Microsoft Tasks (Project Management at Its Finest)
Aug 6th, 2007 by jared
Project management is very important for the entrepreneur. There are so many things going on at once, it is essential that you manage your time. It is also critical that you manage other people and hold them accountable for their projects and deadlines. However, using a project management program can be as time-consuming as completing an actual task. I cannot tell you how many different types of project management tools I have used. The last two programs I tried were from Basecamp and Microsoft Project. While I thought Basecamp was one of the best programs I have ever used, it was still was one more program that I had to remember to log into and update. I found the only way this program was really going to keep us on track was to dedicate someone at the company to add new projects and update existing ones. Even then I found that it still was not being used as much as I wanted it to be. The bottom line is that sometimes when you are in start-up mode, using project management software can be more of a curse than a blessing.
However, projects still need to be completed and it’s important to be able to follow their progress so that you can keep people on track. I, like most people, use Outlook religiously. If you have Exchange (which all small businesses should have), then you are able to share contacts, calendar, and tasks with your fellow employees. Since I was logged into Outlook all day, it only made sense to use it as my project managing software, so I started to use some of the features that came with Tasks. You are able to sort all your tasks to see what is due in the upcoming week and/or what tasks are overdue. To my surprise, Tasks was such a simple way of keeping track of projects and because I could see anybody’s tasks simply by adding their Tasks as a favorite, I was able to quickly and efficiently keep track of all projects.
With Microsoft Tasks, you can enter the start date and due date of the assignment, set a priority rating, add the status, and show the percentage completed. You can also set a reminder to pop up on someone’s screen and assign an owner to the task, whereby that person will be emailed the assignment. You can even make the task recur as often as you want. I found that I was getting a lot more work done using Microsoft Tasks, while at the same time still having the ability to track and manage projects, and all from the comfort of the same program I use anyway on a daily basis. Also, because I have a Blackberry, I was able to add tasks from the road where it was synced up with Outlook.
All in all, if you are looking for a way to manage projects yet you are exasperated with the management part, start looking for something a little closer to home and check out Microsoft Tasks.
Can you provide a link to more information on this product?
Rich the only thing I could find is the help info on microsoft.com but it does give some info on this feature within outlook: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/CH062556121033.aspx
Good luck!
I think this is one features of MS Outlook that I didn’t explore yet. I’ll check it out and find out how this work for you. Thanks for sharing.
I would definitely try and get Office 2007, the user experiance is way better and there are a bunch of new features for this.
[...] The importance of time management has really changed for me every week for the past three years. I have never been that person who felt taking the trash out or cleaning the kitchen was beneath me. I have always taken the position that I work for my employees. I used to gladly go to Staples and buy office supplies or pick someone up from the airport when they came into town. But as the company started to grow, I realized that money was flying out of my pocket when I was spending time on these tasks. Take the Staples run for instance. In the 30 minutes it would take me to go to Staples and back, I could have made at least 10 important sales calls. I could have completed a phone call with a potential investor or evangelized mobile marketing to an analyst who was including me in his upcoming report. The amount of important work (which directly affects my bottom line) was literally endless. I realized I had to create a new habit–a habit of quickly analyzing every task. If it didn’t affect my bottom line, I didn’t do it. “But Jared,” you might say, “I run a marketing firm and my bottom line could be something as small as writing a blog article on Internet marketing in hopes that it would drive traffic to my site and a few of those readers would become leads.” It’s true–the bottom line is a long line, so not only do you need to properly manage your time, but you need to ensure you are managing your time by prioritizing tasks. (Read my previous post on what I use to manage tasks.) [...]
Hey Jared,
We got in The Groove about 5 yrs ago which enabled me to manage over a dozen people, clients, and over 3 dozen projects simultaneously:
http://www.groove.net/downloads/groove/download-preview.cfm
It was a GREAT tool b4 Microsoft acquired the company and 2007′ed it (TeamDirection Project syncs up with MS Project, enables you to create a dashboard report for EVERYTHING, etc).
I am about ready to go back to using Outlook tasks right now (thank you soooo much for the reminder, I had erased that tool from my personal RAM :).
-Ryan
PS: It was really good too see you and Kat this weekend…as always!