The 4 stages of task planning

Good planning and task allocation can make the difference between a project's success and failure. Generally speaking, we need to set cost-effective and realistic objectives. Then we need to take the following steps for effective planning:

1. Divide the project into tasks and prioritize them.
2. Analyze available resources.
3. Allocate tasks according to these resources. 
4. Monitor and control their execution.

The use of a task management and project management tool not only facilitates and optimizes task scheduling, but also, more generally, project management and the management of associated resources for greater profitability.

Define project objectives

Defining a project's objectives is essential, as it determines the rest of the management and task allocation stages. There are several types of objectives :

• Time.
• Economical. 
• Related to personnel management.
• Performance.
• Techniques. 

Objectives are fundamental because they determine the tasks, resources and people in charge of the project. Let's look at an example.

Let's imagine that a development company is planning to deliver an application for which it has estimated 950 hours of programming. It has three programmers who will develop the code for five hours a day, devoting 100% of this time to the project:

• 950 hours / 3 programmers = 316.6 hours, to be completed by each of them.
• Taking into account that they will spend five hours a day, they will need 63 working days to complete the project (316.6 hours to be spent by each programmer / 5 hours a day they will be able to spend = 63.3 working days). 

Defining objectives is essential, because if we want to deliver the application in less than two months, we'll have no choice but to call on more staff. These are issues that affect future management and the distribution of tasks, so it's the first thing to clarify.

What are the steps involved in assigning tasks?
Once the objectives have been defined, it's time to take the four key steps to managing and assigning tasks correctly.

Step 1: divide the project into tasks and prioritize them

With the objectives in mind, we need to divide the project into tasks and prioritize them. There are various tools available to help us with this planning.

Eisenhower matrix

This is a system for tasks into urgent and important tasks. The Eisenhower matrix has four spaces:

• Important and important and urgent These are tasks that need to be completed immediately, usually as a result of unforeseen events in everyday life. To take the previous example, the absence of one of the programmers and the need to complete the work entrusted to him before this eventuality.
• Important important but not urgent: these are long-term tasks that can be postponed.
• Tasks not important but urgent These are issues that can be delegated to other team members, or that need to be automated.
• Tasks that are neither important nor urgent These are tasks that are neither important nor urgent: they could therefore be eliminated, because they waste our time.

PERT

The PERT diagram is another tool for efficiently dividing a project into tasks.

It is made up of sets of interrelated actions. It is particularly useful in projects where tasks depend on different departments or large teams. It unifies criteria and tightens relationships to ensure that tasks are carried out smoothly and correctly, in the right order and with priority given to delivery dates.

Its representation is reminiscent of a relay race, where worker "B" cannot start running until worker "A" has completed his assigned task.

ICE rating

The ICE ( Impact, Confidence, Easy) rating model is another methodology that evaluates tasks on the basis of three parameters, allowing us to prioritize the most important tasks. The following aspects are rated from 1 to 10:

• Impact What is the objective of the task. 1 being low impact and 10 high impact (crucial task).
• Confidence Confidence: the certainty that the expected impact of the task will be achieved. A value of 1 corresponds to a task that inspires little confidence, and a value of 10 to tried and tested tasks that we know will produce the expected impact.
• Ease The ease of the task, given the constraints of time, resources, costs, etc. The easier the task, the higher the score. 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 product will designate the order of priority of the tasks.

Step 2: Analyze available human resources

The second step is to carefully plan the available human resources, taking three aspects into account:

• Check skills.
• Their availability.
• Willpower.

Checking skills

At this stage, we have to ask ourselves whether the staff personnel have the skills required necessary to carry out a given project.

It's important to bear in mind that these are not just technical issues. Depending on the project, social skills can be just as relevant. 

For example, in projects involving several departments, it will be necessary to check that the participants have negotiation, empathy or communication skills. These skills will be essential to the success of the project. 

Check availability and monitor load

One point that is often overlooked is checking resource availabilityespecially in companies with several projects underway and profiles involved in several of them.

It's essential to ensure that you have the right developer for the job. And that he'll actually be available when we need him.

This involves checking for paternity or maternity leave, vacations, scheduled absences, etc. It involves reorganizing tasks or finding a replacement when the person initially assigned is not available.

To correctly manage staff resources and make the best decisions, we need to rely on management software such as Stafiz resource planning . With this type of tool, we can :

• Visualize quickly and easily workloads.
• Analyze at a glance whether the various tasks are completed on time.
• See who is responsible for each task.
• The of each task.
• Speed up decision-making and redirect the project if objectives need to be modified.
• Setting goals realistic for each task and for the project as a whole.
• Control with warning systems if you're out of time, in case the project continues to develop as it has so far.
• Real-time updates on work in progress.
• Reassign profiles and employees with agility, if necessary. With a project manager, we can quickly find profiles with the skills we need.

