If you are struggling with managing your team tasks and achieving your goals in an effective and timely manner, we have 5 words for you: the centralized to-do list.We’ll show you how centralizing your team to-do lists can help you accelerate your solution development and which methodologies you should use!
A goal without a deadline is just an idea. That’s the power of to-do lists: add consistency to ideas so they become goals. And goals rely on actions. You simply take notes of things you must do to achieve your goals. That simple! All you need is a pen and paper.Now, if you take it seriously, you’d use tools like Asana, Trello, Jira, Todoist, for example. They’re all great if you’re by yourself, have a small team or work with freelancers. These task management tools help to keep everything in the same place and provide a clear overview.But what we want you to consider is the whole development, tasks to be done, and everyone in the project. In this case, it gets more complex. Not just the tool will make a difference, you also need an appropriate methodology to make it efficient.
Before choosing which methodology for managing your team tasks, you must analyze the complexity of your project. Doesn’t make any sense looking for a PMI when all you need is a simple Kanban, right?Have your ultimate outcome very clear, the deadline, which are the necessary steps and one-off tasks, and the order they will take place.Remember we are not talking about process, but a project. It has a well-defined chronogram and a result. Processes, on the other hand, are much longer and can be improved from time to time, including authorizations, measuring, controlling and have an impact on effectiveness.
With a clear idea of your project, it’s time to look for the best way to manage your team tasks. There are countless methodologies available, and not all of them are appropriate for your project or for every task included.Getting Things Done, Agile, Kanban, Extreme Programming, Adaptative Project Framework. Each of them will focus on something like creating a list, followup, prioritization and so on, building simpler or more complex frameworks. You might as well combine them, depending on your needs.When we talk about a tech startup the best options are the ones created by developers themselves, because these are going to consider the necessities of a software development team. And usually, they can be applied to other areas without any trouble.
Here in MyCTOfriend we believe that one of the best agile methodologies for startups is the Agile Scrum, for its flexibility and insights. Scrum major benefit is how much you can learn with experience during the development.Instead of planning the whole solution in the beginning, like a V Cycle, the Scrum methodology focus on developing something and testing it. This way, it reduces the gap between the idea and the real product, being more aligned with customer needs.From a business point of view, it’s more effective. Although the product readapts along with the development, it’s not necessary to change an entire product in the end, reducing the final cost.Using Scrum increases the responsiveness of your team to market requirements and trends because it works with sprints. You can easily adapt your product to a new system or add a feature and quickly get a response from users.Another benefit of this method is that since your team will work on smaller and faster projects, it will be easier to keep them motivated. They’ll have a clearer sense of achievement and to where they are heading as the product is constantly evolving from the previous idea.Know more about how it works by checking this video out!
This method is perfect for production and recurrent tasks. It makes the process much leaner, by separating it in 3 stages: to do, in progress and completed.Kanban means “cards” in Japanese, meaning you can visualize the tasks as cards moving from one column to another along the production process.Team members and managers can look at the Kanban workflow and understand how new demands can impact productivity and easily prioritize tasks. Agile and Kanban are a perfect match, and you could combine them according to each team and what they intend to accomplish.
To be the best manager for your tech team, you must understand which are the difficulties of keeping them from further development and look for a solution.No matter which methodology you pick, all of them have something in common: centralizing the to-do lists. This is not only important for transparency but also for achievement. When everything is kept in the same place and everyone has access to it, you are holding all members accountable for the results and goals.Managing your team tasks is not as hard as it seems, but it requires an efficient workflow and communication from everyone.The best way to start is by setting your goals in a SMART way - we have the perfect tool for that! Download the SMART Goal template for free.And if you are ready to take on the tech team management, applying the methods we mentioned and more, have a look at our How to build a startup without a CTO course!
