Maximize Productivity: How to manage projects
When you have a lot of projects in the pipeline, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and stall work.
In this piece we’ll be unpacking some productivity hacks you can adopt to manage projects effectively
Define scope of project
Knowing the scope of a project helps you understand the processes and deliverables required to ensure all team members share a clear understanding of what will be accomplished.
Defining the scope would involve:
- Outlining Deliverables
- Deciding on tasks
- Resources needed
- Budget allocation
- Software tools
- Team members
By defining the project scope, you create a roadmap that aligns with the company’s goals. This clarity allows you and other team members focus on your respective responsibilities, eliminating misunderstandings and ensuring proper execution. A defined project scope prevents scope creep that can derail budgets and deadlines.
Set Small Goals
Having a checklist of smaller goals within the project is key to managing a project effectively, it maintains the momentum and keeps your creativity flowing. Breaking a project into smaller actionable steps makes the project appear less daunting and increases productivity.
This approach allows for time management and improves the quality of work as each team member focuses on individual tasks.
Leverage Technology
This could either be project management tools like Asana or AI tools like chatgpt .
Integrating AI into project management can boost efficiency and streamline workflows. AI tools can automate tasks, enhance communication and provide necessary data insights.
Here’s an example from Sarah Colley, Sr Content manager at Animalz who used Claude to pull out terms from 1,700 keywords for a project.
AI can’t do everything but it sure can be your assistant if you use it properly.
There’s no need to do everything manually when you can automate some processes with AI.
Track your time
Timing is a crucial part of every project, knowing the time spent on different tasks increases productivity. When you understand what tasks take up more time than the others you’re able to recognize the gaps in your processes.
There are a number of tools available for time tracking, toggl is one of them.
Toggl is a software with time tracking features that makes it easy to start and stop timers with a click. It helps you set project timelines, categorize tasks and generate reports based on your activity.
These features show you where time might be wasted and identifies tasks that require more resources. There wouldn’t be any need to worry about manually tracking your time when you use toggl .
Review and Reflect
You’ve delegated your tasks, gotten a time tracking tool, gotten started on the project and you’re halfway through and probably almost done.
Take multiple breaks to review the progress on this project and collaborate with your teammates on possible misunderstandings that they may have encountered.
Reviewing completed tasks ensures that no one deviates from the idea for the project, the quality of work is stellar and deadlines are met.
Productivity is not just about working harder but rather working smarter and ensuring your team’s efforts and resources reflects in the finished project.
