The document discusses how task management software can help teams stay focused by providing key features like task assignment, time tracking, communication tools, and reporting capabilities. It argues that such software creates a centralized place for all project information, aligns teams to processes, enables effective communication, and allows monitoring of progress through analytics and reports. This helps improve collaboration, execution, and productivity while reducing distractions and issues.

1. © 2011-2019 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California | www.orangescrum.com 1
How to Stay Focused with Task Management Software?
Smart teams globally prefer task management software to achieve high
productivity levels. Primarily for the simple reason to make the most out of their
work day & stay on top of their key assignments.
On the other hand, there is a lot of fuss around distractions at the workplace due to
overuse of digital mediums be it various productivity tools, social media platforms or
constant dings of the cell phones.
Digital mediums are the need of the hour and if not deployed and used in the right
manner can turn counterproductive.
Moreover, daily operational challenges and ambiguities add to chaos & lea to
execution delays and less than optimal quality of deliverables.

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All of which can:
throw the project off-track
demotivate team members
add to customer dissatisfaction
probable loss of business
To that extent, let us take a quick review of how an all-in-one integrated task
management and team collaboration software can keep our teams focused.
Integrated task management tools offer a plethora of productive features such as
time tracking, resource utilization, project templates, Gantt charts, Kanban boards,
resource allocation and daily catch-ups that enables smooth communication and
collaboration across the team.
Get Organized
The first wise step is to bring your project teams together on a central project
management platform.
The platform becomes your single source of truth and your go to place for all
information regarding the project.
Right from project plans, project templates, task assignments, schedule and all
project documentation can be found within a single project management tool.
Thus, time is saved from juggling between multiple apps. Less chaos and anxiety as
all information is interlinked and presented at one place for ease of use.
Additionally, roles based access control ensures the right people see the intended
information and hence, reduced distractions and better control.
Also, the team now knows their individual responsibilities, expected outcomes &
absolute clarity around project schedule.

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Align your Processes
Processes are often bypassed or forgotten altogether while execution. As a result
there are quality gaps, more issues than expected & rework efforts that will not be
billed to the client.
Intuitive project management software takes these crucial business requirements
into account. They offer enough room to align your process to your execution and
help maintain a common understanding.
Execution is far more streamlined and is in accordance with the established
processes.
Also rework and repetitive activities are reduced.
For e.g. project template is a capability that allows for defining project plans once
and reusing them forever. You can always update and optimize based on evolving
project requirements over time.
But the important fact is, chances of missing out on key tasks and project activities
are significantly reduced. Plus you save time from defining the same tasks for every
new yet similar project.
You also get to do accurate project estimation with time using historical data from
actual implementations.
Similarly, defining the logical sequence of tasks life-cycle from start to finish
eliminates any scope for confusion.
Teams know how the tasks will move along the process, who will work on them and
when ensuring seamless execution with greater quality.
Pro Tip: User role management and Gantt chart works
wonders when you are working on large complex
projects or projects with very strict deadlines.

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Communicate Effectively & with Ease
The power of optimum communication is well known to us. The more the better. No
denying that fact.
But then communication has to be meaningful. The whole idea is to have all relevant
information available when needed and with ease.
If you make communicating a time consuming and tedious affair, the benefits are
outdone!
Ensure your chosen project and task management software enables optimum
communication.
Integrated in-app chat is one capability that prevents use of multiple mediums. Saves
on cost and keeps data within the tool.
Moreover, simple yet effective features such as desktop notifications, email alerts,
daily and weekly overview make tracking progress easy.
Also, the ability to link relevant artifacts to the tasks allow for all round information
centrally. Thus all personnel working on the task have utmost clarity.
Daily catch-up is a highly productive way of tracking daily progress. Imagine if all
team members reported their daily progress over email.
But with daily catch-ups all updates are linked to one single task. A simple glance and
you know who has done what!
Pro Tip: Custom Status Workflow & Project
Templates save you lot of time and make
your processes effective.

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Similarly, real time notifications on task progress, replies and status changes are
most important.
Once enabled, you get to know how your key tasks are progressing plus getting
prompt answers from dependents is also seamless.
Execute as a Team
The whole point is getting to the end point faster with better outcomes.
Task management tools must enable that all costs.
Detailed task management capabilities to breakdown the project plan is a good start.
Ability to group related tasks using task groups or keeping associated tasks linked by
means of parent, subtask and sub-subtasks is added bonus.
You can assign each individual activity to respective assignees and track the
estimated vs actual hours using the intuitive time tracking capabilities.
And then having a centralized Kanban Board brings your entire execution status to a
single view. Issues & delays are identified immediately and can be discussed over
quick yet productive stand-up meetings.
Building a new product, launching a new campaign or making a MVP?
Go Agile if your business processes are up for it.
Scrum board, epics and sprints, sprint reports and velocity charts the whole range of
Scrum methodology at your fingertips enable an iterative development and delivery
model.
Good for the team, better for the customers and best for the product.
Pro Tip: Daily catch-ups, task status updates, replies
& comments, email alerts and desktop notifications
are all baked into the task management software -
Orangescrum.

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The important thing is absolute visibility of task planning & progress ensures better
collaboration. Teams are more aligned with the common objective and motivated
enough to help each other.
Monitor and Improvise
In-depth analytics and reports are a must to optimize the processes and execution
continuously.
What works today, may not be relevant tomorrow. But making informed decisions is
crucial.
Ensuring project is delivered on time with quality is one aspect, but keeping them
profitable is another.
We are all so much occupied with getting past the finish line that often one or more
of the cost, time and quality parameters get side-lined.
That is for sure not in alignment with the overall project objective and surely not
good for business.
Hence, having a project dashboard (s) and a host of reports covering
resource allocation
resource utilization
actual vs planned hours
billable vs non-billable hours
overdue tasks
tasks progress by age, assignee etc.
Pro Tip: Agile Scrum, Kanban, task
linking, task labels, filters & subtasks
make for a robust task management
model.

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Moreover, all of these reports must be auto created and available for filtering, review
and downloadable for detailed analysis.
Just imagine a project manager’s relief! You save countless hours that are spent on
manual & error-prone reporting.
Next time your stakeholders request a report, a few clicks is all it takes to showcase
team’s real time performance & the overall status of the project.
With this, precious hours can be reallocated to handling more projects & to focus on
pressing complex project issues that require human intelligence.
If you are still spending hours on reporting then your current platform isn’t up to the
mark. Replace it immediately.
Lastly, it is all about being effective, efficient and productive. The idea is not only to
do more but to achieve more (both personally and professionally) with less.
The ability to collaborate at will, communicate globally & keep it all together is what
integrated task management software should deliver for you.
Make the right choice, invest once and focus only on your business!
Gift your teams all the productivity boosters they need in 2020 with an account in
Orangescrum!
Pro Tip: Comprehensive reporting section to filter
& download in a desired format for task, time &
resource management is the need of the hour.