One Productivity App for simplicity and continuity
May 22, 2017 8:40 AM   Subscribe

Good news, everyone! I've stepped up from baby manager to full blown manager, with a broad and seemingly endless project portfolio. Turns out this hard to manage with my scratch paper and calendar reminder approach, and I need a better solution. Special consideration: I want my current team, and my eventual replacement to be able to use this, and I can't count on tech comfort.

I've taken my team from being an obscure support department to a mission critical operations team, and we're stepping up our game as we go. It's apparent that my tools are lacking in two areas: idea capture and task tracking. This week I know I have too many random things to do, and it'll only get more complicated from here. Managers in my field (long term care) are expected to have a hand in everything from clinical operations to construction, marketing and payroll, and it's a lot to track!

I want to adopt a system like GTD that can be easily managed for a 5-10 person team on one of our existing programs: Outlook, Excel, Slack. We also have OneNote and SharePoint but we don't use them right now. I'll be with the team for about another year, and in that time I'm writing our first transition manual. As opposed to my situation, I want my successor to start with things working.

What have you found that works over a long period with less tech savvy teams, that makes life easier, not harder? Thanks so much!
posted by skookumsaurus rex to Work & Money (7 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Are you totally opposed to / unable to add to your technology stack? I ask only because I think other than excel, nothing you name in your list is really geared toward doing what you want to do. Something like Trello *is* geared toward this kind of task management, and I've used it with success with less tech-savvy clients.
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:24 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


One more thing: Sharepoint offers some task-tracking, but I've never found sharepoint to be very user-friendly for non-tech-savvy users. YM-and-opinion-MV.
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:25 AM on May 22, 2017


Best answer: I agree, Trello would be my recommendation. I'm not sure you're going to get a great result from Outlook, Excel, or Slack on this.
posted by primethyme at 9:39 AM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I have heard ok things about Asana a web based task/project management system for teams.

My small team works all in the same office. We use a sticky note on whiteboard kanban/scrum style to track shared tasks. Captured tasks go on a sticky in the pending column and get moved to columns for each employee.

We make a once a year giant Gantt chart/calendar using MS excel to track time sensitive deadlines.

This approach has kept us from having to invest in buying or training something more complicated like asana, MS project, or the like.
posted by sol at 10:18 AM on May 22, 2017


My team at work uses Wrike, and I really like it. It's very adaptable, good at keeping everyone looped in, and I think the learning curve is very easy.
posted by Cranialtorque at 11:18 AM on May 22, 2017


Response by poster: Medieval Maven, I think that's a good question. I am open to expanding our stack, but I want to avoid unnecessary novelty and learning curves. A little more specific detail:

My team is a 'Lifestyles' team in a very large retirement community. Traditionally, this role in the facility has been interpreted as being entirely focused on planning and conducting resident activities; Bingo, art classes, exercise, etc. This is a low-tech, low administrative overhead job, and people working in this field tend to be older and often come from different backgrounds including the arts or direct care. We've pivoted towards higher impact roles, including care-planning, volunteer coordination, and program design! This is very exciting for us, but we need to put good systems in place now before we get lost.

My only reluctance to add to our stack is a reluctance to add more computer time and resistance for my older staff members. I still want them on the floor most of the time, and using whatever approach we implement as helpful assistance, not as an additional burden.

It sounds like Trello is the community consensus, and I like the idea of using a physical kanban/scrum board as well. I'm happy to go with Trello as long as it's free to start and relatively cheap as we scale! Thanks so much; if anyone is still hanging around, are there any particularly good or friendly Trello guides you've encountered?
posted by skookumsaurus rex at 2:53 PM on May 22, 2017




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