What to do, if tasks will not be ready

One project manager complained that his project was overdue because his resources didn’t do the tasks. Even though he posted emails to his resources, the tasks were not being done. He must constantly remind and micro manage them all the time. And even if the tasks were written in the minutes, they were not done.

The project manager was astonished when I asked him if the reason for doing nothing could be due to him, though. Generally, people want to do the tasks assigned to them. The reason for inaction is usually due to a bad assignment or unclear instruction.

  1. Do you know what other tasks a person currently has on their worklist? What is the priority and schedule of their existing tasks?
  2. When do you send emails? Emails sent in the evenings and on weekends are likely to be lost in amongst other emails.
  3. How many emails do the recipient get? Has your email even been read yet?
  4. Did you write the e-mail clearly? Did the email have many tasks for multiple people to do?
  5. If the tasks were written in the memo of the meeting, did the person take part in that meeting? If the person did not attend the meeting, did the person know about that task? Or should he find the activity from the minutes?
  6. Was the deadline set for the assignment? Has the person been given enough time to complete the assignment?
  7. Is email usually the best tool to share these tasks?

The project manager recognized these problems. He defended himself as follows:  ” That’s how we used to act. We’ve also tried to create different types of Excels, but that’s also not working properly.”

I asked the project manager how would he like to act from now on? The answer came quickly: He has dreamed of a tool to share different activities for resources. Each resource would find all activities in one job list. And the project manager could track the completion of each task in real time.

The Project Manager purchased ProjectTOP software for project management. We collected all the activities of the project and uploaded them to ProjectTOP. We took a brief introduction to the project resources.

Within a couple of weeks, we had a follow-up meeting. The project manager welcomed me. He said that, unexpectedly, tasks were being completed on schedule. Each project resource now has a clear task list with timetables. And he can see each resource’s work list. Now the resources know what to do And the Project Manager has tools to manage the project.

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