En société de services, le chef de projet planifie ses tâches au chiffrage en 4 étapes (découper, prioriser, attribuer, suivre) pour tenir sa marge.
Planning project tasks is about breaking down the project into tasks, prioritizing them, assigning them to the right resources, and then tracking their execution. In a service company, each task corresponds to billable time: poorly planned, it eats into the margin of the mission.
Proper planning and task assignment makes the difference in project management.
In general, you should always set yourself profitable and realistic goals. Next, you need to follow 4 specific steps to plan your project tasks efficiently and productively.
Split the project into tasks.
Identify available resources.
Assign tasks based on these resources.
Track and monitor the execution of tasks.
🔎 Key elements to remember
A poorly planned task is paid for in non-billable hours: planning protects the margin as well as the deadlines.
Découpez chaque tâche assez finement pour qu’elle reste estimable et attribuable seule.
Prioritize by billable milestone and critical path before the urgency felt.
Link every task to time entry: without it, real profitability remains invisible until invoicing.
Qu’est-ce que la planification des tâches dans un projet ?
La planification des tâches intervient à l’intérieur des phases d’un projet, une fois le périmètre validé. Elle descend au niveau d’exécution : chaque tâche reçoit un responsable, une durée estimée et une date de livraison. Sans ce niveau, un planning affiche des jalons sans dire comment les atteindre.
The use of a task management and project management tool facilitates and optimizes the scheduling of tasks, but not only. More generally, the management of the project and the management of its resources make it possible to obtain better profitability.
Project tasks planning is therefore a strategic element whose stakes cannot be underestimated!
In a consulting firm or a IT Services, several assignments move forward in parallel and the same consultants move from one to the other: a task that is poorly estimated in the costing or followed up too late quickly turns into non-billable hours. Scheduling tasks then means linking each task to a resource, a duration and a cost.
What is a project task?
A project task is an elementary, estimable action entrusted to a person, which contributes to a deliverable. On the development of an application, mocking a screen or integrating a feature are tasks. A good task remains fine enough to be quantified and followed on its own, without hiding several days of uncertain work.
En société de services, une tâche consomme du temps vendu. La même tâche confiée à un consultant junior ou à un associé ne pèse pas le même coût, puisque le taux journalier diffère. Une tâche de projet en cabinet porte trois informations : le travail à faire, la personne qui le fait, et ce que son temps coûte à la mission.
Pourquoi planifier les tâches d’un projet ?
Planifier les tâches protège la date de livraison et la marge de la mission. Une tâche découverte en cours de route se fait dans l’urgence et consomme des heures que le forfait n’avait pas prévues. En société de services, ces heures sortent de la marge, puisque le temps passé avait été vendu à un prix fixé au chiffrage.
Le planning des tâches est l’endroit où l’écart entre le temps vendu et le temps réel devient visible avant la facturation. Sans lui, un directeur de mission découvre le dépassement au moment d’établir la facture, quand la marge est déjà consommée.
Cette lecture vaut aussi à l’échelle du cabinet. Un consultant qui passe trois jours de plus que prévu sur une mission ne les passe pas sur une autre : le retard d’une tâche déplace la charge de tout le portefeuille.
Comment définir les jalons d’un projet ?
A task is a job to be done, with a duration and a person responsible. A milestone is a timeless checkpoint: it marks the end of a set of tasks, such as a billable delivery or milestone. Tracking milestones tells if the project is meeting its deadlines; Track tasks, how to get there.
Pour poser les jalons d’un projet, partez de ce qui déclenche un événement contractuel. Une recette client signée, un livrable accepté, une phase validée : ces événements sont des jalons. Une réunion d’avancement hebdomadaire n’en est pas un, faute de marquer la fin d’un ensemble de tâches.
En mission au forfait, chaque jalon mérite une question de plus : débloque-t-il une facturation ? Un jalon facturable engage la trésorerie du cabinet en plus du calendrier. Le décaler repousse l’encaissement.
Faites figurer les jalons facturables sur le planning de la mission, au même titre que dans le contrat. Un directeur de mission qui les voit sur son planning arbitre ses priorités dessus.
Qu’est-ce que le chemin critique d’un projet ?
Le chemin critique est la plus longue chaîne de tâches dépendantes d’un projet, celle qui fixe la date de fin. Chaque tâche qui s’y trouve est sans marge : la décaler d’un jour décale la livraison d’un jour. Les tâches situées hors du chemin critique disposent d’un battement et peuvent glisser sans toucher à l’échéance.
Le calcul devient mécanique une fois les dépendances posées entre tâches : additionnez les durées de chaque chaîne de tâches liées, la plus longue chaîne est le chemin critique. Le diagramme PERT et le diagramme de GANTT affichent ces dépendances.
