Huddle's Blog

Five simple steps to project management:

Posted on 03. Nov, 2011 by Alastair in Huddle comment

It’s interesting the different approaches that people take to dealing with deadlines and project time management. Some are uber-efficient, list-making autons that never miss a deadline, are hugely organized and ensure the rest of the team are fully in line too. Whilst others have a more haphazard approach; they don’t (or rarely) miss deadlines but are disorganized, chaotic and things get left right until the last minute.

Whilst we believe (and more importantly so do our customers) that Huddle is the most effective project management tool in the business, it will never be a silver bullet if you are one of the more disorganized types. It will however, make your working life much easier.

There is no ‘typical’ project in 2011, but they will often involve team members in a variety of locations both inside and outside the company. So project management can be tough, which is why we have put together this Huddle five step guide to effective project management.

1) Delegate and assign tasks to the right people – project management can see the overall manager taking on too much themselves, so it is hugely important to learn the art of delegation. Huddle allows a user to view and track project deadlines, including late and upcoming tasks which can be reassigned to other team members if necessary. Huddle also lists contact details and biographies of all the people working on a project, so it is easy to delegate a task to the person with the right expertise.

2) Keep everything relating to a project in one place – nothing can be more frustrating than being unable to find the latest version of a key document on a project, especially when updates are being made on a regular basis. Huddle provides a central and secure place for all content relating to a project, which is accessible by everyone involved, irrespective of location.

3) Manage up as well as down – good project management means staying on top of what senior team members are doing as well as everyone else. If a document has been written but needs signing-off the project manager cannot let it stand still. Huddle will automatically chase team members on your behalf to ensure documents are signed-off by the desired date. It will also allow you to see at-a-glance who has or has not yet approved a document.

4) Don’t let deadlines be missed – remembering all deadlines on a project can be a huge challenge so to ensure tasks are not forgotten, Huddle can be used to send an auto-reminder, either when a task begins, 48 hours before is due or on the day that it was meant to be completed.

5) Give people individual responsibility for aspects of a project – whilst projects are of course collaborative and very much a team effort, some individuals need to feel they are managing their own mini project. Huddle allows all tasks to be seen in a workspace and has a visual indicator so you can gauge the progress of all tasks, without the constant need to check in on people.

Tags: deadlines, enterprise collaboration software, project management tool, task management, time management, workspaces