Work Management: An Ultimate Guide
As an organization grows in size and complexity, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage the many moving parts of a project or process across teams. Implementing a work management system can be a useful strategy for tracking task lists without losing sight of the big picture.
In this article, I’ll review the key components and steps involved in work management and share some tips to help you get started.
What Is Work Management?
Work management is a system for orchestrating workflows to execute organizational business processes. Understanding and optimizing processes, especially when they involve dependencies with cross-functional teams, boosts productivity and saves organizations time and money.
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You should consider implementing a work management system as your organization scales to help you manage increased complexity and foster team collaboration.
Why Is Work Management Important?
Work management is important for improving work processes, streamlining projects, and boosting productivity and accountability to help companies achieve their goals.
Work management systems standardize communication tools and protocols to make sure everyone has the information they need to do their jobs effectively. They clearly define roles and responsibilities to promote an efficient work environment. They also track the progress of key tasks and dependencies to ensure work is logically sequenced and adheres to project timelines.
Work Management vs. Project Management
Project management involves planning, executing, and monitoring a set of activities required to complete a defined scope of work in service of business goals.
Work management focuses on optimizing workflow management so tasks are executed as efficiently as possible. This could apply to both project tasks and operational processes.
The table below highlights the key differences between work management and project management:
Work Management vs. Project Management
Key Components of Work Management
Understanding the key components of a work management system will help you to create a strong work management program for your organization. These components include:
1. Task Management
Work management systems identify what tasks are required for a process or project, assign team members to complete those tasks based on availability and skillset, and then make sure that the team has what they need to get the job done. As the effort progresses, work management systems also report on progress against tasks.
2. Workflow Optimization
Workflow optimization is about making your workflows as efficient as possible to minimize any lag time during execution. Begin by cataloguing and mapping your existing workflows to find the handoff points between teams. Then, adjust as needed to simplify the number of steps involved and make any transitions smoother.
3. Collaboration & Communication
Work management systems should have a communications plan that defines the frequency and format of stakeholder communications.
In addition to a plan, work management systems should also include a centralized system for communication and collaboration to promote stakeholder alignment and information accessibility.
4. Resource Management
You cannot manage tasks, workflows, and communications without resource management.
Work management systems define what resources are required to execute identified tasks, assign resources based on availability and skill set, and develop and manage the team to complete defined tasks, making any required adjustments along the way.
5. Reporting & Analytics
Once you’ve got your work management system in place, you’ll be able to track things like task completion, resource allocation, and cost savings. Continuously monitor the performance of your work management system to improve your existing processes.
Steps in the Work Management Process
Effective work management ensures that work flows smoothly from planning to completion. It also creates a feedback loop for the continuous improvement of organizational processes.
Here are the key steps involved in the work management process:
1. Work Identification
Once stakeholders have agreed on desired outcomes for your process, break down stated objectives and deliverables into discrete tasks.
For example, if you decide you want to improve your website update process so you can deploy changes more quickly, begin by generating a list of the tasks that are part of your existing process.
2. Work Planning
As part of work planning, you’ll need to estimate how long you think each task will take, determine who should work on it by factoring in resource availability and skill set, and develop a cost estimate for your project or process.
For example, updating the website may require marketing to generate copy and engineering to deploy changes. Figure out who from the marketing team and who from the engineering team will work on this and how long it will take (possibly using a RACI chart). Multiply the expected duration for each team member by their hourly rate to come up with a total cost.
3. Work Scheduling
Once you’ve got your list of tasks and estimated duration, sequence the tasks to create a project schedule. Don’t forget to build in contingencies in case any of your estimates come up short.
In our simple website example, we know marketing will need to develop content before engineering can deploy changes, so we should schedule tasks accordingly.
4. Work Execution
During execution, you’ll assign tasks to team members and facilitate collaboration across teams to complete the work as efficiently as possible.
For example, you may identify that engineering can complete some steps prior to receiving final marketing content, which saves time during execution.
