Macro to Micro Task Management

Brendan T Malaysia

Hi all,

Frequently in project management it is necessary to deal with long term planned activities and daily tasks that arrive ad-hoc on a daily/hourly basis. I find existing tools often struggle with these two different scenarios.

Task management falls into two camps, project management that may span months/years and day to day task management. Neither is particularly appropriate to represent the other. Project planning has little concern about hour long tasks, and daily to-do lists certainly cannot forecast if your present hour long task will mean completing the project on time.

Frequently people find themselves in the position where we must juggle both. This may mean dodging in and out of different systems, glancing/reviewing project plans and taking tasks from one system to another. It can be both complex and time-consuming and lead to frequent contemplation of project plan tasks and their relation to present actions.

I think there is an elegant way to handle this using a single system. The features of this system are the following:

It combines project tasks with ad-hoc daily items under a single framework
Since project/daily tasks are under one system, daily/weekly review of project lists can be removed
The basis of scheduled activities is a project plan so important projects tasks are covered by default
It allows for taking project plan tasks and breaking them down into actionable tasks that are conducive to daily work
It is quick to both enter new tasks and determine which tasks to execute

To get such advantages, I try to utilise the strengths of different methods of task management. I merge three different approaches (Waterfall, SCRUM and GTD) to create a unified approach to task management that spans project activities spanning years to daily tasks in the order of minutes. I outline the approach here: http://donebeforebrekky.com/macro-to-micro-task-management/

So, this is my attempt to try and deal with the conflicting situations of long term and short term management. Am happy to hear how others manage these conflicting situations.

Posted: Oct 25, 2015 10:08 AM

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sofia watson United Kingdom

Good article. Just in these weeks I''m attempting to discover a strategy to oversee large scale to miniaturized scale assignment and I was thinking to embrace an approach like that you have help with assignment. I''m cheerful to see that somebody have quite recently tried with progress this approach. I would likewise hear how others deal with these circumstances.

Posted: Nov 8, 2017 4:26 AM

KAGISO RHULANI PM Specialist| moche media projects (pty) ltd Hammanskraal, Gauteng, South Africa

Mar 21, 2016 10:34 PM

Replying to Michelle Daigle

...

Much like Stéphane, I use email to manage smaller tasks and reminders. Specifically I use Outlook flags to set follow up reminders, and Outook tasks for small to-do's, as well as a folder structure.

I sometimes use the 'Post Reply to Folder' option to resend myself the email with a note that describes the action I want to take on the email, if it's not a simple follow up. This gives it a different message type in your folder (inbox) so you can sort by these. It helps keep me organized. An example of how I use Post Reply to Folder is as reminders of email content that I want to include in my weekly report. I do a Post Reply to Folder with a subject line 'For Report'. It puts it back in my inbox with this new message type. I can sort by message type and easily find them all on reporting day.

wow that very smart Michelle, thanks for sharing

Posted: Jan 22, 2019 6:54 AM

Grace Kilpatrick Project Manager| Paradigm Madison, Wi, United States

Another vote for utilizing Outlook reminder flags and tasks! The color coding for emails/tasks/meetings has saved me!

Posted: Jun 11, 2019 11:56 AM

tom lite Sweden

Much like Stéphane, I use email to manage smaller tasks and reminders. Specifically I use Outlook flags to set follow up reminders, and Outook tasks for small to-do's, as well as a folder structure.

Posted: Jun 13, 2021 12:00 PM

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Macro to Micro Task Management

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