Task management is the process of managing a task through its life cycle. It involves planning, testing, tracking, and reporting. Task management can help either individual achieve goals, or groups of individuals collaborate and share knowledge for the accomplishment of collective goals.Maus, Heiko, M.P. van der Aalst, Wil, Rickayzen, Alan, Riss, Uwe. V. “Challenges for Business Processes and Task Management,” Journal of Universal Knowledge Management. Volume 0, Issue 2, 2005. Tasks are also differentiated by complexity, from low to high. Effective task management requires managing all aspects of a task, including its status, priority, time, human and financial resources assignments, recurrence, dependency, notifications and so on. These can be lumped together broadly into the basic activities of task management. Managing multiple individuals or team tasks may be assisted by specialized software, for example

workflow A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence o ...

project management software Project management software (PMS) has the capacity to help plan, organize, and manage resource tools and develop resource estimates. Depending on the sophistication of the software, it can manage estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control ...

, and such a type of software may sometimes be referred to a productivity system. Task management may form part of project management and process management and can serve as the foundation for efficient

in an organization. Project managers adhering to task-oriented management have a detailed and up-to-date project schedule, and are usually good at directing team members and moving the project forward.

Task life cycle

The status of tasks can be described by the following states: * Ready * Assigned * Terminated * Expired * Forwarded * Started * Finished * Verified * Paused * Failed The state machine diagram to the right is referenced from IBM, and describes different states of a task over its life cycle. A more up-to-date task state machine diagram which is applicable to the modern

continuous delivery Continuous delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time and, following a pipeline through a "production-like environment", withou ...

method has also been published.

Activities supported by tasks

As a discipline, task management embraces several key activities. Various conceptual breakdowns exist, and these, at a high-level, always include creative, functional, project, performance and service activities. * Creative activities pertain to task creation. In context, these should allow for task planning, brainstorming, creation, elaboration, clarification, organization, reduction, targeting and preliminary prioritization. * Functional activities pertain to personnel, sales, quality or other management areas, for the ultimate purpose of ensuring production of final goods and services for delivery to customers. In context these should allow for planning, reporting, tracking, prioritizing, configuring, delegating, and managing of tasks. * Project activities pertain to planning and time and costs reporting. These can encompass multiple functional activities but are always greater and more purposeful than the sum of its parts. In context, project activities should allow for project task breakdown also known as

work breakdown structure A work-breakdown structure (WBS) in project management and systems engineering is a deliverable-oriented breakdown of a project into smaller components. A work breakdown structure is a key project deliverable that organizes the team's work into ...

, task allocation, inventory across projects, and concurrent access to task databases. * Service activities pertain to client and internal company services provision, including

customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study big data, large amounts of information. CRM systems data collectio ...

and

knowledge management Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...

. In context, these should allow for file attachment and links to tasks,

document management A document management system (DMS) is usually a computerized system used to store, share, track and manage files or documents. Some systems include history tracking where a log of the various versions created and modified by different users is r ...

, access rights management, inventory of client & employee records, orders & calls management, and annotating tasks. * Performance activities pertain to tracking performance and fulfillment of assigned tasks. In context these should allow for tracking by time, cost control, stakeholders, and priority; charts, exportable reports, status updates, deadline adjustments, and activity logging. * Report activities pertain to the presentation of information regarding the other five activities listed, including the graphical display.

Task management software

Task management software tools abound in the marketplace. Some are free; others intended for enterprise-wide deployment purposes. Some are simple to-do lists, while others boast enterprise-wide task creation, visualization, and notification capabilities - among others. Task management is used by small to Fortune 100 size companies. It does support simple individual projects to corporate task management activities.

Project management software Project management software (PMS) has the capacity to help plan, organize, and manage resource tools and develop resource estimates. Depending on the sophistication of the software, it can manage estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control ...

calendaring software A digital calendar is a collaborative or personal time management software with a calendar that can be used to keep track of planned events. The calendar can also contain an appointment book, address book or contact list. Common features of ...

and workflow software also often provide task management software with advanced support for task management activities and corresponding software environment dimensions, reciprocating the myriad project and performance activities built into most good enterprise-level task management software products. Software dimensions crisscrossing nearly all lines of task management products include task creation, task visualization, notifications, assign resources, compatibility,

configurability In communications or computer systems, a configuration of a system refers to the arrangement of each of its functional units, according to their nature, number and chief characteristics. Often, configuration pertains to the choice of hardware, soft ...

scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...

, and

report A report is a document that presents information in an organized format for a specific audience and purpose. Although summaries of reports may be delivered orally, complete reports are almost always in the form of written documents. Usage In ...

ing * Task creation encompasses collaborative capabilities for turning ideas into actions (tasks). This includes activities involved in defining the task and encompasses the collaboration needed in the planning process. * Task visualization encompasses presentation of tasks, most often through time and list forms. Priority visualization encompasses classification (e.g., budget, time, stakeholder) and mechanism (e.g., color code or text). Calendaring covers scheduling (e.g., availability, meetings, appointments and other potential conflicts) and notifications. * Notifications encompass configurable settings for informing past, present and pending deadlines. * Assigning resources encompasses the ability to delegate tasks and tools to single or multiple people. * Compatibility encompasses the ability of a task management environment to connect to other systems, software and environments. It includes setting a structure and restrictions on communication going from the task management environment to other software, systems, and environments. * Configurability encompasses the ability to add, remove and manage functionality and usability in task management environments. * Scalability encompasses ability to perform a task properly when a change in the quantity of users is done to meet the specific task requirements. * Reporting encompasses presentation of information by displaying either in tabular or graphical display.

References

{{Task management software Management by type Labor

Task life cycle

Activities supported by tasks

Task management software

See also

References