Work is a maelstrom. Your team is receiving requests from a dozen different directions. Answer one email and there’s already three chats waiting for you. Every meeting generates four new projects. As PM, you are the captain and you need to steer away from the storm. Incorporate some practical steps to manage things. Emily Bonnie over on the Wrike blog recently gathered together five best practices to help you steer clear of catastrophe.
1. Have One Gatekeeper
Be it the PM, the team lead, or the department head, one person handles all the decisions. This person reviews incoming requests, prioritizes them and assigns the work. As Wrike points out, a gatekeeper is essential to aligning work with goals. This will also reduce conflict and confusion on the team.
2. Write It Down
Wrike refers to this as the line in the sand. Coworkers will make requests in meetings, informally in the hallway and hand you stickies. Make it clear that your team will only do work requested in writing. Wrike Request is an excellent tool for this purpose. Requests come in on a template. Once you start work, everything you need is in easy reach.
3. Keep All Your Requests in A Single Place
Sticky notes, spreadsheets, emails are a recipe for disaster. You can’t afford to lose any work. Sort work into folders. Track and prioritize the work and know immediately who is working on what. Get rid of duplicate requests. Wrike is a brilliant solution for this, funneling all your work into one place.
4. Organize Request As They Come In
Be proactive. Don’t wait for you current project to complete. Grab the requests as they land and assign them priority. Knowing what’s next keeps things moving. As Wrike points out, this will keep your team focused. A clear focus guarantees your team produces at it’s best.
5. Map Incoming Requests to Strategic Goals
Help your team work with a purpose. Wrike suggests using weekly, monthly or quarterly meetings. Provide a top down view of the work and how it ties into goals – at team level, a department level, and a company level.
If you don’t have a system in place yet, try using Wrike Requests to keep all your incoming work requests organized and your team running smoothly. Founded in 2007, Wrike is a powerful, collaborative PM platform. They understand what it takes to produce at the highest level. With Wrike, you have a simple solution to incorporate these best practices.
Featured Partners: Project Management Software
If you’re interested in learning more about top-rated project management software, the editors at Project-Management.com actively recommend the following:
1 monday.com
monday.com Work OS is an award-winning no-code work management platform that helps teams manage projects and workflows more efficiently.
Used by 152,000+ customers worldwide, this fully customizable software lets you plan, manage, and track every project in one place. monday.com offers time-saving and easy-to-use features such as automations, time tracking, document sharing, and real-time collaboration. Multiple board views such as Gantt and Kanban help you structure and navigate tasks and projects the way you prefer, and dashboards give a high-level overview of your progress.
In addition, integrations with apps such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, and Excel, allow you to easily continue working with your favorite tools from within the platform. monday.com also offers dedicated solutions, such as monday dev and monday sales CRM, designed to answer the needs of specific industries.
2 Wrike
Wrike is the most powerful work management platform on the market, enabling teams to plan projects and collaborate in real time. Our award-winning software is trusted by 20,000+ companies across the globe, including Sony, Estée Lauder, and Siemens.
Wrike’s customizable features include Gantt charts, request forms, dashboards, cross-tagging, time tracking, and proofing. Integrate with 400+ apps from the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Automate repetitive tasks and achieve 50% faster planning. Work from anywhere with 100% access to your files via our mobile and desktop apps.
Whether you’re a small startup or an established brand, Wrike has the solution for you. Paid plans start at $9.80/user/month. Join our community of 2.3 million — start your free two-week trial today.
3 Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a leading work execution platform that has real-time work management features, collaboration and automation tools. Users are presented with a familiar and easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interface. However, it has enterprise-grade capabilities that even Fortune 500 companies like Cisco, Bayer, HP, and PayPal are confident to adopt in their business. Strong project management features enable teams to utilize different views of real-time data, and switch easily from Gantt, card, grid and calendar views. Smartsheet has automatic update requests, and can be used for waterfall and agile projects, product launch, sprint planning, and more. The resource management feature provides users the visibility who is busy, and who is not, in real-time. They can also attach files, share sheets, get notified, view the activity log, export, email, and print.
