Whether you're managing a large-scale project or just trying to stay on top of your to-do list, a task productivity tool can help you to get organized, delegate responsibilities, and complete tasks more efficiently. In this article, we'll explore ten benefits of using a task tracker in project management and why you should incorporate it into your workflow.
One of the biggest advantages of using a task tracker in project management is the increase in productivity and efficiency it brings. With the right software used in a smart way, project managers can keep a close eye on their team's progress and make sure everyone is on track to meet their deadlines.
Automations are a real winner here. As a manager, you can receive a notification when a task is approaching its deadline and take corrective action early. This allows you to keep your team on track, minimize disruptions to the project timeline, and ensure that the project is completed on time and within budget.
Task-tracking software also helps project managers to identify areas where they can optimize their workflows and processes to improve productivity and efficiency further. With a clear view of the progress of each task, managers can identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the project and take steps to eliminate them.
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It’s easy to get sucked into the micro details and lose sight of the bigger picture, but this is kryptonite to project managers. Time trackers can play a major role in your ability to prioritize wisely.
With all tasks and project information stored in one central location, you get a comprehensive view of your completed tasks and what needs to be done. This makes it easier to identify which tasks are the most critical and should be given the highest priority. If you feel a task is nearing its deadline, you can allocate resources more effectively and ensure that the most important work is completed on time.
Task-tracking software also helps team members organize their to-do lists. With each task displaying the expected time needed, team members can organize their day and focus on the tasks most critical to the project's success. This saves you as a manager from setting daily priorities for each individual.
With task management software, you can measure each individual’s performance, and reallocate responsibilities as a result. With the clear data at hand, you take away any guesswork and can justify your decisions.
The system is straightforward. Start off with your task analytics, where you can see who completes their work on time and who is struggling. At first, play it cool, and transfer a bit more responsibility to your high-flyer. For example, if a new client appears in your CRM, rather than assigning them randomly to a sales agent, you can send them to the worker who has more time.
However, if it is a consistent trend, you might consider making things official. To keep your top performer engaged, you can delegate greater responsibility to their daily schedule, then track how well they are carrying out these new tasks. If you’ve been in project management for a while, your ears will prick up at the sound of delegation. Yes, work assignment trackers are indirectly responsible for keeping your best workers motivated.
Task trackers have revolutionized how teams collaborate at work. The most obvious change is that long email streams are out of the window. Instead, everybody involved with a task communicates via the relevant card on your project management software. This helps to eliminate confusion and ensures that everyone is working towards the same goals.
Whether you’re in the office or on a remote setup, start off by storing all the relevant files and instructions on the task card, so everybody knows where to find the right information. This is a major productivity booster as it removes the need to ask questions at every stage. You won’t be able to master this immediately, so pay mindful attention to how people react to your instructions, and make frequent improvements to your messaging.
Automations are back on the scene to streamline your work again. Once a task is done, you’ll receive a notification so you can review it while your team gets on with their next job. In the other direction, every time you send an update, everybody involved will get an immediate notification too.
Transparency is everything in project management. If you don’t know what’s going on, small problems can grow into project destroyers relatively quickly. That’s why you and your team need to maintain visibility throughout the timeline — and task trackers are a great way of achieving that.
Software such as Kanban boards gives your whole team a birds-eye view of everything that is going on. You can see which tasks have been sitting under “in progress” for too long, or even create another column for tasks that have stalled. Boost that with real-time updates and notifications, and you’ve got a powerful framework for real visibility.
In addition, task-tracking software gives project managers the tools to monitor the progress of each task and project. With stats like task completion rates, shy members of the team can’t hide a lack of progress, and you can intervene to get the project back on track.
Following on from the previous point, project managers need a team of individuals who are honest and accountable at all times. But we also need to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day — life doesn’t always work that way.
But task trackers can be a secret weapon in terms of accountability too. At the start of your project, take your team on a trip through your task management platform so they know what you can see. We’re not advocating a Big Brother-style micromanagement — let them know that there is no shame in being up-front and honest about any difficulties they have as soon as possible. This way, you can trust what you hear and make fully informed decisions going forward.
