|
|
|
|
|
|
The One Task List concept is fully illustrated in a Teamwork Fable by Entry CEO Barry Cousins, available at Amazon.com. The concept involves managing all of the organization’s work in TeamHeadquarters with a combination of projects and tickets.
For most organizations, the largest obstacle to improved productivity comes from the amount of “informal” work that is neither project-related nor assigned by a help desk. It is work that is not assigned, tracked, or reported using a centralized system. With One Task List, this work is assigned and tracked using tickets, often within projects.
Informal work often accounts for more than half of people’s time, even in project-driven organizations. When this happens, it is difficult to manage unnecessary work away from people because management is not exactly sure what people are working on.
One Task List brings all of the work into focus, making everyone Management-Ready. Managers can then prioritize the team’s efforts with an awareness of all of the group’s workload.
This may require additional queues, so that the informal work becomes formalized and each manager is running an internal support operation as if it were a help desk.
Project and Portfolio management software tends to be used for strategic management and planning. However, many organizations fail to satisfy the basic need to make their teams more effective if the software is not used to manage the actual work being done. How many of your project teams follow a Gantt chart for all of their work, all day, every day? Most organizations will agree that it’s not common. It is also not a problem – unless you have decided to become more effective as an organization. It may be easier to make the team more effective by becoming more involved in prioritizing their work.
One Task List is about empowering teams to do their job by empowering managers to manage. These are the 7 habits:
To assign work, “Formalize The Informal” with either Tickets or Tasks. This notion centralizes work assignments, so that management knows what’s going on.
Always have a ‘Do-ing’ list. 'To-Do' lists tend to define many items that will not be done today. Convert them to ‘Do-ing’ lists using My Tickets and deferring all but today’s work (“what are you doing now, and for the rest of the day”).
Have frequent, short reviews of the Do-ing list with managers or supervisors. Avoid being surprised to find out that people are not working on the ‘right’ thing.
Use the Bring-Forward system to record and defer new ideas, rather than interrupting today.
Check the ‘Do-ing’ list before interrupting the worker.
Require that all people and projects be “Management Ready” at all times.
man•ag•er n. One who controls resources and expenditures. Does your organization recognize the definition of ‘manager’?
