What is a Task?
In terms of project management, a task is an activity that is to be performed within a determined period of time or within the specified deadline in order to move in the direction of common organizational goals.
This task can be broken down into smaller tasks or assignments if you will, which must be completed within the defined time of the deadline. All these smaller assignments can be grouped together later in order to create dependencies.
The status of a task can be identified by one of the following states:
- Ready
- Assigned
- Terminated
- Expired
- Forwarded
- Started
- Finished
- Verified
- Paused
- Failed
- Completed
What is Task Management?
Task management is the process of monitoring a project’s tasks throughout various development stages from the beginning to the end. Task management is one of the most integral processes within project management. Task management is not just about creating a to-do list. It involves various other things as well such as tracking the tasks from start to finish, assigning the tasks to the team members, and setting deadlines to ensure that eventually, the project is completed on time. This means managing many things at a time such as time, budget, scope, resources, and so on.
Task Management Vs Project Management:
Some people tend to get confused between task management and project management. They think the former and the latter are the same things with different terminologies. Well, that is not true. Project management is a much broader concept that includes task management.
To understand the difference between the two concepts, first, understand the difference between a project and a task. A task is a single unit of work that is supposed to be done. A chunk of these tasks together makes up a project. Project is a broader term that has certain milestones and deliverables to be accomplished. A project also often involves the participation of more than one person.
For example, you add ‘building a new project’ on your personal to-do list. Well, that certainly can not be done in a single day. What you will be doing is breaking down that project into smaller chunks or tasks and then moving ahead step-by-step every day. Also, you won’t be able to complete the whole project on your own. You are going to need a corporation of many people who hold more knowledge and experience in different fields.
So, in simpler terms, the project is a broader picture of what needs to be accomplished and a task is an activity that needs to be done in order to accomplish that big picture.
Coming to project management and task management, the main difference between the two concepts is that the former involves managing the work of the entire team and stakeholders on a larger scale whereas the latter involves managing individual work or activities on a smaller scale.
Now, what is task management software?
Task management software is a tool or software that helps you create your to-do list and various other notes on a single platform. Think of task management software as an upgraded version of sticky notes. Task management solution helps you throughout planning the tasks and efficiently managing them. Such a solution helps you perform your tasks in a faster and more efficient way. They have a strong ability to keep track of all your tasks, deadlines, meetings, and other stuff that you need to perform. All this together makes a task management tool an essential gadget in the business world.
What are the benefits of using task management software?
There are various benefits of using task management software. They include:
- A task management software works as a single platform to keep all your tasks, notes, and other things you would include in your to-do list.
- A task management solution helps you organize, assign, and prioritize your tasks and thus, stay on schedule.
- A task management system also helps you to monitor the progress of each task and ensure that the reserved milestones are being achieved on time.
- A task management tool also eliminates the use of unsystematic things like sticky notes and MS Office.
- A task management package also helps you keep up with your calendar and ensure that you never miss your deadlines.
- A task management program furthermore, helps improve your team collaboration by keeping everything organized and at your fingertips on a single common platform.
6 tips and tricks to manage your everyday tasks:
If you are looking for ways to improve task management in your organization, here are some simple tips you could use to enhance your team’s productivity, collaboration, and efficiency.
- Accurate Prioritization – No matter what tool or software you use to manage your simple or complex tasks, prioritization is one of the most important aspects of efficient task management. Prioritizing tasks in a proper way is extremely important as it helps in the timely and effective completion of all the tasks involved in the planned period of time.
- Define Milestones – It is not necessary to have a big goal for implementing task management, but defining certain milestones helps keep the team motivated to execute the tasks on time.
- Keep Everything Under One Tree – When you decide what tasks you need to perform, try and collect them all in a single place, calendar, planner, or whatever you prefer using. This helps in avoiding complicating the work and enhances the work speed. Keeping everything organized in a single place also helps in keeping one focus point that makes everything much more easier and manageable.
