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The Best of Task Management

A selection of professional insights from the Blog archive

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Since 2008 our project management professionals have been sharing knowledge,

experience and learning with online readers via the Project Manager Blog.

Their collective wisdom provides a wealth of how to, top tips and best practice advice,

for project managers, teams and businesses.

To make their writings more accessible we’ve created a series of “Best of” project

management topics available free to download and share.

Here is a collection of excerpts and insights from blog posts that discuss ways to manage

and delegate tasks effectively.

Enjoy!

Jason Westland CEO

ProjectManager.com

How to Get Out of the Task Management Mentality ................................................................................. 3

How to Manage Tasks ................................................................................................................................. 6

Why Being Just a Task Manager is Bad Project Management .................................................................... 9

6 Steps to Delegate Tasks Effectively ........................................................................................................ 12

How to Delegate Tasks as a Project Manager ........................................................................................... 14

How to Manage Your Tasks ....................................................................................................................... 16

30 Day Free Software Trial ........................................................................................................................ 17

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How to Get Out of the Task Management Mentality

Everybody loves to have a career path. You don’t start at a company in the hopes of

year’s later doing the exact same thing you were doing on the day you started. No…you

start with a company because you want to grow, expand, push the envelope, bring value

and ultimately move up the ladder. This means more responsibility, more accountability

and ultimately more money.

What steps can you take as a project manager to get to this point of moving up in the

organization? More than anything it has to do with mindset. It has more to do with how

you view yourself and the value you bring to your company as it does the opportunities

that will present themselves to you. The following three mentalities are what you need

to break free from to move forward:

1. The task management mentality

2. The 9 – 5 employee mentality

3. The “can’t do” mentality

1. The Task Management Mentality

The task management mentality focuses

only on the “here and now”. Being at the

top of an organization is all about breaking

out of the existing way of doing things and

trying something new. Otherwise, the

competition will. Below are a couple of

suggestions for breaking free of the task

management mentality:

Look beyond the here and now – You need

to see the big picture, not the immediate

task that is at hand. Sure, you may feel that what you are doing is repetitive and the

same every week. You may schedule the same project update meetings, or make sure

the latest version of the plan is checked into the document repository, or even ask the

same questions week after week. But, what is this helping move forward? Are you

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working on a project that will greatly reduce expenses or allow the sales team to sell

more of your product? That’s what you need to focus on and not just the here and now.

Who cares if that’s the way it’s always been done – Think about where we would be if

brilliant creative minds such as Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or Steve Jobs

were content with that’s the way it’s always been done. Just because it’s been done a

certain way over a long period of time doesn’t mean that it always has to be done that

way. Change the task at hand to be more efficient, productive, or effective. It’s this type

of thinking that is needed as you move up the corporate ladder.

2. The 9-5 Employee Mentality

I hate to say it, but I’ve worked with Project

Managers that believe that they are on the clock

only from 9:00-5:00. It’s as if they work

somewhere mining coal and punch in when they

arrive in the morning and punch out when they

leave at the end of the day. And, you will never

find them “on the clock” at 8:59 and certainly

not 5:01.

You may carry some of the bad habits or

mentalities from other departments depending upon how you came up through the

project management ranks. Some of these traits may be that you have to take breaks at

a certain time of day, or lunch time can never be interrupted

or you may not be “on the clock” yet and not able to provide

answers or information until you are.

You will never move up within an organization with that type

of attitude. It just won’t happen. Rather, get into an attitude

of flexibility rather than inflexibility. There’s give and take in

any and every relationship we have. We’re not saying don’t

take breaks, or lunch, or leave at a reasonable hour…just be

reasonable about it.

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3. The “Can’t Do” Mentality

A “can’t do” attitude is a career-path breaker. One thing that there’s no room in

business for is just looking at the problems and what can’t be done and not coming up

with alternatives or solutions. If you’ve had the opportunity to listen to and watch a

good salesperson sell, they rarely say “no”. You may have feelings one way or another

about their particular style or approach, but you have to appreciate the fact that they

focus on what “can” be done.

You can apply the same principle to the way you manage your projects and will quickly

find yourself in a better position to move up in the organization. Nobody wants a ‘yes-

person that can’t deliver on their promises, but what they do want are people that

come up with reasonable solutions that can be relied upon and delivered.

Do You Play Well with Others?

A bit of an extension to getting rid of this “can’t do” mentality reminds me a bit about

some recent shopping experiences. I was looking for a particular item in a store and was

having trouble finding it. I asked the person that worked at the store where it was.

