Delegation is critical for any business, but project managers know that getting things done isn’t simply a matter of assigning tasks and deadlines. Unfortunately, employees do not always have the resources to follow through or may also be overwhelmed with other projects. Project managers need a system to check in on their deliverables in order to keep all members of their team on the same page.
This may seem daunting, and in today’s environment, it certainly can be. Add in the stressor of today’s increasingly remote working situations, and project managers face an uphill battle.
The Meta-Office: Project Managers Struggle with Work Going Online
One main issue that falls on the shoulders of project managers is that so much of today’s communication is asynchronous. That demands a central source of project information, where team members can post updates and check for themselves on the status of projects or any changes that impact their own work.
Since this doesn’t exist currently, this leads to an overabundance of digital video calls for updates. Meetings are notoriously challenging to lead efficiently, and they can be a source of frustration. They both waste time and deplete motivation among the team.
Instead, each team member should have the ability to look at each other’s tasks and the statuses of those tasks, especially those who have inter-dependent tasks.
Many team members accept and expect asynchronous communication, but business models have struggled to adjust to this type of information sharing. Stakeholders are demanding status reports and project updates as if the world has not changed, and this leaves the project managers dangling above the chasm between these two cliffs.
Dissatisfaction Stats
Project managers have expressed their unique challenges, with 86% citing their lack of collaboration efforts and struggles with communication as the top reason for project failures.
More than half (60%) say that remote workers need help to meet their performance goals, and 52% say they’re dissatisfied with the current level of work management options available. An oft-mentioned problem is that there are too many apps that project managers have to use on a daily basis to get their work done, which 43% say leads to scattered information.
What Can Be Done?
Using dedicated software can help organizations, departments, teams, and individuals organize, manage, and share their work more effectively, therefore increasing collaboration. Work management software offers core functionalities such as:
Collaborative task management
Centralized communication
Document sharing
When it comes to work management, one of the key concerns that any manager has is the productivity of their employees. A work management tool will help managers increase the productivity of both the managers and the team members.
In general, a solution needs to offer context-based communication with centralized data and decentralized task management. In addition to being able to see their own and others’ tasks, the rise of remote work necessitates an option for self-service task management. This will alleviate the stress on the project manager and decrease lag time across varying time zones and working hours.
The ideal solution would offer all of this within a single application that users at all levels of an enterprise can use for their daily digital work, a space where they can manage their productivity independently and as a group.
Additionally, since an enterprise owns all of the projects, regardless of the way they’re structured, this singular app needs to have the ability to handle both waterfall and agile projects. While teams may not need cross-project visibility within this app, enterprise customers would have a single app where they could view their project statuses and access reports based on the in-app data.
A good work management tool should help managers and team members increase their own productivity by offering a tool that provides a single source of truth for all work management. This tool offers a place to:
Have waterfall project management, Agile project management, and operational task management all in one place
Prioritize your tasks and track team members’ productivity
Delegate your tasks to others when applicable
Involve those who perform the tasks in the management of tasks
Centralize context-based communications and collaborations
Reduce the number of team meetings, calls, and follow-ups
Manage tasks and monitor progress
Trace the related information as quickly as possible
Create appropriate reports for the management team