Task management tools – such as spreadsheets, apps or the Kanban board method – assist managers and team members in streamlining project workflows while eliminating bottlenecks to enhance decision-making, communication and efficiency of projects.
Unrecognized task dependencies account for 12 percent of project failures. Robust task trackers can prioritize tasks according to dependencies and provide multiple views of tasks for optimal completion. You can use Mogu for task tracking.
1. Set Your Goals
Maintaining order among all the tasks on one’s agenda can be challenging. To achieve effective management, setting goals can help – it involves clarifying desired outcomes and setting measurable criteria to track progress.
To help define your goals, try the GTD method. This methodology breaks projects down into actionable steps – for instance if your goal is to learn to cook then step one would be researching cooking classes in your area; step two could include buying a cookbook; finally step three could involve signing up for classes.
This method of goal setting is beneficial in tracking both short- and long-term objectives, and facilitating more frequent experiences of success which will ultimately boost motivation to meet them.
2. Create a To-Do List
Utilizing a To-Do list is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to improve your organizational skills. It helps transform ideas and impulses into concrete actions you can actually complete.
Make your to-do lists more actionable by starting most of your titles with verbs, like ‘Design three Facebook ads images.’ This gives an instantaneous understanding of what needs to be accomplished. If an activity is too large to complete in one sitting, break it into smaller subtasks with their own deadlines and priority levels.
Once your mind has been cleared of tasks, take another look and determine if any should be dropped from your to-do lists. Don’t become obsessed with perfect grouping – that will only waste your time, which could otherwise be spent working instead! Instead, focus on applying the 1-3-5 rule in order to prioritize work that matters and move any unimportant work off until later dates if necessary.
3. Create a Schedule
Task tracking involves monitoring tasks and identifying any delays or bottlenecks in their completion, and to make sure deadlines are being met on schedule and that team members have access to resources they require in order to complete their assigned work successfully.
Gantt charts provide the ideal way to visualize large projects’ schedules and determine dependencies. Arrows connecting one task to the next indicate their interdependencies; their completion must precede starting the second one. This simple yet essential way of visualizing tasks instantly communicates their critical path, helping teams focus on meeting deadlines on schedule.
While editing a task’s duration or dates, you can also add milestone or deadline dates by typing into or selecting from the Task due field. This will change its total slack (free or critical slack), potentially altering its scheduling behavior.
4. Track Your Time
There are various methods for tracking time, each with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. While some methods are simple enough for use on smartphones, others require using an application specifically dedicated to project management and time tracking.
Task tracking software enables you to record and organize tasks, automate their completion, create custom reports, and streamline workflows – features which enable accurate planning and prioritizing work, meeting deadlines and increasing productivity.
Streamlined task tracking helps manage individual and team workloads more effectively, which is particularly essential in agencies where projects often involve multiple people working on different aspects at once. By setting fair workloads for staff members working on multiple aspects at once, fair workload allocation can reduce staff turnover while improving morale. Furthermore, historical data analysis enables companies that bill by the hour to more accurately estimate task durations and provide clients with accurate quotes – another major advantage.
