task lists, so start entering them into the software. You can then use HighGear to create logical groupings of related tasks and quickly create draft workflows to visualize the project.
By imposing structure now, it will be easier to manage the project overall and finding individual tasks you need to zero in on will be faster and simpler.
3: Establish Task Priorities
Priority tasks should be highlighted, so ensure you make these easy to find. HighGear is a simple and effective task management tool and will automatically track and highlight critical work tasks as the project is executed.
4: Consolidate Everything & Avoid Scattered Lists
If you are working from scattered work task lists, you will find it almost impossible to stay on top of critical priorities, so consolidate everything in one place. HighGear acts as a central repository where you can establish order and control, and quickly access all project work tasks when you need to, as well as delegate and monitor individual and team performance with ease.
5: Getting to the Finish Line
There is always a good feeling associated with ticking off a checklist, but with HighGear you also get to share the good vibes with everyone else too. HighGear provides real-time updating across the team, so you can actually see how work flows through your business processes.
Not only can you see progress, but also identify potential bottlenecks and points of stress within business processes you are using. This allows you to see how work is progressing and also identify who amongst your team is getting overloaded and needs additional support, allowing your project to proceed to final completion that much faster.
P.S. And did we mention clear and simple reporting? Nothing says “effective” like that daily report showing all the great work that got done and that everything is running on time.