“Over there,” they said and pointed to the left. They never picked their head up, they

didn’t look at me, and they immediately went right back to what they were doing. I

couldn’t find what I was looking for and left the store.

The other store I went to I asked the same question. This time, the employee stopped

what they were doing, took me to the item, and asked if there was anything else they

could help me with. What a difference. I have a much better perception of the second

employee than the first and will always go back to that store.

You can be guilty of the same behavior as a project manager. Somebody comes and asks

you if you know where a file is or know who to talk to about the latest on a particular

issue. Stop for a moment and give them the time of day. Show them where it is and

maybe even walk them over to the person if need be. Don’t get so wrapped up in what

you’re doing that you miss the big picture of being a team player and working well with

others around you. Because, playing well with others is also a requirement for moving

ahead in any organization.

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If you are looking to get ahead, focus on getting out of the Task Management mentality,

the 9-5 Employee Mentality, and the “Can’t Do” Mentality and you will quickly find

yourself playing well with others in the executive suite.

How to Manage Tasks

A big part of being a project manager is the ability to manage tasks. These tasks come in

all shapes and sizes. Many tasks and activities have your project plan as the source.

These are the things that you have identified that must be complete by someone else in

order for the project to be complete.

Other types of tasks are the ones that you personally need to accomplish. Some project

managers keep up with these tasks by using daily To-Do lists that never seem to end.

Others may scribble tasks on the whiteboard behind their desk and add them to the

other two dozen items that have been on the whiteboard so long they are beyond the

stage of being erasable.

It’s easy to see that without some way of learning how to manage tasks for yourself and

others you could quickly become overwhelmed. The following are some suggestions

that you can use for task management that may help you at least check off a couple

items off your list at the end of the day.

How to Manage Tasks for Yourself

A great place to start managing tasks is with yourself. There are meetings to plan, flights

to book, agendas to put together, and reports to complete. All of these demands are

coming at you fast and furious and other people depend upon these things being done

in order for them to move forward.

The last thing you want to be on any project or any organization is a bottleneck. So,

what sorts of things can help when it comes to learning how to manage tasks that you

need to get done?

Your e-mail application is a good place to start. We’ll be focusing on Microsoft Outlook,

but the principles would apply to other e-mail applications as well.

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Why You Should Capitalize on the Task Functionality in Outlook

Most people use their e-mail application for its ability to send

and receive email as well as set up meetings and sync with

other people’s schedules. Many people, however, overlook the

Task functionality in Outlook.

There are a couple of ways to make the most of this feature in

Outlook. The first is that if you receive an email that you have

to do something with later, drag it over to the Task Pane in Outlook. This will start

creating your list of To-Do within the application itself, rather than having to write it on

a piece of paper or on the whiteboard behind your desk.

You also have the ability at this point to move the email out of your Inbox and file it

away wherever you want. This keeps your Inbox uncluttered and still keeps the Task in

your list of things to get done.

The next thing you want to do is use the Categorize feature of Outlook. There are six

default color-coded categories you can start with. You can rename these and add as

many as you like. Six is probably a good number of categories to start with otherwise it

can quickly become unmanageable.

You may have a different category for each of your projects, or you may categorize

things that you can only do while you are at your desk, or things that you can perhaps

while you are on the road (like catch up on phone calls that need to be made).

Whatever task management system you develop in Outlook is dependent upon your

specific needs, but it’s something you will find is easier than keeping your to-do list on

paper and rewriting it every couple of days. Plus, you can drag these tasks that need to

be completed, onto your calendar and block off time to get them done.

One trick of learning how to manage tasks is to understand that it takes time to

complete them. Project managers get so busy that their calendar books up with meeting

after meeting – a scenario that leaves no time to get other work done.

When you plan out your week, be sure to drag these tasks onto your calendar for the

hour or so that you will need in order to get them done. You’ll be very pleased at what a

difference this makes compared to checking things off of your list.

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How to Manage Tasks for Others

Once you’ve figured out how to keep yourself and your tasks organized, it’s time to

move on to helping others do the same. Some project managers may reason “I did my

part and put the project plan together. Can’t they just follow that and know what tasks

they need to do next?” Newsflash…a lot of people don’t read, can’t read, or won’t read

a project plan. Yes, it’s hard to believe that as a project manager with all the preparation

you put into it, but many times project plans go unread and unused.

