Welcome to the series of How To:Quality. Your 3 min guide on how Quality Professionals address various business needs to drive Improvement and Governance.
A lot of the work we do is projectised. Regardless of the time it takes, it has a start and an end date is how a project is defined by Project Management Institute. If it does not, it is deemed an operational task. Plenty of project management tools are out there in the market and I use Asana.
WIth 10 years of using Asana as the project / portfolio management tool with many teams across the globe, over 100 projects, and working with over 20 different senior leaders (aka sponsors), I see the added value this tool brings. In this post, I will share how you can deploy project management principles using a tool like Asana, highlighting the Teams Domain.
How to: Quality
Deploying project management principle swith Asana
“Team performance domain addresses activities and functions associated with the peopke who are responsib;e of producting project deliverables.” (PMBOK Guide 7th Edition, PMI 2020).
This domain is focused on those doing the work, including the project manager who should facilitate the removal of obstacles, acting as a shield diversion and encouraging the team and developing opportunities to increase team productivities. They refer to this as servant leadership.
Your project management and work management tool should also enable you to deploy your servant leadership in relation to the work being done. With Asana, there is a list of features you can deploy to ensure you are fostering an environment of servant leadership.
Obstacle Removal:
There are few features you can use to help you support your team and remove obstacles. In project management, some obstacles require analysis and discussion, while others require guidance to be provided to your team. Having a tool that enables you to address obstacles can be helpful. In Asana for example:
- Using a ‘progress custom field’ which inlcudes at risk status. If this is too broad, you can introduce a custom field to your project called – Support needed: Yes / No. You can then create
- Rules that once Yes is selected, the task is added to your 1-1 project with your team member, a comment is added to the task with “@’ mentioning you so you get notified.
This approach could help you get notified immediately, and keep the support you are providing in an environement that is actionable and trackable.
Acting as a Shield Diversion:
Intakes: The best way to manage work load and ensure the requests are aligned with the goal of the project is to introduce an intake process. This can be done via:
- Forms: create a form where your stakeholders can submit requests for support within the project. This can be useful if you have a large number of people who are not asana licensed.
- Sections (whether in list view or in Board view) and call it Incoming Requests. This helps that any new task added to the project is captured under this section. You can ensure that requests are reviewed in this section and approved (if required) before they are assigned to a project team member to work on them.
I tend to use the Project Overview. I capture the project objective, key resources, any portfolio or goal it is associated with. When you have project stand ups and regular catch ups, always start with this page on view for the project team. It acts as a focus and reminder of what is required. It also helps keep the project scope in check as its life progresses.
Developing Opportunities for efficencies and Encourgaing the team:
- Celebrating Success does not need to happen at milestones or once at the end of the project. You can do this at every task that requires a level of effort. Make sure you are specific in providing your gratitude. Keep it fun, precise! Asana’s celebrations/appreciations help you achieve just that
- Efficiencies: As you review the progress of your project, keep in mind 3 things:
i) Status updates provided
ii) Due dates that are missed
iii) Blockers that tend to have a common theme
If you work in an Agile enviornment, and have daily progress meetings, these meetings are good to explore progress, and keep the work moving. If you plan to develop opportunities for efficiencies, try and create a separate space to review and explore those opportunities. I, for example, have a private project where I keep track of feedback given and dev opportunities given to team members. I also have in the 1-1 projects a section to track professional development for my team. This could be for initiatives they sign up to, or suggestions I bring to them. It is very useful to ensure such opportunities are linked directly to the work they are actively involved in.
One thing to keep in mind is project teams as a domain is different to Teams set up in Asana. Teams set up in asana relate to the a hirarchical term as such where by you group people by the funtion they operate it. If you are a small organisation, I personally do not see a use case to clutter your set up with many teams. But this of course is not a one size fits all. If you have workflows that are always used by the same group of people, a function, then crearting a team and housing these workflows in that space become very handy.
Resources from Asana Guide:
- Custom FIelds and use of task progress: https://help.asana.com/hc/en-us/articles/14110099577883-Custom-fields 2
- Intakes and workflow builder: Connecting teams, technology and tools to drive cross-team value ✨ 4
- strategies for dealing with overdue tasks: ⏰ Strategy on how to deal with overdue tasks 5
- bringing clarity using portfolios : 🚀 New Portfolios layout: reinstate your status update heading / summary2
Happy Team Engaging!
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