Boom! 💥 Just a moment ago, you're sitting comfortably at your workplace... and suddenly you land in the middle of a gnarly gaming landscape. You look around startled and discover several challenges at once: Schedules gone wild, to-do lists that are loooong, and communication out of control.
Your mission is clear: 1) organize project team, 2) navigate your team members through the game, 3) ensure project success. Only how? 🤯
You know that strategy, tactics and a little bit of magic are needed here. Your skills as a project manager will help you.
We are also at your side and show you how to organize your project team optimally - and successfully play through all levels. That means: from project organization to communication and documentation.
We'll give you project management tips and a secret weapon for each level. But first we have to clarify the question...
Go through the project organization: What's in it for you?
Well, for one thing, as a project manager, you'll get the invaluable wealth of knowledge that will help you master any level of project management. Secondly, something amazing will happen: Your project team will be more organized, more efficient and happier.
Projects suddenly seem less like insurmountable obstacles. You are happy about the success of your project - and so is your team.
In short: All levels played through = project team successfully organized. 🚀
The first level is already waiting for you... Are you ready? Start the game in 3...2...1...
Level 1: Plan your mission (aka. your project)
Starting point: You are facing a mountain of tasks, project goals, deadlines and customer requests. So far there is no structure. No project management. No prospect of project success.
The challenge: Mastering your project organization.
As a project manager, it's up to you to put all the pieces of the puzzle together into a clear project structure. In doing so, you not only keep an eye on the short-term to-dos, but also on the long-term planning.
You also make sure that your project doesn't collide with other customer requests and keep the project goal in mind.
Here's what you need to do to get full marks:
✅ Set clear project goals: Define what you want to achieve with the project and set priorities, responsibilities and milestones. These goals will help you track the progress of your project and keep your team members on track.
✅ Start with long-term planning: Here you set long-term milestones and create a rough plan. What project scope can your team really accomplish without working overtime? Which deadlines must be met?
✅ Then zoom into the micro level: Here you take care of the organization in the daily business. You make a detailed schedule with start and end dates for each to-do. You create check-ins with appropriate intervals. For example, daily, weekly, Mondays or Fridays - as it makes sense for your project team.
✅ Identify and prioritize tasks: What task packages need to be put together to achieve your project goal? What priority do they have? This will help you keep track of the workload and the dependencies between the to-dos.
✅ Plan your resources: Determine resources such as your team's capacity, equipment and budget. (➡️ Spoiler: You'll encounter capa planning in level 2).
🔫 Secret weapon for your project team: awork project planning
✅ Everything in view: awork gives you control over your project plan and your team's workload. Overbooking and missed deadlines are old news. 👉 try it for yourself.
✅ Immediate problem solving: Dependency problems can be identified at first glance in the awork timeline and easily resolved.
✅ Task management made easy: awork also makes juggling tasks and priorities a breeze - whether you plan them in lists, on Kanban boards, or visually in the Timeline.
✅ Always one step ahead: Thanks to awork, you never lose the overview, recognize bottlenecks before they become a problem, and ensure efficient work throughout the entire team.
✅ Organization in easy: awork supports you in structuring your team project in your everyday life as a project manager. Collect current topics, create kick-offs and update appointments, and combine to-do and project management with meeting planning - effortlessly thanks to calendar integration.
Level 2: Choose your players for the project team.
Starting point: You have made it to the second level. 💪 You have a selection of potential team members in front of you, all with a unique set of skills and availability. Which players should - and can - join you on this project?
The challenge: Putting together the perfect project team.
Your task is to put together the project team. It is important to organize the resources among the team members in such a way that all to-dos are completed in the best possible and most efficient way.
At the same time, your team members should be happy and not drown in chaos or overtime.
Here's what you need to do to get the full score:
✅ Clearly define roles: Take a strategic approach and assign roles and tasks for the project. This will create the framework for perfect teamwork.
✅ Task match: Use your team's potential wisely. Know and appreciate the skills of each team member and distribute the tasks so that everyone can contribute their superpowers in the best possible way.
✅ Define goals: For project organization, it is helpful to set clear goals for individual team members - for the next 4 weeks or 3 months, for example. This way, everyone knows what is expected of them and can work toward it.
✅ Regular coordination: As a project manager*, make sure each team member has their own slot for regular coordination with team leadership. This will allow you to review progress and make timely adjustments to the project.
✅ Perfect workload: make sure that all team members are working to capacity but not overloaded.