En société de services, le chemin critique sert surtout à l’arbitrage de staffing. Quand un consultant tombe malade, savoir si sa tâche s’y trouve dit s’il faut le remplacer dans la journée ou si la mission absorbe l’absence. Sans cette lecture, chaque absence est traitée en urgence, et le remplacement mobilise un profil qui aurait rendu davantage sur une autre mission.
Goals are fundamental because they determine tasks, resources, and people in charge of the project.
Let's say a development company plans to deliver an application for which it has estimated 950 hours of programming.
Three programmers will develop the code for five hours a day, dedicating 100% of that time to this project:
950 hours / 3 programmers = 316.6 hours, which each of them will have to complete.
Taking into account that they will be working five hours per day, they will need 63 working days to complete the project (316.6 hours to be completed by each programmer / 5 hours per day that they can devote = 63.3 working days).
Setting goals is key, because if we want to deliver the app in less than two months, we'll have no choice but to bring in more staff.
These are issues that touch on the subsequent management and distribution of work tasks, so this is the first thing to clarify.
After defining the goals, you are ready to follow the four key steps to properly manage and assign tasks.
Step 1: Split the Project into Tasks and Prioritize Them
With your goals in mind, divide the project into tasks and subtasks so that you can prioritize them.
There are various task scheduling tools to help you out.
Cutting with the right granularity: the WBS structure
Before prioritizing, break down the project down to estimable, assignable tasks one by one: this is the Project Breakdown Structure (WBS). A practical rule sets the limit at five man-days per task. Beyond that, the task hides too much uncertainty and risks being underestimated; Too thin, it multiplies the monitoring work without gaining precision.
Eisenhower's Matrix
This system help you categorize urgent and important tasks, distinguishing quality and time constraints.
The Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower matrix has four spaces to order your project tasks.
Important and urgent tasks : In this box are tasks that need to be completed immediately and that usually arise from unforeseen events in daily life. To go back to the previous example, the absence of one of the programmers and the need to do the work assigned to him before this eventuality.
Important but non-urgent tasks: These are long-term tasks that can be postponed.
Unimportant but urgent tasks : These are matters that can be delegated to other team members or that need to be automated.
Tasks that are neither important nor urgent : therefore, they could be eliminated, because they waste our time.
The PERT method
The PERT chart is another tool for effectively dividing a project into tasks.
The PERT chart
It consists of sets of actions that are related to each other. It is especially useful in projects where tasks depend on different departments or large teams.
It unifies criteria and tightens relationships to ensure that tasks are executed correctly and smoothly, in the planned order and with priority given to delivery dates.
Its depiction is reminiscent of a relay race, where worker "B" cannot start running until worker "A" has completed the task assigned to him.
The ICE rating
The ICE (Impact, Confidence, Easy) scoring model is another methodology that evaluates tasks based on three parameters, which helps prioritize the most important tasks.
The following aspects are scored from 1 to 10:
Impact: chat is the objective of the task, with 1 being a low impact and 10 being a high impact (crucial task).
Trust: the certainty that the expected impact of the task will be achieved. A value of 1 is a task that we don't trust a lot of, and a value of 10 is a value of proven tasks that we know will have the desired impact.
Ease : The degree of ease of the task, taking into account the constraints of time, resources, costs, etc. The easier the task, the higher the score.
The ICE score for each task will be the result of multiplying the values given for impact, confidence, and ease. The highest output will designate the priority order of tasks.
The MosCow Method
The MoSCoW method is a task prioritization technique used in agile management.
It classifies the requirements of a task into four categories.
Must haves ,
Should have (important but not critical),
Could have (optional) and
Won't have (not a priority for now).
With a more concrete example, in an application development project, user authentication could be a Must have, while a dark mode would be a Should have and compatibility with a connected watch a Won't have.
Prioritize by Billable Milestone and Critical Path
These methods order the tasks, but in a fixed-price mission one criterion is the most important criterion: the billable milestone. A task that unlocks an invoice or is on the critical path (the longest chain of dependent tasks, the one that sets the end date) takes precedence over a task that is useful but has no effect on delivery. Deferring a task from the critical path shifts the delivery, and the billing milestone with it.
At this stage, make sure that the staff has the necessary skills to execute a given project.
It's important to keep in mind that these aren't just technical issues. Depending on the project, soft skills can be just as relevant.
For example, in projects involving multiple departments, it will be necessary to verify that participants have negotiation, empathy, or communication skills. These skills will be necessary to carry out the project.
Identify the right profiles with Stafiz
Check Availability and Monitor Workload
An often neglected point is the verification of the availability of resources, especially in companies that have several projects in progress and profiles involved in several of them.
It is essential to ensure that we have the right developer to execute a given development, and that he will actually be available when we need him.
This involves checking any paternity or maternity leave, holidays, scheduled absences, etc. This will include reorganizing tasks or finding a replacement when the person initially assigned is not available.
