Tasks management tools

We have seen that project execution is a very dynamic activity. Any planning tools that are static in nature will fail to meet the dynamic demands .

What are static planning tools? Word documents for the test plans, coverage plans and checks plans. They can be generated for review but not for execution. Excel sheets are out for the task tracking and planning. Both of these are very static in nature.

Why do we consider them as static? Note that plans are property of team and don’t belong to any individual. Plan management system should allow multi user interface. Microsoft word and excel are great tools. But come think of is multi-user interface of it, even version control tools cannot do automatic merge on them due to their binary formats. This makes it unfriendly for the multi user operation. When medium used for these plans does not provide clean multi-user interface it hinders the team work during execution. Strong recommendation is to put in place a good task management software. There are plenty out in market. If you are big corporation and want to shed some weight from your wallet get custom one made. If you are not, go with the off the shelf products. Task management software tools provide interface for multi user operations. This means everyone can do updates. It reduces the unnecessary email traffic.

Especially leaders can reduce conversation centered around tasks status. It’s not a great use of time. Pick a user friendly task management tool and setup your requirements specific guidelines for its usage.  This does not mean end of conversation about status but it will reduce it.