If you do proper scheduling, we do not need to face a delay in any tasks in the personal or professional zone.
One needs to log all the activities with time spent like you account your expenses daily, and at the end of the day, you can review and practice prioritization and optimization.
This practice will make you became an expert in managing time and plan the tasks.
While you prioritize, you should also give room for unexpected calls and queries which are unavoidable.
In case you are planning a task/project with other people, which means depending on others’ contribution, do take an optimistic approach and monitor the progress regularly by specific milestones, and not by taking random status of completion by any one of the team members.
While planning, divide the tasks into measurable sub-tasks, and it should not be very micro level at the same the time, it should not be of a significantly higher level.
If you have a task that cannot be measured, it requires close attention and needs more research.
As said earlier, for planning, you should have a reference which is nothing but one's own log on time spent on the timesheet did by others.
A simple diary of yours with a time log or project timesheet or activity database plays an essential role in planning and also in projects like Time & Material (T&M) it plays a critical role in billing.
When we land up in a new task or unfamiliar one, we can collaborate with the client or person who is familiar with that. This way, the log will also be useful for future planning.
Nowadays, there are plenty of tools available for scheduling and monitoring. A tool-based approach will be more comfortable and facilitates better management.
The backbone of the project management is scheduling, monitoring progress and reporting. In project management, tasks are planned and monitored based on the progress or delay; one adjusts and manages the activities to meet the planned schedule in multiple ways.
In recent days, the dashboards play an essential role in focusing the project status of various stakeholders.
Weekly timesheets logging and approval by the authorities have been made mandatory in all most all the projects.
The log also can be used to some extent to measure the performance of different team members performing a similar type of job with variations. This will give a very objective assessment of the performance in the appraisals.
Often the team members work overtime on the tasks, but the same may not be reflecting in the timesheet also the vice versa. Hence, the monitoring tools or methods should catch this problem by comparing it with the total elapsed time spent on the task. This can be archived by various tools that can automatically log the time spent on each task.
The intention of automation of tasks can be achieved by well-planned tasks that are divided well and by looking at the rote ones in a project. One can plan or eliminate duplication by some automation in any project. This kind of automation by tools yields good quality and completion of projects without delay. One also should be careful about the noise of the tool which automates the tasks.
To summarize, log the activities with time spent that refer to planning, and DB of this will be an asset for any organization. Also, measure the betterment of the logs and make continuous improvement.
About the Author
Seshadri Thathachari is a Consultant, currently engaged in marketing and has vast experience in managing large engagements and marketing in consulting business.