Сегодня мы поговорим об управлении задачами и скоупом проекта.
1. Task management
Ability to manage tasks is critical when you want to succeed in your project.
Project management and task management go hand in hand because any project can be broken into small tasks. The role of a project manager is to manage both the entire project as well as simple tasks that he or she assigns to each team member.
Earlier we spoke about having a project plan. Very often, especially in case of large projects and distributed teams, project plan is not enough. You also need to create a to-do list.
There are many approaches how to make a to-do list. Let us cover a couple.
Simple to-do (task) list
A to-do list (also called task list) should include the following items:
· Start date (optional, important for time monitoring)
· Due date
· Responsible person
· Accountable person (optional)
· Status (not started/in progress/completed or other statuses that correspond to the logic of your project)
· Priority (optional but quite useful if you need to prioritize)
It is very convenient to have such a list in Google Sheets so that each team member has access to the latest version and can update it when necessary.
Kanban board
A Kanban board is a very useful tool, especially if you have a whiteboard that your team can regularly see. Alternatively, there are many online tools which enable a distributed team to see a Kanban board online.
A Kanban board is a board that can be separated in several parts: for example, ‘to-do’, ‘doing’, done’. A project manager can put stickers with explanation of the task, name of the responsible person and expected deadline. Once the task changes its status, the sticker can be moved to a different area of the Kanban board. There can be other areas on the Kanban boar such as ‘backlog’ (meaning, items that can be revised later), on-hold, questions, etc. It all depends on the logic of your project.
Explaining tasks
It is critical to remember that explaining tasks well is one of the key skills of a good project manager. Misunderstanding is a common situation in any project when a project manager did not take enough time to clearly explain tasks and describe the expected result.
In order to get the result you want, you need to pay special attention describing the exact objective of the task and the way to get there. It often helps to provide your project team with tables, templates and other frameworks so that the task is divided to sub-tasks that are easy to complete.
Prioritizing tasks
When you have too many tasks on your to-do list you need to find way to prioritize them.
There is a widely spread methodology how you can prioritize tasks. It is called Eisenhower matrix that was also described in Stephen Covey’s ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’.
According to this matrix, all tasks can be broken down to four categories based on two criteria – urgency and importance. Thus, you can do the same with your project tasks (in order of priority):
1. Urgent and important – do it immediately and allocate maximum amount of available time
2. Urgent and not-important – make sure you don’t forget to allocate some time regularly to completing those task as at some point they either become urgent or non-completion might be harmful to overall project outcome
3. Urgent and not important – are often called distractors; you shouldn’t plan specific time for completing those; instead you should either drop or delegate them
4. Not important and not urgent – can be simply ignored; they don’t affect project result
Consultants love to use Pareto principle saying that 20% of effort bring 80% of result. They always work in circumstances of limited time. Thus, ability to prioritize become one of the critical skills for anyone who wants to lead any type of projects, especially consulting ones.
Monitoring task execution
Setting tasks clearly is not enough. There should also be regular status updates. Ideally, you need to fix them in advance. For example, depending on the length and intensity of your project, regular meeting with your team should be scheduled in all the team members’ calendars on a weekly basis. This helps to create project routine, and increases sense of responsibility. Normally, team members will make an effort to meet the deadlines and come to the meeting with at least some results.
If you work with a Kanban board, it helps to hold regular stand-up meetings. They shouldn’t be long because people are standing. At the same time, the fact they are not sitting relaxed in chairs help them get more focused. Thus, the meeting gets very effective and you end up discussing everything you wanted in a very quick way.
Status updates can be in a form of a call. Still, you need to stick to a clear agenda to keep it efficient. Ideally, your task list should serve as an agenda for the call.
2. Scope management
In the previous article, I have mentioned the importance of the project planning. One of the key objectives of this phase is to make sure your client and yourself clearly understand and agree on the project scope.
In order to fix the project scope, you need to define the following parameters:
· Project objectives
· Goals
· Sub-phases
· Tasks
· Resources
· Budget
· Schedule
In order to fix those parameters, you need to follow several simple steps.
Step 1. Plan your scope
I have mentioned key actions of this step in the previous article. It includes design of the document, often called project proposal, which should include explanation of the key parts of the projects, project schedule, key deliverables. This document should consider input from the key stakeholders of the project.
Step 2. Collecting requirements
This is one of the key steps of the project. It will enable you to fine-tune the expectations of the client as well as your deep understanding of the project. You can collect requirements through interviews, focus groups, surveys. For some projects involving product or service design, it is necessary to create prototypes or mock-ups at this step.
Step 3. Defining the scope
Once the previous step is finished, you can then adjust and finalize the project scope statement, listing what is in the perimeter of the project and what is excluded. This is critical to outline the limitations of the project. These should include areas that are not going to be covered by the project in order to avoid misunderstanding with the stakeholders.
Information gathered at the previous step will help you make the project scope statement so detailed that your project team will be able to use this document as a guideline for their work. If your client decides to ask your team to do something outside of the scope of the project, you can always refer to this document and request price change or at least deadline change.
Step 4. Creating Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
This is basically your work plan as well as to-do (task) list for your team. Depending on the project management tool (simple Excel or specialized project management software) it can be either one integrated list or several documents as well as a Kanban board. It will help you to describe your document structure and agree with the team so that you all know how you work.
It is important to mention, that for each chunk of the work in WBS there needs to be clear deadlines, deliverables and objectives.
Step 5. Validating your scope
At this step, you need to confirm your project scope statement, WBS (project plan) with the key objectives, deliverables as well as deadlines with whoever needs to approve it.
It is important to understand approval process for your project in order to adjust your project plan. In some cases, your project would require passing several stages of approvals including committees that are held quite seldom and can even be postponed.
At the end of this step, you will have change request, project documents updates as well as confirmed deliverables and deadlines.
Step 6. Controlling your scope
The role of the project manager implies controlling that your team is doing exactly what has been agreed upon in the project documents. Very often clients require changes informally, and the project members end up doing extra work not even informing their project manager.
In order to avoid such cases, you need to build a system of clear task allocation, monitoring and controlling. Consulting firms approach this by requiring consultants to log time, fill our status reports as well as attend daily or weekly catch-ups where they plan daily or weekly activities.
Further reading:
· Task list management templates
· How to prioritize tasks using GTD methodology
· How to hold project status meeting
· How to hold a Kanban meeting
· Project scope management: why it is and why it is important