In a practice or IT Services, the availability displayed is not the actual availability: the same consultant often works on several assignments. Before assigning a task, also look at the inter-contract for competent profiles that are still available.
When an employee feels confident, his or her involvement in the projects is greater. If they doesn't have the right qualification level, it is worthwhile to train them within the company.
In this way, they will perceive that the organization cares about them and provides them with the necessary resources to do their jobs, which enriches them professionally.
You can then make it a point of honor to consider the preferences of professionals in the distribution of tasks.
Express interest in a mission in Stafiz
To maintain high levels of drive and involvement, there's no secret: you need to share workloads fairly.
In this respect, it's essential to anticipate future needs by using analyses to predict which teams will be busier or less busy, redistributing tasks to other employees if necessary.
Check employee availability in Stafiz
Digitalize and simplify employee scheduling & workload management
Once your project has been broken down into tasks and your human and technical resources have been identified, you can move on to the third step: task assignment.
To do this, assign the following information to each of the tasks that make up the project.
Who will be responsible?
How long will it take and when will the task for which he is responsible have to be ready?
What tools will it be used to carry out?
Task assignment can be performed and represented in different ways.
GANTT: a Well Known Breakdown Chart
This task scheduler is a system of bars occupying a certain time space.
In a GANTT chart, you'll see at a glance:
the name of the task,
the estimated time for its execution,
the person responsible for the task,
interdependence with other tasks.
Use a Staff Table
The staff table also allows you to quickly visualize the professionals involved in a project, the tasks assigned to them, and the estimated time to complete them.
Both in the GANTT chart and in the staff tables, workloads of the available profiles are displayed.
Sometimes, depending on how the project evolves, it may be necessary to balance these workloads for proper project development.
Balancing Workloads
The utilization rate is the indicator that allows workloads to be measured and balanced in a fair way, without jeopardizing the objectives and deadlines set for the execution of a project.
The utilization rate is equal to the time spent on billable projects divided by the available time. If an employee works 5 hours a day on billable projects out of a total of 7 hours in their workday, their utilization rate for this day will be: 5 / 7 * 100 = 71.42%.
By knowing the utilization rate of all project members, you can make better decisions about task organization, scheduling, etc.
The billable utilization rate also allows you to organize costs according to the actual time spent by each person and optimize the time planned for each task, thus ensuring the continuity of the project.
Read at the task level, this rate indicates whether the assignment remains profitable: a task entrusted to an already saturated profile slips, a task entrusted to an under-occupied profile costs more than it brings in.
With a resource planning, you have up-to-date data on the entire team, taking into account staff leave, days of absence or illness, whether they work full-time or part-time, etc.
Thanks to all this, resources will be better distributed, enabling overloads to be avoided or potential mismatches to be detected before they even occur. This will have a positive effect on the overall development of a project.
Step 4: Tasks Execution Monitoring
Once all the resources have been allocated according to the objectives, it's time to track the tasks themselves.
As we have seen, planning is key. But sometimes unforeseen events occur that require changes or modifications to the initial planning.
Detecting unforeseen events in time, or even anticipating them, is the main purpose of this phase. The use of a project monitoring tool is very useful because it allows:
automatic alerts when certain tasks are not completed on time and in the right way,
act quickly if changes need to be implemented in the event of unforeseen events,
the proper coordination of resources to achieve objectives,
detect bottlenecks in certain tasks that delay the development of other necessary actions,
readjust workloads in real time, promoting worker motivation, productivity and ensuring that the project is executed according to the planned parameters,
detect deviations in the budget, control subcontracting costs or non-billable costs,
Streamline communication between all team members.
What tools are used to plan project tasks?
For a small team, a to-do tool like Trello or Asana is enough to list and track tasks. In addition to several dozen employees and simultaneous assignments, a project management and management software resource planning like Stafiz connects each task to time spent, resources, and margin, which a spreadsheet doesn't show.
Le choix se joue moins sur les fonctions annoncées que sur ce que l’outil laisse dans l’angle mort.
Une mission à la fois, une équipe dédiée
Tableur partagé
Le temps réellement passé sur chaque tâche
Deux missions ou plus, consultants partagés entre elles
Outil de to-do (Trello, Asana)
La charge consolidée d’un consultant, toutes missions confondues
Missions au forfait, marge suivie à la tâche
Système de pilotage opérationnel (Stafiz)
La tâche, le temps saisi et la marge vivent au même endroit
Le tableur tient tant qu’une seule personne le met à jour et qu’une seule mission tourne. Il décroche au moment où le même consultant apparaît sur trois plannings différents : rien ne consolide sa charge, et le conflit se découvre le jour où deux directeurs de mission comptent sur lui la même semaine.