5. Work Follow-up
At this stage, you’ll report on task progress to stakeholders and evaluate whether the work products met established success criteria.
For example, if your success criterion was to be able to execute website changes 20% faster, compare how long this process took to complete with your baseline.
6. Work Analysis
Continuously use the data you collect via your work management system to help you with real-time decision-making. You can also use the data to improve future processes.
For instance, if you’re noticing that engineering is having trouble updating the website on time due to competing priorities, consider investing in product tooling to bypass engineering resources and let marketing handle website updates independently.
What Is Good Work Management?
Characteristics of good work management include:
- Documentation of repeatable workflows and processes, including defined roles and responsibilities across cross-functional teams.
- Established resource management process to assess who is working on what and be able to shift resources to accommodate emerging priorities
- Strong key performance indicators around task management, including time to completion, budget adherence, and stakeholder satisfaction.
Benefits of Work Management for Project Managers
Work management offers several benefits for project managers:
- Increased productivity: Employees understand their roles and responsibilities and thus are more effective in completing tasks, improving work quality and increasing throughput.
- Better visibility: Clearly defined responsibilities and workflows promote transparency around who is doing what and when, streamlining handoff points for faster execution.
- Improved collaboration: Centralized tooling and communication protocols make it easier to work cross-functionally.
- More efficient workflows: Documenting existing workflows, identifying pain points, and then working with teams to streamline processes eliminates unnecessary steps and the potential for duplicate work
- Data-driven decisions: Using the data you collect to inform decisions on resource allocation, scheduling, and funding can significantly reduce risks.
Work Management Best Practices
Here are some best practices for implementing a work management system:
- Set clear goals and priorities: Work with stakeholders to align on the goals you’re trying to achieve. For example, is your pain point selecting the right initiatives to pursue? Or do you prioritize well but struggle to allocate resources effectively? Once you’ve reached consensus, design your work management system with those goals in mind.
- Standardize processes and workflows: Streamline processes and workflows company-wide to simplify execution, remove roadblocks, and enable teams to do their best work.
- Use work management software: Take advantage of project management software to automate common workflows. You can even configure alerts to notify you of potential task management issues before they arise (e.g., a resource is over-allocated.)
- Monitor and adjust continuously: You won’t know if your work management system is functioning properly unless you monitor its performance. Establish metrics for success, and adjust your processes to promote system health as needed.
How to Get Started with Work Management
Implementing work management can be daunting, especially if you’re new to the process and/or your organization is new to the concept. Here is a set of steps you can follow to get started:
1. Assess Current Workflows
Interview stakeholders to understand and document your existing workflows so you can identify any potential gaps or areas of improvement.
2. Define Clear Work Management Goals
Align on goals for your work management system and how you’ll track progress. This ensures that stakeholders adopt a consistent approach for prioritizing and addressing identified issues.
3. Choose the Right Work Management Tools
A big part of your work management system is the technology stack you’ll use to document, track, and report on your operational and project processes. As you make your decision, consider features such as project plan, roadmap, or Gantt chart visualizations, time management capabilities, and available integrations.
4. Establish Standard Processes
Review your existing workflows and associated pain points and then modify your workflows to mitigate those pain points. Standardize processes, where possible, so each team doesn’t have a slightly different version of the same workflow.
5. Train & Onboard Your Team
Once you’ve mapped out your new and improved workflows, socialize them with affected teams to ensure they are on board. These processes will crumble without teamwork, so take the time to verify that your stakeholders have bought in.
6. Monitor & Iterate
As you adapt to your new work management system, be sure to continuously monitor performance, gather feedback, and iterate to ensure that work management remains useful to your organization.
Best Tools for Work Management
Project management tools can help facilitate successful work management.
For example, a work management solution may offer capabilities such as centralized collaboration apps, file storage, time tracking, and project dashboards to show you how your work is progressing, as well as alerts regarding any potential bottlenecks in your workflows.
Consult our list of the best enterprise work management software to help you choose what’s right for your organization:
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