Once this culture is instilled within your team, you can take a step back from chasing people up and investigating the minor details of tasks. So what do you do with all that free time? Get to work looking at a more strategic overview, liaising with your clients, or analyzing performance.
As a manager, you’ll want to keep your processes as agile as possible. Gone are the days of vertical hierarchies where you expect permission to slowly grind its way from boss to subordinate. Now, you need fast reaction times and strategies that blow away roadblocks in an instant.
Clearly, the first port of call here is real-time updates and notifications. You and your team get a notification whenever there is activity on your task management card, so you can intervene and answer outstanding questions rapidly.
The best work assignment trackers are available on mobile devices too. Rather than getting a notification on your desktop, you’ll simply get a familiar buzz in your pocket. This gives you total freedom to attend on-site meetings, visit clients, or even work from home without a drop in productivity. Conversely, this also means there’s no excuse for late replies and updates to your team.
But the benefits are clear for all to see. By tackling issues and roadblocks immediately, you keep your backlog of tasks to a minimum and make a free passage for your project.
When you’ve got a project made up of countless tasks, sticking to deadlines across the board is the only way you can really keep a handle on things. This puts time management into the spotlight, and there are a lot of opportunities to exploit.
Let’s start at the bare-bones level. You’re likely to repeat similar projects with the same team, so make sure to use customizable workflow templates. This will set up the structure of your project at the click of a button, and you can make the necessary changes in far less time than launching a new project from scratch.
Then, as we’ll see later, analytics seriously comes into play. If individuals repeatedly overrun tasks, it might not be their fault. Use data to identify the trends, then put your compassionate hat on and take a closer look at the root causes — you may need to change your expectations.
With so much data at your fingertips, plus automations that deal with a lot of the menial work, you can master your time management skills and set a great example for your team.
Workflow templates will save you time in many areas, and one of those is allocating the right resources to each task. If it worked last time, it’s likely to work this time, right? So reproduce your workflow and get going.
More advanced task management tools go further than just assigning a single task to a single individual, however. You can assign:
A responsible person, usually a department manager who knows the status of the task
Participants, who work to complete the task
The creator, usually you, who made the task in the first place
Observers, who may need to know what’s happening, but don’t intervene in any way
But when task trackers really save the day is when you can see that a task is running slow. Rather than waiting until it’s too late, speak to the responsible person and reassign resources to get the task back on track.
To finish our benefits of project management task trackers, we’ll go to one of the biggest buzzwords of the 21st century: Data.
These days, there is no excuse for not using solid data to inform your strategic decisions. Taking time tracking as an example, you can set metrics and targets for each individual and use the speed and performance of their work to analyze it. With this information, you can:
Reward completed targets
Identify slow areas of your business
Reassign resources where necessary
Track your project progress
While it may be daunting to dip your toes into data, there is really no better way to spend your professional time. By seeing data as an ally, rather than a distant enemy, you can learn key insights rather than relying on intuition (which, we’re sorry, isn’t a great strategy).
So there you have it! We hope our 10 benefits of task trackers have helped you understand how they can drive your company forward while reducing your personal workload.
Whether you're a small business owner or part of a larger team, task trackers offer a wide range of benefits that can improve your efficiency and help you deliver those projects on time. From less stress and better organization to improved collaboration and communication, they are an essential productivity tool for anyone looking to streamline their workflow.
But where do you find them?
Bitrix24 offers business owners and entrepreneurs pro-level task trackers, alongside a generous helping of other tools, including:
A website builder
A range of communication tools
A human resources information system
Put simply — it’s everything your business needs, all in one place.
Try Bitrix24 today and experience the power of a centralized business tool!A task tracker is a software tool that helps project managers and team members to track, manage, and prioritize tasks and projects. It provides a central location for storing all project information and helps to improve productivity, efficiency, collaboration, and communication among team members.
A task tracker helps to improve productivity and efficiency in project management by automatically identifying tasks that overrun deadlines. Looking forward, when planning new projects, you can use previous time data to plan future deadlines.