Les pièges à éviter en planification des tâches
Quatre réflexes font dérailler un planning de tâches : découper trop gros, prioriser à l’urgence ressentie, planifier sur la disponibilité théorique, et ne jamais confronter le prévu au réel. Les trois premiers se corrigent au moment de bâtir le planning. Le quatrième se corrige tous les jours de la mission.
Découper trop gros. Une tâche trop grosse cache trop d’incertitude pour être estimée sérieusement. Personne ne sait dire où elle en est, et elle reste déclarée en cours jusqu’au jour où elle est en retard. Le bon calibre est celui qui laisse encore estimer la tâche seule. Au-delà, l’incertitude cesse d’être visible.
Prioriser à l’urgence ressentie. Le client qui relance le plus souvent n’a pas toujours la tâche la plus critique. Une tâche bruyante située hors du chemin critique peut attendre. Une tâche silencieuse qui bloque un jalon facturable engage la trésorerie de la mission. Poser le chemin critique avant le démarrage évite cet arbitrage à chaud.
Planifier sur la disponibilité théorique. Un consultant affiché à 100 % sur une mission finit rarement à 100 % dessus : il termine l’avant-vente précédente, il forme un junior, il a des congés posés. Un planning bâti sur le chiffre du contrat, et non sur la charge réelle, fabrique du retard dès la signature.
Ne jamais confronter le prévu au réel. Un planning que personne ne met à jour reste juste jusqu’au premier imprévu. Sans saisie des temps en face des tâches, l’écart entre le temps vendu et le temps passé apparaît à la facturation, quand la marge est déjà consommée.
From task to margin: time entry closes the loop
A planned task only becomes a management tool if the time actually spent is entered in front of it. The chain then closes: provisional planning, tasks, time entry, profitability. Without time entry, a service company compares the cost of a task with what it has invoiced only at the time of invoicing, too late to react.
Ce bouclage vaut aussi à l’échelle du portefeuille : le planning de projet en 9 étapes donne le cadre temporel dans lequel les tâches viennent se ranger, et l’échéancier du projet fixe les dates que les jalons facturables doivent tenir.
Case study
Altai Consulting is a consulting firm with 105 employees in France.
Before Stafiz, time tracking and project indicators lived in two separate systems, reconsolidated by hand in Excel. The team wasted time consolidating and management decisions were slowed down due to a lack of up-to-date project data.
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Stafiz is very project-oriented and particularly suitable for consulting firms, as it breaks down information by task and man-days.
Giang Huong Huynh
Operations & Financial Manager
Since the deployment of Stafiz, Altai's project managers have been reading the margin and burn rate in real time, without going back to Excel: time tracking and project indicators live in a single platform.
Discover the full Stafiz x Altai Consulting success story
Ce que la planification des tâches change pour la marge de vos missions
Les quatre étapes de la planification des tâches tiennent en une phrase : découpez le projet en tâches estimables, regardez qui est réellement disponible, attribuez, puis suivez. Leur difficulté vient d’ailleurs. En société de services, chaque tâche porte du temps vendu, et un planning qui ignore cette dimension ne dit rien de la rentabilité de la mission.
Un cabinet qui planifie ses tâches sans les relier au temps saisi découvre sa marge au moment de facturer. Relié, le même planning laisse arbitrer pendant que la mission tourne : décaler une tâche située hors du chemin critique, remplacer un consultant positionné sur un jalon facturable, ajuster le staffing avant le dépassement.
The phases structure the project life cycle: scoping, planning, execution, closing. Task planning takes place within these phases: it breaks down work into concrete tasks, assigns them, and tracks them. Confusing the two makes you lose the level of execution, where deadlines and real load are at stake.
L’organisation des tâches range le travail : qui fait quoi, dans quel ordre, avec quel outil. La planification y ajoute le temps et l’engagement : une date de début, une durée, une échéance tenue devant un client. Une équipe peut organiser ses tâches sans les planifier. En société de services, la planification touche la marge, puisqu’elle confronte le travail prévu au temps vendu.
A task breakdown sheet links each task to a manager, a start and end date, and their dependencies. It makes visible who does what and when. Its real interest: to identify tasks whose delay blocks the next ones, before they postpone the entire delivery.
The project manager manages the planning of tasks: he breaks down the work, sets the priorities and assigns the tasks. In a service company, he does not do it alone: the manager arbitrates the resource planning between assignments, and each consultant estimates and then updates the progress of his or her own tasks.
With multiple projects, the challenge is the big picture: the same people move from one assignment to another. A consolidated view of the load per person, all projects combined, becomes essential. A management tool like Stafiz centralizes it and avoids staffing a task on someone who is already saturated, or seeing the conflict too late.
A spreadsheet is fine as long as tasks, resources, and tracking fit on a shared sheet. As soon as several assignments accumulate, the same people move from one to the other and the margin depends on the time actually spent, it reaches its limits: data is quickly obsolete, re-entered, margin is known too late.