Assessing motivation

This is a matter for personnel management Is the team motivated, and are the right conditions in place to ensure 100% commitment?

How can we improve employee motivation?

To improve employee motivation and maximize their involvement, you first need to ensure that they have the necessary necessary skills to get the job done. When professionals feel confident, they become more involved in projects.

If they don't have them, it's worth training these workers within the company. In this way, they will perceive that the organization cares about them and provides them with the resources they need to get the job done, thus enriching them professionally. 

Secondly, we must integrate professionals' preferences in the allocation of tasks.

The third step in maintaining high levels of willingness and commitment is to share workloads fairly. In this respect, it's essential to anticipate future needs, using analyses to predict which teams will be busier or less busy, redistributing employees if necessary.

Step 3: Assign tasks

Once we've divided the project into tasks and know what human and technical resources are available, we move on to the third step: task allocation. To do this, we need to provide each of the tasks the following information :

• Who will be responsible ?
• How long time will it take, and when will the job he's responsible for be ready?
• With which tools will be used?

Tasks can be assigned and represented in GANTT charts and staffing tables.

GANTT chart

It's a system of bars occupying a certain space in time. In a GANTT chart, you'll see at a glance :

• Task name.
• Estimated execution time.
• The person responsible for the task. 
• Interdependence with other tasks.

Staffing table

The staffing table also provides a quick overview of the professionals involved in a project, the tasks assigned to them and the estimated time needed to complete them. 

Both in the GANTT chart and in the staffing tables, the workloads of the available profiles are displayed. Sometimes, depending on how the project is progressing, it may be necessary to rebalance these workloads for proper project development. 

Balancing workloads

utilization rate is the indicator that enables workloads to be measured and balanced fairly, 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 time available. If an employee works 5 hours a day on billable projects out of a total of 7 hours in his working day, his utilization rate for that day will be : 5 / 7 * 100 = 71,42%.

By knowing the utilization rate of all the members of a project, we can make better decisions about the organization of tasks, schedules, and so on. It also allows us to organize costs according to the actual time spent by each person. It also allows us to optimize the time scheduled for each task, thus ensuring project continuity. 

With a software from resource planning, we have up-to-date information on the entire team. Taking into account staff vacations, days of absence days days illnesswhether they work full-time or full-time or part-timeetc.

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.

Stage 4: Monitoring and control

Once all resources have been allocated according to objectives, it's time to keep track of task tracking itself. As we've seen, planning is essential. But sometimes unforeseen events occur that require changes or modifications to the initial planning.

Detecting unforeseen events in good time, or even anticipating them, is the main benefit of this phase. The use of a project tracking tool tracking tool is extremely useful:

• It enables automate alerts when certain tasks are not completed on time or in the right form.
• It allows us to act quickly to implement changes in the event of unforeseen events. events.
• It promotes coordination of resources to achieve objectives. Visual, agile and simple.
• Detects bottlenecks in certain tasks that delay the development of other necessary actions.
• Enables readjust workloads in real time. This boosts worker motivation, increases productivity and ensures that the project is carried out within the planned parameters.
• It also detects deviations in the budgetcontrol subcontracting costs or non-billable costs, among others. financial indicators for project management. These are key questions for anticipating and making decisions that will maximize the profitability of the project and, consequently, the company.
• Streamlines communication between all team members.

Frequently asked questions

What are project tasks?

Project tasks are the individual actions necessary to execute the project as a whole in accordance with the set objectives. A project might be the development of an application for mobile devices.

It will include tasks which, taken as a whole, make up the project. For example, creating a mock-up of the application's main screen. 

What are the functions and benefits of task allocation in a project?

Assigning tasks according to the resources available is essential, as it allows you to be efficient. Efficiency in a project is synonymous with achieving the best possible with the appropriate use of available resources.

What's the best way to assign tasks?

For assign tasksThe first step is to determine the objectives to be achieved when developing a project. This is followed by four phases:

1. Plan tasks individual required to complete the project, according to the objectives (time, costs, etc.) defined above.
2. Analyze personnel resources required to carry out the tasks planned in the previous point.
3. Assign tasks according to staff availability and training.
4. Monitor the completion of these tasks and, if necessary, reassign managers or workloads.

What is a task sheet and how does it work?

A task distribution sheet is a visual, intuitive and intuitive and agile way of representing who is responsible for a given task. Using tools such as GANTT charts, we can :

• See who has been assigned a task.
• See when it began and when it will end. 
• If the schedule is respected. 
• Know which other tasks depend on the execution of a previous task.