Do you dream of a project where everything runs smoothly and every team member understands their role in the project?
To achieve this, people have to know exactly which tasks they’re responsible for.
Read on and learn 5 simple steps to help you establish clear task ownership and improve accountability in your organization.
Table of Contents
Break down the project into manageable tasks
Projects are complex endeavors, and they almost always include a lot of people, and sometimes even multiple teams.
So, the first step towards improving accountability is breaking down the project into manageable tasks that can be handled by a single person. That way, there is no confusion as to who is working on what since a task is assigned to one person.
This allows for clear responsibilities and, in turn, clear accountability.
The easiest way to break down projects into tasks is to use a project management tool.
In Plaky, you can create a board for each project, and as many tasks as you want for each board. This will provide you with an overview of the entire project.
Decide on task owners for each task
Once you’ve created a list of tasks, it’s time to decide who will be responsible for which task.
As Bryan Berthot, Project Manager, Scrum Master, and Doctoral Candidate at the University of South Florida explains:
“On project teams, it is essential that every deliverable, every task, is assigned an owner who’s responsible for completing it. This doesn’t mean that the owner is charged with doing all the work, but the task owner is who the project leader holds accountable for delivery.”
This is easy to do through Plaky — you can assign a team member to each task in a matter of seconds. All you need to do is create a ‘person’ field and type the name of the teammate and click on it.
You are not limited to only one ‘person’ field. So, if more than one person is working on the task, and you want to distinguish the task owner, you can create 2 fields and name them ‘Assignee’ and ‘Task Owner’.
When deciding who to assign to a new task, the filter option can be very useful. You can filter tasks to show the ones owned by a certain team member to see how busy they are.
For example, if you need to assign a task to test a new feature on your app, you can first check how many tasks all your QA testers have — and assign the newest one to someone whose schedule allows it.
Add a deadline to each task
Every task owner should know the due date of a task before they even start working on it. This way, they can organize their time to ensure they deliver the results on time.
So, make sure you add a deadline for each assignment as soon as possible — and, most importantly, make the deadline realistic.
If you are not sure how long it would take to finish a task, talk to the task owner to hear what time frame they feel comfortable with. Or, if they don’t have enough experience with that type of task, ask someone in the organization who does.
In Plaky, you can add a deadline simply by adding a date field to the task.
Alternatively, you can add a timeline field, where you choose a start and end date of the task, and you’ll get a visual representation of the timeline.
Keep track of the task’s progress
Assigning a task owner to a task doesn’t mean your job is done. You have to be in the loop with how things are going and be available for any questions from the person in charge of the task.
As Bryan Berthot points out, it’s important for leaders to follow up on the task’s progress:
“It’s not enough for a project manager to assign task ownership and forget about it. Once the task ownership and a baseline due date are established, the project manager must follow up. If I see a deadline approaching and I’m not hearing from the task owner that progress has been made, then I drill down and start asking questions about any task blockers and technical obstacles.”
Following up on tasks is easier with the right team collaboration software. In Plaky, project managers can leave comments directly on tasks and discuss any potential problems.
For example, if you see that the deadline is approaching, or if you notice the task owner changed the status to “Stuck”, you can leave a comment to offer assistance. You can even @mention the task owner if you want.
Focus on improvement and praise, not punishment
The final, but crucial step to improved accountability is to focus on the positives.
The President and COO at Hennessey Digital, Scott Shrum, explains why the way we approach accountability matters:
“Culturally, it’s important to make accountability less about punishment and more about coaching and improvement. Not everyone hits every goal — if goals are challenging enough, the team will inevitably fall short sometimes. The key is to approach it with a mindset of, ‘What did we learn? What can we do differently next time?’
This mindset shift helps both managers and employees come into these conversations with a much more open mind towards feedback, helping them perform better over time, which is the goal of accountability systems!”
Praising your employees can be as simple as leaving a comment on a task to show you’ve noticed they did a good job. Or, you can conduct a meeting after a project to discuss what was done well and where there is room for improvement.
Manage task ownership and accountability with Plaky
If you want to be able to organize task ownership quickly and have an overview of all tasks with their owners in one place — Plaky is the task management software you’re looking for.
As a powerful, yet user-friendly tool, Plaky offers an effective way to establish clear accountability. You can:
- Add task owners and assignees to tasks,
- Customize task fields to fit your project,
- Track tasks’ progress,
- Receive notifications of all changes, etc.
Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to know more about what Plaky’s free and paid plans have to offer, check out Plaky’s pricing information.
Utilize Plaky to create clear task ownership without hiccups and boost accountability in your organization. Create a free Plaky account today and begin!
Or, if you need an all-encompassing productivity package, try the CAKE.com bundle. Besides Plaky, you will also get Clockify – a simple, yet robust time tracking app and Pumble – a reliable team communication app to help you run your projects smoothly.
