how do you mange your tasks / projects
how do you mange your tasks / projects
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petemurphy

Original Poster:

10,537 posts

201 months

Hi - am drowning at work at the mo in projects and tasks. have some tasks on todo / excel / numerous pads. Looking at software like monday, asana etc. Which do you use? need it to be quick to get head round and although mainly many tasks there are a lot of projects. need one that will produce pretty reports. any favourites etc? work can pay for it although some require super expensive enterprise level for certain elements that put me off.

StevieBee

14,430 posts

273 months

I've tried a few including Monday and Trello Board. For me, I found they took more time than they saved and did little in the way of easing anything - they just better documented things.

Old school works for me - a white board with weekly tasks and a daily to-do list..... and the ability to work out the difference between important and urgent.

Any environment that requires extensive cross-teams collaboration would likely need something more structured and usable across those teams but it sounds to me like that isn't your call or responsibility other than to raise the need for something with senior management.

HH7777

8 posts

17 months

Agree most take more time than they save.
I use microsoft to-do which does everything i need - syncs on laptop and phone so useful

simon_harris

2,237 posts

52 months

a well setup excel sheet can manage even the biggest of projects, but if that is not enough then the classic MS project always works, if you have teams then tasks can be made to be useful.

Trello, monday.com etc all work but there is frontend work in getting them setup they way you want them, but arguably no more then getting excel or project the way you want.

I ran a £3m multi-site full infrastructure refresh with just excel.

Freakuk

4,133 posts

169 months

I'm in the same boat, spinning 3 projects currently, lots of different tasks/actions/problems to manage.

My simple view is to create a meeting in my calendar with my to do list and then update, add, remove, comment and then move to the next day and repeat.

If I need to I block out time using this meeting to let me focus on 1, 2 of the items.

shirt

24,614 posts

219 months

Also agree. In my case it also meant having to teach and then police my team to adopt it, just meant more work for me.

I use a basic excel sheet to input tasks with some vba scripts to create a dashboard page which highlights what is becoming due and status. I paid someone on fiverr to do the latter part.




Time4another

421 posts

21 months

In our service team we use Microsoft Planner. From quoting, recieving orders and carrying out the visit it works well with us. Able to have checklists, comments from anyone in the team, attachign documents is helpful for when our engineer reaches site the info is on one place. While limited in some areas, it works well for us, allowing us to obviously plan forward but also able to look back at historical visits.

cheeky_chops

1,614 posts

269 months

Time4another said:
In our service team we use Microsoft Planner. From quoting, recieving orders and carrying out the visit it works well with us. Able to have checklists, comments from anyone in the team, attachign documents is helpful for when our engineer reaches site the info is on one place. While limited in some areas, it works well for us, allowing us to obviously plan forward but also able to look back at historical visits.
Same here, think its free with O365 - we do training events so have setup templates for eg "beginner" course with tasks before and after the event. Easy to copy from last plan to a new one, makes sure we dont miss essentials like "invoice"....

We dont have so much success with planning other areas like "accounts", "IT, "marketing" etc as for us they are less repetitive/structured. We used to try to sit together for an hr every week to manage these areas but as we are just 2ppl we generally dont need to chase each other so pad/pen/Whats app works just as well

petemurphy

Original Poster:

10,537 posts

201 months

Thanks all I had discounted planner after a quick look of reviews but maybe should look again. I quite like to do (I used to use wunderlist!) but need more reporting

Terminator X

18,412 posts

222 months

Old school here, I just log anything that needs doing by a certain date in Outlook Calendar. Works for me.

TX.

petemurphy

Original Poster:

10,537 posts

201 months

Thanks all I had discounted planner after a quick look of reviews but maybe should look again. I quite like to do (I used to use wunderlist!) but need more reporting

shirt

24,614 posts

219 months

if you have MS 365, then look into what copilot can do to automate both planning and reporting using planner.

i have yet to do so myself, but when i have time i will be looking into it.


LooneyTunes

8,423 posts

176 months

Use basic project management approaches for long term.

For day-to-day: simple 2x2 matrix on paper.

Urgent/not urgent on one axis
Important/unimportant on the other

Usually makes it easy to prioritise/delegate/ignore as appropriate.

pacenotes

379 posts

162 months

Mostly keep to a pad and paper. I start the day with a task list. Most get done and ticked off. The ones that roll over each day for a few days mustn't be important and I drop them. Priority takes over.

Emails I need to reply to I use a quick action to go into a to do folder and creates a to do task.

I've asked for fixer.ai but work doesn't want to pay for it rolleyes


paulrockliffe

16,245 posts

245 months

Planner is good, I find it's not great for collaboration because I end up being the only person updating it, but that's an issue with my leaders rather than Planner. But about a year ago they let you create your own plans there and it's great just for making notes and collating resources even if you don't want to organise tasks, like a more structured One Note. I like that you can use it for notes then edit your notes into a task then when you're planning your week you can assign the tasks and add deadlines from your notes.

If you're in M365 though, setting up a Teams site for projects, then adding a Channel for each Project, with security to manage whomis in each Project, then add Planner boards in there is the most comprehensive way of running projects with the best options for collating resources, managing a team and collaborating and tracking tasks.

8IKERDAVE

2,601 posts

231 months

Yesterday (15:13)
quotequote all
We use Asana as one of our clients shares access with us for new jobs, job updates, etc. It works well for that specific use, however they are constantly updating and changing it which is very frustrating. I was more than happy with the original!

I have a ton of spreadsheets for various things as well which is probably not best practice but often changing something ends up taking longer than sticking with the original bulky method IMO.

petemurphy

Original Poster:

10,537 posts

201 months

Yesterday (20:28)
quotequote all
when people say planner do you mean planner for the web? so confused on Microsofts offerings. can you even get project anymore?

paralla

4,829 posts

153 months

Yesterday (20:30)
quotequote all
MS Teams Tasks works for me.