When you suddenly start getting more projects than you think your team can handle, effective project management is the recipe for triumph.
In contrast, unclear goals, poor communication, and inadequate deadlines are some of the most common reasons for project failure, leading to dissatisfied clients and a tarnished reputation.
The good news is that it’s absolutely possible to go from overwhelmed to organized in 3 simple steps.
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1. Manage all projects in one place
You should keep all project information in a single place — so that everyone involved can easily access it. The most optimal way to do this is to use project management software.
The centralized platform Plaky is a great choice for keeping track of all the projects and information about them — such as task distribution, assignees, due dates, budget, and more — making everything of importance transparent.
Organized into spaces and boards, Plaky enables a clear distinction between different projects. And, since every project is unique, you can tailor the layout and workflow with as many boards, items, and users as you need.
Our most popular paid plan lets you share spaces with the entire company or only a certain team, which is handy for projects requiring privacy through restricted access.
Bonus: If you are worried that you might get lost switching between different projects, you can rely on the search, filter, and sort options.
2. Break projects into tasks (and prioritize them)
Look at each project and divide the work into smaller tasks. Also, you should prioritize the tasks, decide the exact order in which you’ll tackle them (don’t forget about potential task dependencies), estimate the time needed for their completion, set project milestones, etc.
Breaking a project into manageable chunks makes it less overwhelming, while proper task prioritization minimizes procrastination that occurs when unsure what to tackle first — which, in turn, helps keep the team motivated.
Have you heard of Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)? It’s a popular method for decomposing work into digestible segments using a hierarchical structure. You can create it in Plaky and have a clear overview of your tasks using the Kanban view.
Paid plan users can rely on the Gantt chart view as well. It provides a clear overview of your timeline, revealing potential room for new projects and task reorganization.
Prioritization is a breeze in Plaky since it lets you assign a priority label to any item. The three-degree scale of high, medium, and low priority is probably the most standard one, but you can add more labels and/or rename them if you need a different categorization. Alternatively, you can also group items according to their priority.
Our contributor, Randi Mays, Project Development Manager at data science company Oii.ai, shares a situation in which prioritization was vital:
“Recently at Oii.ai, we had a surge of customers that all signed up at the same time. The sudden growth prompted us to take a step back to see how we would tackle this.
We needed to accommodate the increased demand without sacrificing deadlines and customer satisfaction. First, the team looked at what we needed to do and what needed to be prioritized. We had to ensure essential activities were addressed first while still working on new responsibilities.”
💡 PLAKY PRO TIP
If you’re unsure how to plan your activities from scratch, check out our versatile offer of project management templates:
3. Distribute responsibilities
When there’s a sudden surge of new projects, smart task delegation is a crucial step in handling them all successfully.
The first thing you need to consider is availability — who’s free to work on what?
People’s workloads fluctuate throughout the project, so it’s reasonable to entrust new responsibilities to colleagues with less on their plate at the moment.
Apart from availability, you should consider your team members’ skills and affinities that might come in handy on new projects or tasks. That way, you’ve found yourself an assignee, and they get to work on something they care about and/or are good at — a win-win situation.
Plaky makes task distribution easy. Create a Person field within the item, click on it, and select the assignee(s) from the pool of available users.
You may also @mention users in comments within an item description.
Plaky users also receive notifications about new assignments and mentions — which prevents confusion and oversights.
A sudden influx of projects? Plaky can help!
Plaky’s features and ready-made templates allow for excellent task management, team collaboration, progress tracking, and administration.
One of Plaky’s biggest advantages is supporting an unlimited number of items corresponding to each project activity, even in its free plan, so you don’t need to worry about reaching a limit before inputting all the tasks.
All the item descriptor fields are highly customizable, so every team can organize tasks in the way that suits them best.
Another strong point is the activity log, showing when a member makes any change to a board or task you’re subscribed to. This allows you to quickly check changes made without having to micromanage.
In addition to practicality, Plaky offers a smooth user experience. The platform is visually appealing and easy to navigate, whether as a mobile app or on the web.
Besides the light/dark theme alternatives, there are different color options for item groups, statuses, and labels.
As user satisfaction and loyalty fall under our main priorities, customer support is available 24/7 — even to users on the free plan.
Plaky’s Free Forever plan isn’t as restrictive as those offered by similar software options out there. Nonetheless, if you want perks such as more storage, a longer/unlimited activity log, a custom subdomain, etc., don’t hesitate to upgrade to one of our paid plans.
Do you need a centralized platform to help you tackle a surge of new projects simply and affordably? If so, sign up for Plaky today.
You could also opt for CAKE.com’s Bundle plan and use Plaky together with our business messaging app, Pumble, and team time tracker tool, Clockify.
