How to manage tasks?
In PMI's 2017 Global Project Management survey, 37% of executive leaders said "the primary cause of failure [of projects in their organization] was a lack of clearly defined objectives and milestones to measure progress" and "a lack of discipline when implementing strategy." Keeping this study in mind, here are some key steps involved in task management:
Prioritization: Whatever tool you use to manage your tasks, whether a simple to-do list or a comprehensive project task management tool, the most important aspect of task management is prioritization. This helps in efficiently completing all the tasks involved while maintaining the planned constraints.
Milestone tracking: The findings of this study also show that establishing clear goals is essential to the successful completion of a project. Although for task management an end goal isn't necessary, defining milestones helps motivate teams to execute tasks successfully.
Schedule management: Making sure your task gets completed on time is something that has an impact on the overall project health. Attributing the right time frame by estimating the effort involved is key here.
Resource allocation: Optimum resource management is the next step to ensure effective task management. Depending on the budget and schedule, assign the right talent and amount of resources to get work done.
Collaboration: For all the steps mentioned above, collaboration is key. While working in teams usually means more work gets done, keeping team members in sync can be difficult. Task management software for teams can help you keep your team connected.
Another interesting way to manage tasks can be by categorizing them on a deadline or priority matrix with "schedule" and "priority" as the axes. With this structure, necessary work that needs to be done immediately should be placed high on both priority and schedule, while necessary work that isn't needed immediately should be placed high on priority but low on schedule.