How does a leadership team track in progress projects?
March 29, 2017 7:17 PM Subscribe
I work co-leading a busy team of 30 professionals. We have literally hundreds of active projects at any one moment, some urgent and requiring several of my staff to work regularly (daily/weekly) on them and others only getting sporadic updates (monthly/annually). My co-lead and I are looking for a way we can track all of these projects at a glance (and our team can easily update and also check in on shared projects). Microsoft Projects was suggested - anyone have experience with that app or any other ideas?
We're open to anything, though we are a bit of a non-tech-savvy stodgy organization. We're using Windows as an OS and Outlook for our mail but open to other platforms.
The challenging thing seems to be that we don't just have the 10 urgent projects we talk about daily - we also have things we only do work on every six months but that still needs to be on our radar. I'd guess the total number of active projects would likely number in the mid hundreds.
It would also be great to have functionality which permitted us to establish deadlines for various people (e.g. assign Ann and Ben to complete X by 4/1/17) then get an emailed update if they complete/don't complete by the deadline. Right now we're just depending on our (extensive) notebooks and our (less reliable) memory for accountability.
We're open to anything, though we are a bit of a non-tech-savvy stodgy organization. We're using Windows as an OS and Outlook for our mail but open to other platforms.
The challenging thing seems to be that we don't just have the 10 urgent projects we talk about daily - we also have things we only do work on every six months but that still needs to be on our radar. I'd guess the total number of active projects would likely number in the mid hundreds.
It would also be great to have functionality which permitted us to establish deadlines for various people (e.g. assign Ann and Ben to complete X by 4/1/17) then get an emailed update if they complete/don't complete by the deadline. Right now we're just depending on our (extensive) notebooks and our (less reliable) memory for accountability.
Have you looked into Kanban board systems like Trello? This would fulfill many of the needs that you cite, but may be difficult for a non technical organization.
posted by graxe at 7:27 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by graxe at 7:27 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
My organization uses jira to track work across about 100 different projects. You can use it for all kinds of alerting and monitoring, and also build dashboards of things like "tasks that are assigned to me that are due in less than 7 days"
posted by rockindata at 7:29 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by rockindata at 7:29 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
My work uses Asana! It sounds similar to a lot of all these other options!
posted by Juliet Banana at 8:31 PM on March 29, 2017
posted by Juliet Banana at 8:31 PM on March 29, 2017
Seconding Jira.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:16 PM on March 29, 2017
posted by infinitewindow at 9:16 PM on March 29, 2017
My work has tried a lot of these and currently uses a physical Kanban board with sticky notes (mostly for tracking when things are Done), and Asana for everyday project status updates.
posted by wearyaswater at 9:19 PM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by wearyaswater at 9:19 PM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
Most of the tools suggested so far could be made to work, but they also each expect a certain process to be used around the tool. I wonder if you might be well served to hire a project management consultant to come in for a few days and help you create a more structured process around tracking your work. I think it will be hard for us to recommend the right process without a ton more detail on your business, projects, and people (and a poorly-chosen process is worse than no process at all). Once the best process is identified, the selection of tools and techniques to manage and track the process will be a lot more straightforward.
posted by primethyme at 9:43 PM on March 29, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by primethyme at 9:43 PM on March 29, 2017 [7 favorites]
Slack / PivotalTracker / Daily Scrums / Weekly Retrospectives / Project Managers working with your group to build building design docs. There is no 'good' way for a complete understanding of 30 people's work unless it is either someone's explicit job to know where things are and that person is not making decisions - just reporting out and keeping things on track. Decisions have to be either empowered to the team members or driven by organizational direction and actual leadership with reporting from a qualified PM.
That combo does a great job of knowing where work is, but does a poor job of maintaining milestones and gant charting and correctly identifying external dependencies. No one tool does it all really well, or everyone would be using that tool.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:55 PM on March 29, 2017
That combo does a great job of knowing where work is, but does a poor job of maintaining milestones and gant charting and correctly identifying external dependencies. No one tool does it all really well, or everyone would be using that tool.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:55 PM on March 29, 2017
Are these projects or tasks? I don't see how 30 people could possibly do hundreds of projects. A project is something like "remodel the kitchen" and tasks would be "get quotes from contractors," "choose a color scheme," etc.
I'm asking because this can make a big difference on your approach.
posted by AFABulous at 9:57 PM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm asking because this can make a big difference on your approach.
posted by AFABulous at 9:57 PM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: do you need to manage sub-tasks within each project and assign those to people?
Yes. Our folks work very hard but are incredibly overcommitted, so we need to have deadlines that help us all stay accountable.
Are these projects or tasks? I don't see how 30 people could possibly do hundreds of projects. A project is something like "remodel the kitchen"...
Projects, often more on the scale of "evaluate a proposal to build 15 homes, vet all building materials, review the site plan, provide input into landscape design and periodically review progress on the project during the building phase, then check back in every 2 years for 10 years and every 5 years in perpetuity".
My co-lead and I indirectly supervise several hundred people (our 30 subordinates themselves supervise teams as well). Our organization is chronically overcommitted relative to available resources and we have limited ability to impact our tasking. In order to make good on our efforts to do less with less, we need to know what's out there so we can empower our folks to not work on everything.
posted by arnicae at 10:23 PM on March 29, 2017
Yes. Our folks work very hard but are incredibly overcommitted, so we need to have deadlines that help us all stay accountable.
Are these projects or tasks? I don't see how 30 people could possibly do hundreds of projects. A project is something like "remodel the kitchen"...
Projects, often more on the scale of "evaluate a proposal to build 15 homes, vet all building materials, review the site plan, provide input into landscape design and periodically review progress on the project during the building phase, then check back in every 2 years for 10 years and every 5 years in perpetuity".
My co-lead and I indirectly supervise several hundred people (our 30 subordinates themselves supervise teams as well). Our organization is chronically overcommitted relative to available resources and we have limited ability to impact our tasking. In order to make good on our efforts to do less with less, we need to know what's out there so we can empower our folks to not work on everything.
posted by arnicae at 10:23 PM on March 29, 2017
One of our IT groups uses Basecamp. Not sure if it meets all your needs, but it's been very easy to learn so far (speaking as one person who is part of only one project).
posted by SuperSquirrel at 5:46 AM on March 30, 2017
posted by SuperSquirrel at 5:46 AM on March 30, 2017
Trello can be useful if you have projects in a lot of different phases, you can have a card for each project to keep a running record of major things (adding comments on the card throughout) and who is assigned and move it across columns as it goes across phases, and have checklists for subphases if needed. Trello however doesn't handle tracking tasks due dates elegantly at all - Jira or something else seems to work better for that.
posted by typecloud at 11:18 AM on March 30, 2017
posted by typecloud at 11:18 AM on March 30, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by suedehead at 7:25 PM on March 29, 2017