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Project management

A guide to task management

Rosanna Campbell 11 min read
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You’ve heard the saying: “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” Why is that? Well, a busy person needs to know how to get things done, and done well and on time. They’ve got to have a system. And if you have a lot of tasks to get done, you need a system too.

Simply jumping into tasks as and when they crop up, or plastering your workspace with more and more sticky-note reminders is a recipe for disaster.

To work effectively and without burning yourself (or your team) out, you need to develop great task management. That way, you can stay on track and know you’re on top of your highest-priority task at any given moment. In addition, using a platform like monday.com can make it easier to plan, manage, and track all your team’s tasks in one flexible platform. 

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What is task management?

Task management is the process of planning and completing your tasks in the most effective and efficient way. With task management, you oversee the whole lifespan of your tasks, from conception to completion, so that you achieve your specific goals and objectives.

That involves:

  • defining your tasks
  • prioritizing tasks by urgency
  • assigning tasks to other people
  • setting timelines and deadlines
  • making adjustments
  • monitoring progress towards your objectives.
easy team task management in monday.com

The difference between project management and task management

How does task management differ from project management? In general, it’s a matter of scale, scope, and timeframe. Project management deals with the planning, running, and overseeing of an entire project life cycle, with all the complexity of its constituent objectives. Task management, on the other hand, focuses on the more straightforward actions that help you achieve those objectives.

In terms of time, project management covers the whole duration of the project — which could be months or even years. Task management is more focused on what needs to be done here and now — all those daily and weekly actions that lead to short-term goals. Task management, then, is essentially a subset of project management, and effective overall project management relies on great task management.

The difference between workflow management and task management

Task management is related to workflow management. However, workflow management is also concerned with the bigger picture — in this case, the end-to-end processes, the dependencies of multiple tasks, and the specific sequence of activities that will lead to objectives.

Task management, meanwhile, is more granular, focusing on the specific activities within those workflows and how to prioritize tasks. It operates within a shorter timeframe, dealing with the immediate, daily, or weekly actions needed to keep a workflow on track.

What are the benefits of efficient task management?

We’ve all been there: faced with a to-do list of tasks to tick off that just never seems to get done. Worse, we may even experience ‘task paralysis’ — when the number or complexity of our tasks becomes so overwhelming that we don’t know how or where to begin. And so we do nothing, and the work piles up even higher. 

Task management is all about avoiding those scenarios. The problem isn’t having too many tasks or not knowing how to do them. It’s more about not having a strategy and a practice for getting them done efficiently. This is where task management comes in.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of effective task management.

team task management in monday.com

1. Task management boosts productivity

Task management is like solving a puzzle. You examine how items relate to each other, and decide on the most productive order to complete them. When you get it right, individuals and teams are strategic and in sync when dealing with the tasks in their workflows and projects. By involving the whole team in task management, you keep the overall project moving forward more smoothly and productively.

Task management can also boost engagement by breaking down workflows into more manageable and quickly achievable chunks, which you can organize more effectively. This avoids the diluted focus of multitasking, as well as distraction, procrastination or unproductive antics (The Office’s Jello stapler, anyone?) Instead, you create a more engaged workforce that is more productive.

For more on productivity, check out these productivity apps.

2. Task management ensures high-priority tasks get done on time

Without task management, it’s easy to treat less important tasks with more urgency than they merit, and high-priority tasks can fall by the wayside. Sure, a manager might send out email reminders, but that can just add to the pressure, without guaranteeing that tasks will be done on time.

With task management, you can take a more structured and organized approach to your work, categorizing and prioritizing tasks to allocate time and effort more effectively. Creating dependencies between tasks lets you organize tasks logically and efficiently. With a system in place to set clear priorities and due dates, you can ensure high-priority tasks get the attention they deserve.

3. Task management gives a better overview of your projects and business

Using project management software does more than simply helping teams get more done, and get it done better. It also gives managers and team members a better perspective on the tasks that help move workflows and projects forward.

Tools such as Kanban boards and Gantt charts offer different visualizations of how your tasks fit within your workflows and projects. These can help you track real-time progress, forecast any potential bottlenecks, and give you insights into the progress of tasks and the overall project.

4. Task management improves collaboration and speeds up tasks

If people on a team focus only on their own task lists, they’ll struggle to achieve their team goals. Collaboration is not only a better way to achieve objectives, but it also benefits the business as a whole. Companies with collaborative working environments improve financial results by 17% and annual revenue by 34%.

Task management makes communication and load-sharing between teams and stakeholders easier. This keeps everyone on the same page, knowing what is expected of themselves and their colleagues. With task management software, it’s easier for the team to help each other out. Colleagues can share and collaborate on task lists, plan resources, and assign task responsibilities and task status.

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Examples of task management in action

Task management can improve everything from marketing campaigns to creative projects, and even Human Resource management.

Let’s take a closer look at the most popular use cases.

Personal task management

For many of us, staying on top of our personal to-do lists is challenging. From family finances and home improvements to healthcare, fitness and hobbies, learning to prioritize and schedule tasks gives you a better chance of checking them off your list. Calendars, planners, or task management apps can help you stay on track and not let important tasks slide.

