How Not To Use Task Lists
Task lists are a valuable tool for managing projects, and also for completing many day-to-day activities too. They are the core of project management plans and the basis of many schedules. In fact, many project managers can’t live without them! Even though the concept of a task list is simple, it is still easy to make errors that mean your tasks lists (and the subsequent project plans that are based on them) are less effective.
Here are some things to avoid when it comes to putting together comprehensive and effective task lists.
Don’t Do It Alone
Creating a task list for a project by yourself is potentially dangerous. Why? Because you are not the subject matter expert on your project and you can’t possibly know about every single task required. Don’t take it personally. No single person could know everything there was to know, so it isn’t a reflection on your ability as a project manager.
While you will get a much broader view of the project and required tasks in a few months, at the start of the project you can’t be expected to work out exactly what has to happen in order to complete your deliverables, so you need to enlist the help of your project team.
Put a meeting in the diary and make the time to sit together and bounce ideas off one another. It helps to have everyone in the same room but if you can’t do that use other collaboration tools to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to contribute. Record all the tasks that are identified and use this as the basis for your task list. You’ll be surprised at the things people come up with, and 99% of the time they will be completely valid and need to go on the project plan!
Don’t Ignore Structure
Great, you now have a comprehensive task list. You can start planning, right? Actually, no. It is better to add some structure to your list before you upload it to your project management scheduling tool. Add in some sub-headings. Group similar tasks together. Add summary tasks that cover a selection of smaller tasks and also some milestones to mark finish points in the project.
Another element of structure is to add time frames to some of the tasks as this will help with the next stage, prioritization. If you know when a task has to be completed by, make sure that you include this information on the list so that everyone knows that there is a firm deadline.
Don’t Forget Priorities
Task lists are great, but they can be unwieldy and a bit scary if they are very long. When you open up your task list in the morning only to be greeted by 350 tasks, it’s impossible to know where to start!
Make life easier for yourself by marking those top priority tasks somehow. You could highlight them, use a different colour font, put them in bold or add a picture or some stars next to them. Or, more traditionally, mark the most important tasks with a number 1, the next set of tasks with a number 2 and so on.
Use whatever system of prioritization that works for you.
Don’t Keep It Hidden
Unless your task list is full of private tasks, it is much more beneficial to upload it and share it with the team, especially if they helped you put it together. Then you can all look at the tasks to do and contribute to getting them completed.
Using online software is a good way of making sure that everyone can access the list, wherever they happen to be. That way no one has an excuse for not doing their tasks.
If you do share your task list with the team and are expecting them to complete some of the tasks, don’t forget to add their names alongside the tasks — remember to allocate the work to them! You can’t expect people to carry out work when they don’t know that they have to do it, although this is one of the steps that is often forgotten. It only leads to frustration later!
Don’t Forget To Review It
A task list isn’t static — it can’t be, because you should be working to complete all the tasks on the list. As a result, you need to go back to the list regularly and review it. Mark anything that is finished as complete. That is the most satisfying part of using a task list!
This is also the time to review the outstanding work, check your priorities and ensure that you haven’t forgotten anything. Once you get into the work it is more than likely that you’ll come up with some other tasks that also need doing, so add these to the list as well. Again, use your team to help at this point. It is a good idea to put several meetings in the diary during the project to use for reviewing the task list or project schedule to ensure that nothing has been forgotten.
If you do identify new tasks, be sure to allocate them to the right resource. This will make the task show up in their personal dashboard so that they can’t forget to do it! Some software products will also send an email alert to the task owner as a reminder for when the task is due. And if you have difficulty remembering the details of your own workload, don’t forget that you can allocate work to yourself as well!
Task lists are a great way of ensuring that everything is done on time, by the right people. They can help you structure your project and are key to helping your team know what they have to do next. And you can use them for practically anything! What will you put on your list?