You have two choices at this point. You can become incensed and furious that nobody

respects your plan enough to read it…or, you can change your strategy and help people

understand what tasks are next for them to accomplish. Your job is not to be a baby-

sitter, but you can add a lot of value as a project manager to the team if you help them

in the area of knowing what to do next. Break the plan into bite-sized chunks and tasks

and be sure to be mindful of the following principles of task management:

Communicate Clearly – Be crystal clear when it comes to assigning tasks to somebody

else. What exactly are you asking them to do? Do they understand what the expected

final deliverable? There are numerous methods of making sure they understand. One of

the more insulting ones that I’ve seen used in the past is having someone repeat back to

you what you just said. How condescending. Treat your team with the respect they

deserve and you’ll find that communication is that much easier. You’ll know if someone

understands what they need to do or if it needs further explanation.

Provide Context – A good thing to do when if you want to know how to manage tasks is

to provide the context around that task that has been assigned. They may know “what”

they need to do, but may not know “why”. This is important to getting things done

because, if they run into a problem or situation that slows things down and you can’t be

found, they can make the decision because they understand the bigger picture and

context.

Determine Standards – When it comes to assigning tasks, you must also make sure they

understand what the desired outcome looks like from a quality perspective. You could

say ‘build a house’ and then be terribly disappointed when you see they built a straw

house rather than the brick house you imagined. Be very clear as to what standards you

expect the task at hand to meet.

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Empower Them to Get the Task Done – Responsibility without authority is a frustrating

experience for anyone, especially good resources on your team. Make sure that they

have the commensurate authority they’ll need to get the task that you have assigned

them, done. Otherwise, they may end up throwing their hands in the air and giving up.

Give Support – Make sure the person you have assigned the task to, knows that if they

do get stuck, or if they do have a question, to come back to you sooner rather than

later. They need to feel comfortable with the support you will provide them and not

criticize them for asking questions or assistance in getting “un-stuck”.

Get Commitment – Finally, you’ll want their buy-in and commitment that they will get

the task, assignment, or activity done – and how soon. As much as possible, let them set

the date, but hold them accountable to making that happen.

It’s important to remember that your job as a project manager is not to look over

everyone’s shoulders to make sure that they’re getting their work done. Rather, you

need to learn how to manage tasks and let good people do good work. By following the

guidelines above you’ll find that you’ll be able to manage tasks not only for yourself, but

others as well.

Why Being Just a Task Manager is Bad Project Management

Unfortunately, some project managers take the position that it’s not their job to fix the

problems of the company but rather just continue to force work through the old system

in the hopes of it getting better some day. They choose to live with a broken process

and dysfunctional people and systems rather than take a little time out of their schedule

to make things better. Below are three reasons why some may feel this way and why

this line of thinking is flawed:

1. I’m Just a Project Manager and

that’s Not My Job

Talk about making your blood boil. Some project

managers feel as if their job is to sit behind the

computer and forward emails to those on their

project with their nominal value-add statement of

“FYI”. That brings no value! They would rather sit

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there and wallow in the misery of systems and processes that are broken rather than do

something about it.

If it is negatively impacting or affecting you in a bad way, then it IS your job. If it gets in

the way of you and your team getting something done, or causes delays and cost

overruns on your project, or introduces disappointment to your clients…then it IS your

job. If deliverable after deliverable is falling behind on your task management

software then it is up to you to do something about it! Never get caught in the trap of

just thinking you are a task manager and you don’t have ownership of the process.

2. I Don’t Have the Necessary Influence

This is another self-defeatist attitude that should be removed from our vocabulary as

project managers. This feeling of inadequacy may be a result of the “I’m just a Project

Manager” mentality and is a career-killer. Being a great project manager is nothing but

Influence! Rarely will you have people that report directly to you within a matrixed

organization. Rather, you will need to get your work done through other people in other

departments managed by other managers. How? By influence. At the very least, you

should be able to influence your actions and maybe the person next to you. That’s all it

takes to get a movement started.

Talk about what’s broken. Discuss what prevents things from

moving forward. Ask yourself and those immediately around

you what you can do to improve the process and the

situation. Make some minor adjustments and start talking

up the positive results. Get more people involved and make

an even bigger impact. Track metrics such as the amount of

time saved, or an increase in ROI, or the ability to reduce

rework and get those numbers out to everyone. In no time, you’ll have people paying

attention and jumping on board to improve the process.

3. Why Bother? It Won’t Make a Difference Anyway

If you start going down this slippery slope, you need to check yourself fast! Your

effectiveness as a project manager will quickly become marginalized. It means you’ve

given up. You have a couple of choices at this point:

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Go somewhere else – Be careful with this one. If you find

yourself in a similar situation, attitude, and low level of

effectiveness time and again then the problem is you. You

may be what is broken and not necessarily the places you

work.