- Set Practical Deadlines – No one likes deadlines but they are still a part of the world. And as painful as they are, they do tend to improve productivity. Researches prove that deadlines make people work harder when they are aware that they are bound to certain target times and dates. But as important as setting deadlines is, it is also important to make sure that you set a feasible deadline. If not, the worker would feel more burdened than required and that would be unhealthy for them.
- Limit the Number of Tasks Per Day – “Slow and steady wins the race”, we have all heard this saying quite often. Deadlines must be set in accordance with the person’s potential for growth and productivity. A long list of incomplete tasks could be really overwhelming but overworking is no solution for this. An important thing to keep in mind here is skillful assigning and scheduling of tasks.
- Rewards Are Always Great! – Rewards can be fun and honestly, improve people’s willingness to work and improve themselves. Healthy incentives have many benefits. It makes people work harder and faster towards their goals without any distractions and it improves their self-esteem which is quite crucial when you don’t feel up for it.
What to consider when choosing a Task Management tool?
There are certain things that must be kept in mind when choosing a task management tool. They include:
- Collaboration – Collaboration capabilities are one of the most essential characteristics of the right task management tool. Make sure that the tool you choose collaborates the way you need it to. Think of the ways your team prefers to communicate and compare the tool with that.
- Visual Layout – Adopting a new tool or software is not always welcomed in an organization. Make sure you keep in mind that the tool you choose is user-friendly and easy to use. We would suggest looking for a tool that has a dashboard with visual boards to help separate the projects. These types of tools look less intimidating than excel spreadsheets.
- Integration – Moving from one tool to another can be quite exhausting. Anyone would prefer if the tool has some sort of integration with your older tool. So, figure out how and how well the tool integrates with other tools. It would make moving tools so much easier.
- Sharability – Since the tool will be used among a team, it is essential for it to have a nice sharability option for the team members, stakeholders, clients, and so on. That would help you with your collaboration endeavors and also ease up communication among team members.
- Assistance – Check out how the tool assists you with all the planning that you perform. So, look for a tool that offers real-time updates on your project. An effective tool will allow you to schedule and assign tasks and give updates as well.
Top Tools for Task Management:
- Visure Solutions – Visure is one of the most trusted ALM platforms that specialize in requirements management for organizations of all sizes across the globe. The major partners of Visure include business-critical and safety-critical companies. The company integrates through the whole ALM processes including risk management, issue and defect tracking, traceability management, change management, and various other areas like quality analysis, requirements versioning, and powerful reporting. Additionally, it offers one of the most affordable pricing for enterprise RM platforms in the market today. You can get a 30-day free trial, and check their competitive pricing upon request.
- Click.Up – Click.Up is a project management tool that allows planning, visualization, collaboration, and track the progress of the product. It offers live Docs collaboration, personal notepad, dashboards, real-time chat, mind maps, and much more at zero cost.
- Zoho Creator – Zoho Creator is a free ALM solution that is designed to help businesses digitalize all their operations with as lesser hassle as possible. Zoho’s top features include compatibility testing, data migration, and AI-assisted development. It is easy to use and offers a free trial and version.
- Monday.com – Monday is a dynamic platform that helps you create an informational database for your team with flexible knowledge management software. Monday is great for navigating your knowledge base with custom statuses, hashtags, and filters so you can find your things easily.
- Asana – Asana is known to be a bug tracking tool that helps organizations strategize their daily tasks and improve their collaboration. Asana makes it easy to apply the tasks and track them along with their progress. It is easy to use and also helps improve team collaboration and manage the workflows inside the organization.
- Google Cloud Platform – Google Cloud Platform is a modular cloud-based platform that allows you to create almost anything from a simple website to a complex application. Google helps with calendar management, application management, compliance testing and management, and more.
- Anywhere.io – Anywhere is a project management tool that helps you manage your tasks, and clients, and bring your team together. It is an easy and collaborative platform that ensures flexibility throughout the organization. Anywhere is best suitable for startups because it offers more features at an affordable price.