Business task management

For managers and business leaders, task management tools and software can help you to align tasks with business objectives, delegate and assign responsibilities, set deadlines, and track task progress and completion.

For example, if you’re conducting a financial audit, your task management might involve managing data collection, financial analysis, reviewing reports, and meetings with auditors.

Team task management

Teams need to be able to collaborate effectively and coordinate with one another.

An in-house creative team, for example, might handle over 100 time-bound requests in a given week. Without effective task management, workflows can quickly become chaotic, with team members not coordinating well, productivity compromised, and deadlines missed.

With good task management, the team can ensure the availability of designers, copywriters and social media managers, assign tasks, and keep everyone up to speed with their specific responsibilities.

planning team tasks is easier with monday

Project task management

Project managers need to plan clearly defined tasks and subtasks and to manage dependencies, timelines, and milestones. This means prioritizing, sequencing, and delegating those tasks effectively to drive workflows that support the overall project objectives, as well as helping you keep your teams on track.

For example, if you’re adopting a new software system, you will need to break the implementation process into stages, each with its own related tasks for IT and departmental teams. This might include surveying staff on software requirements, selecting and assessing vendors, adoption plans, and testing.

Marketing task management

Marketing teams have to handle diverse tasks around content creation, social media, event planning, and coordinating with copywriters and designers.

When planning a marketing campaign, marketing teams have to set the budget, identify the target market, and define objectives. Only then can they undertake keyword research, writing ad copy, social media planning, and creating a landing page. To keep everyone and all their tasks aligned, task management software and strategies are an absolute necessity.

Check out these free task manager tools.

HR task management

HR managers balance a complex range of responsibilities, including recruitment, onboarding and performance management and payroll. Good task management is vital to ensure all of these HR processes can be run efficiently and productively.

Recruitment alone involves a wide range of tasks, such as creating and posting job listings, reviewing resumes, shortlisting candidates, scheduling interviews and checking references. With good HR software, HR teams can manage and monitor those tasks effectively, so that nothing is missed and they can move onto onboarding new hires — along with all the key tasks that process involves.

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What is the best way to manage tasks?

There’s no one way to manage your tasks, and there are all sorts of methods, of varying usefulness — from the humble sticky note to high-end AI-powered software tools. Or, if you’re lucky, a personal assistant to manage your tasks for you.

Here are some of the most commonly used methods for managing your tasks:

  • To-do lists, whether pen-and-paper checklists or simple online or mobile apps, let you mark off tasks as you complete them.
  • Bullet journaling offers a more creative, personalized strategy for combining different task management methods, such as lists and note-taking.
  • Spreadsheets (e.g., Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets) are more versatile for sorting your tasks, while you can use formulas to create handy task trackers.
  • Mind maps, whether physical or digital, can be useful for breaking down projects and workflows into their constituent tasks and helping to get an overview and see the dependencies.
  • Kanban boards are another way to visualize your projects and chunk tasks together with boards and cards — not unlike a digital version of sticky notes on a noticeboard.
  • Gantt charts let you plot the timelines of your tasks and see their dependencies and deadlines.
manage your team's weekly tasks with monday.com

In our opinion, the best way to manage tasks is online task management. Many project management platforms incorporate task management tools and views, like Kanban boards and Gantt charts, allowing users to design the task management solution that best suits their needs.

Online task management also helps teams to help each other. Colleagues can use communication tools to share best practices or productivity tips and hacks that can improve the task management of the whole team.

A digital platform like monday.com offers simple and intuitive task management within a wider project management framework, so you can:

  • access and update task lists, anytime, anywhere
  • sync task lists and assignments, so the whole team is up-to-date
  • set smart notifications to keep task owners and managers on track
  • visualize the status and dependencies of projects across the team
  • collaborate and share with team members and avoid duplication

Why monday.com is your ideal task management solution

Streamlining your workflows starts with improving your task management capabilities and choosing a task management tool that suits your unique needs.

Fintech platform Moneytree initially struggled to manage processes and workflows when starting out. They tried monday.com to track task progress between product, design, and engineering teams. As the company scaled up, so did their use of monday.com. They began using it for onboarding tasks, compliance tracking, and visualizing processes across the company. They now use monday.com as their main work platform.

As Moneytree CEO and co-founder Paul Chapman put it, “Anything you would do with Excel, but really shouldn’t, like managing lists of things, can be done better with monday.com, with the added benefit of also having conversations and file sharing in the same place”.

With monday.com, you can:

monday.com's AI assistant can generate project tasks automatically

Being busy doesn’t mean you have to be overwhelmed with work. The busy person with the great task management system can get things done on time. With monday.com’s easy-to-use task management templates and supportive project management functionality, you can be sure your team can handle everything it needs to.

If you want more than simply a digital to-do list, but want to optimize your entire workflow, monday.com is your best bet.

Get started with monday.com and discover just how efficiently you can manage your teams’ to-do list.

Rosanna is a freelance content writer who writes non-boring content for B2B SaaS clients like ThoughtSpot, Lattice and monday.com. She lives in Spain with her husband, her son, and a beagle puppy who eats her furniture. Learn more about her here: rosannacampbell.com
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