Change your attitude – You can spend the next couple of

days being miserable and feeling helpless, but, next Monday

morning wake up and come in with a new attitude. Make

such a drastic shift that your co-workers won’t recognize you. Realize that improving

processes and systems that are broken IS your job, you have the necessary influence to

get it done, and it WILL make a difference.

This is how easy it would be to start to make things better. Find a simple process that is

broken. Get all the people in the room that are involved in that process, are recipients

of what the process delivers or provide input into that process. Ask everyone to talk

about it from beginning to end.

Put it up on the white board and document who does what and when do they do it.

Document how long something takes. Identify how long a deliverable sits somewhere

idly before it is picked up by the next group to be worked on. Document this in whatever

form of project and task management software you use to get a visual representation of

what the current process looks like.

Then, identify those areas that are troublesome. You’ll come up with problems such as

people not knowing when something was done, things taking too long in one

department, double work being done on a deliverable, inadequate quality which will

lends itself to rework and other “a-ha” moments Finally, ask everyone what the new

process should look like. Let everyone state their opinion. The process may be totally

revamped or just tweaked a bit. Regardless, everyone has provided their input and has

ownership of the new process, and thus, some level of accountability.

Put a simple flowchart or swim lane diagram together and implement the new process.

Once implemented, you will start seeing how much time is saved. Communicate this out

to the team, communicate this to the functional managers and most importantly start

going up the executive chain about what the team has done and the cost savings /

revenue generating / time reducing results that have been realized. Following the above

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steps will move you from being just a task manager to taking your project manager

career to the next level.

6 Steps to Delegate Tasks Effectively

Do you have trouble delegating tasks to people on your team? There are a number of

reasons why people have a hard time delegating tasks to others:

They are Control Freaks – Some believe

that if to give someone else just the

slightest amount of responsibility or

authority would undermine her position.

They feel if everyone around them is of

sub-par intelligence and wouldn’t be

able to complete tasks at their level of

expertise. This results in not letting go of

anything, ever.

They Don’t Know How to Delegate –

They may have attempted to delegate in

the past and weren’t pleased with the results. The people they delegated did what

they were told, but it wasn’t what needed to be done. Directions, timelines, quality

levels, or other criteria were lost in the translation.

They are Unsure of Themselves – Some people may not fully understand the task at

hand themselves and are reluctant to pass it on to other people. This would mean

they would need to explain in great detail what needs to be done, and they just don’t

have that level of comfort.

Why It’s Critical for a Project Manager to Delegate

You need to rid yourself of any hesitation relative to delegating tasks if you are a project

manager. Delegation is a core part of what you do, and you should do it well.

Technically, what you own or are responsible for on each project is the project plan,

including communications, risk, expense, and procurement plans. You are not

responsible for doing the actual work. As a matter of fact, that flies in the face of staying

off of the critical path. The only way to accomplish this is through delegation.

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6 Steps to Delegate Tasks Effectively

Below are six steps you can follow to delegate tasks effectively:

Be Precise – You need to be extremely precise, thorough, and comprehensive about

communicating what you are asking somebody else to do. You need to remove any

ambiguity or questions in your mind before you bring someone else into the picture.

Passing along ambiguity to someone else is like a copy of a copy of a copy. Someone

will take the ambiguity you passed along to them, make it just a little bit fuzzier, and

then pass that on to the next person. The directions you gave could be almost

unrecognizable by the time you see them implemented in the final project.

Choose the Right Person – You need to make sure you are matching the task with

the right person. Consider the person’s skill level and knowledge relative to the task.

Will they be able to accomplish the work with minimal instruction from you or will

they need additional hand-holding? It’s not a problem to delegate to a newer person,

just be aware of the fact that they may take a bit longer to get something done. They

may have a false start or two that a more experienced person would not have.

Have a Clear Hand-off – Once you’ve

established the task and chosen the

person, you need to make sure there is

an event that marks the hand-off. The

best way to do this is with a face-to-face

meeting if possible. Explain what you

need to have accomplished. Make sure

your project team member has a grasp of

all the details necessary to complete the

task. Include due dates, milestones, resources that are available, who can assist and

other relevant information about the activity. It’s also good practice to put what you

discussed at this hand-off meeting in writing.

Make Yourself Available – The biggest service you can provide after delegating is to

make yourself available. Make sure they know that if they have ANY questions about

what they are doing they can come and ask you anytime. You’ll be glad to answer

them and would prefer they come to you sooner rather than later, in case you need

to clarify any misunderstandings that may have occurred during the hand-off.

Follow Up – You’ll want to follow up even if the person doesn’t come to you with any

questions, and not in the spirit of “I don’t trust you,” but as if to say, “Is there

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anything you need from me to finish this task?” They may not need a thing from you

and that’s great. It just lets them know you are concerned about their success. Plus,

it gives you a reality check as to how well they understood your directions.

Resolve Issues Quickly – If the task you delegated is not on the right track, get

involved as early as you see it, and often. Point out where the confusion may be

coming from and jump in to help fix the issue quickly. Helping resolve the issue

quickly may just be a matter of pointing them in the right direction, or letting them

know what they need to do next. Regardless, you are preventing them from spinning

their wheels unnecessarily and setting their selves up for disappointment later.

Knowing how to delegate effectively would have helped Lisa and her staff. It may be too

late for her, but it’s not too late for you. Learn to let go. Implement these six steps

today, and you will experience what smoother projects and a happier staff is like.

How to Delegate Tasks as a Project Manager To understand why some Project Managers end up in the unenviable position of doing

way too much work themselves, we have to understand how they get into that position.

Some find it hard to delegate tasks for a number of reasons. The following are a few of

these reasons:

It May Not be Your Style to Delegate

It may not be your style to ask other people to do

work. They may have been a person that was an

extremely effective organizer. Or, they may have

been highly proficient in a particularly technical

aspect of their job. These two skills sets would

lend themselves to being a Project Manager. They

may have also found that they were the only

person for the job and they jumped into do the

best they could do.

Regardless, they may not be the type of person that is used to telling others what to do

and delegating tasks. This may be compounded by the admittedly noble, yet somewhat

naïve view that they won’t ask someone to do something they won’t do themselves.

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If the above describes you…then get over it…and fast! You need to become very

comfortable and confident with telling others what to do. They expect that from you as

a Project Manager. They are looking for someone to let them know what they did right,

what they did wrong, and what is next on the schedule to bring this project to

completion.

You Can Do it Better Yourself

This is a very slippery slope to start going down, especially when you are proficient at

whatever it is that you are delegating for someone else to accomplish. You may have

done that other person’s job for years and know how to do it inside and out. This poor

soul has only been doing it for a year and certainly doesn’t understand the intricacies

and nuances of that particular task the way you do!

So…you ask them to move out of the way so

you can take their place and just do it

yourself. This is not an effective way to

delegate tasks as a Project Manager. Why?

Four words…It Does Not Scale. Are you

going to do this task for this person every

time? Are you going to do this task for the

next person that needs to do it along with

doing the first person’s task as well? You can

see how quickly this will get out of control

and distract you from your job of managing

the project.

Sure, you probably can do it better yourself. But, ask yourself, does it HAVE to be done

that particular way? Is the end result just as acceptable if someone else does it a slightly

different way? I’m sure you already know the answer to these questions.

More often than not, how a task is performed is a matter of personal preference as

much as it’s a matter of HAVING to do it a particular way. Give your resources some

breathing room to do it their way. Allow them to make mistakes and learn from them.

Will this take a longer time in the short-term? You better believe it. But the exponential

return on this investment in the future will make this decision a no-brainer.

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You Can do it Faster Yourself

This is a variation on the theme above of being able to do it better yourself, but with a

slight twist. It’s going to take 5 days to train a new person on a particular task that you

know will only take 2 days to complete. There’s never enough time put into the

schedule for training, so you fall into the trap of doing it yourself…over and over again.

At some point you need to stand up and say that it’s not going to be done this way

anymore and the time spent on training will pay off substantial dividends in the future.

How to Delegate Tasks as a Project Manager

Once you have overcome your concerns of delegating tasks to others, you will soon find

that your effectiveness as a Project Manager skyrockets. Be very clear in your

expectations. Let others know that you are going to operate in a particular way when it

comes to delegating tasks. You will do everything you can to clear obstacles out of the

way or make their job as easy as possible, but ultimately it comes down to them

finishing the task that they have been assigned. Help them pick the ball up again if they

have dropped it, but don’t take the ball from them and run with it. Help them come up

with a plan of action for getting the job done.

This may require pulling in other resources, creative scheduling or a combination of

both. This way they will realize it is ultimately theirs to complete and not something

they can quickly (and many times unnecessarily) turn over to you to do. Finally, reward

those who see a task from beginning to end with minimal intervention from you.

How to Manage Your Tasks Project management is all about making sure that the right tasks happen at the right

time. Projectmanager.com Director, Jennifer Whitt, shares six things to help project

managers manage their own tasks http://www.projectmanager.com/how-to-manage-

your-tasks.php

1. Establishing systems

2. Performing sanity checks

3. Estimate realistically and baseline promptly.

4. Escalating timely and that’s really calling out for help.

5. Requesting support.

6. Identifying resources

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