🔫 Secret-Weapon for your Project Team: The awork Kapa Planning
✅ Live Workload: The awork workload view shows you live how busy your team is. You can transparently track the workload of individual employees and act directly if someone is overbooked. This ensures a fair distribution and a pleasant collaboration in the project team.
✅ Realistic capacity planning: awork shows the actual workload of your team. And this from planned projects or tasks, calendar meetings and recorded times. 👉 try it for yourself.
✅ Tasks in perfect bites: awork shows each team member what's next on the to-do list. Responsibilities and status updates? Covered! Your project organization? On point!
✅ Prioritize subprojects: Which work package has the highest priority? With awork, you can check this at a glance and flexibly shift the subprojects.
✅ Overview - at all times: With awork, you always maintain the best overview, prevent bottlenecks from occurring in the first place, and ensure that project tasks are optimally distributed.
✅ Additional workforce for your team: If the tasks become too much, you can call in freelancers to support your team. Thanks to awork, collaboration in project teams is easy - even with external service providers.
Level 3: Crack the time tracking
Starting point: time tracking - it's crucial for controlling costs and optimizing workflows. It also allows you to track the progress of the project and keep track of everything. The task sounds easy, but every project manager can confirm - it is NOT.
The challenge: Keeping track of the project progress
You are faced with the mammoth task of keeping track - many tasks, limited time. Who is doing what? How much time is needed? As a project manager, you are VERY concerned about this issue. The creative minds in your team don't.
For them, structure sometimes takes a back seat and time tracking is equated with wasting time. 🙈
Here's what you need to do to get full marks:
✅ Make time tracking simple & cool: Find the right tool to make time tracking as fast and as easy as possible. And... maybe even fun! That's the key to getting your creatives excited about time tracking, too, and taking project organization to the next level.
✅ Understand and improve: Track how much time different project tasks eat up and use that info to better plan upcoming task packages and push your team's productivity.
🔫 Secret-Weapon for your project team: awork time tracking
✅ Stopwatch feature: awork offers a handy stopwatch function. So your team can easily record their times and book them directly to specific tasks or projects.
✅ Calendar 🤝 Time tracking: awork offers the possibility to convert appointments from your personal calendar directly into recorded times - especially useful for workshops or appointments with customers.
➡️ Easy planning: Your team can schedule project tasks directly in their calendars in awork and automatically block times for them. As a project manager, you can then breathe a sigh of relief - try it for yourself.
✅ Calendar integration: With the drag-and-drop function, you can easily enter times in the awork calendar and assign them to the corresponding tasks or projects.
Level 4: Find the perfect communication tool
Starting point: You are on the playing field of infinite communication channels! Email, chat, video tools.... and these are just a few of the options for keeping your project team members in touch. You set out to find a tool that meets your day-to-day project needs.
The challenge: Find the right tool for team communication.
Your challenge as a project manager is to ensure clear and transparent communication throughout the team. Because misunderstandings and information gaps can lead to delays and errors - and that costs time and money.
A red rag for you as a project manager and for your customers.
Here's what you need to do to get full marks:
✅ Real-time communication: Ensure a simple and reliable communication tool and regular coordination.
✅ Open exchange within the team: Ensure that all employees are actively involved in discussions, that regular meetings take place, and that every team member has access to all information.
✅ Smart management of tools: Sort communication tools according to their synchronicity. That is, the more personal the topic, the more personal the communication channel should be. It's best to share the news of a promotion or a pitch win in person - and then celebrate together. Logical, right? For less emotional topics, there's email and the like.
🔫 Secret weapon for your project team: Slack 🤝 awork
✅ Team conversations made easy: Project and task-oriented communication takes place directly via awork comments. But what about communication away from that? With a communication tool like Slack, your team can create groups as well as have one-on-one conversations - so it's the perfect complement.
✅ Planning without switching tools: via awork's chat tool integration, project planning can be started directly from Slack chat. Completely without switching between tools. A dream come true for you as a project manager (PS: This also works with Microsoft Teams).
✅ Always up-to-date: Slack shows you directly when something changes in your awork projects. This way, you ensure that all employees are up to date.
Level 5: High score through first-class project documentation
Starting point: Imagine you are playing a cool game, but suddenly the power goes out. Your progress? - poof - gone. The situation is similar if the documentation in your project management is not up-to-date. Chaos reigns, errors creep in and if a team member suddenly drops out, the project comes to a standstill as well.
The challenge: to document everything important and make it findable.
Make sure that your team's learnings are accessible to everyone at all times. This way, the project can continue even if you as the project leader are sick.
Documentation is like caching in a video game - it can make the difference between a project's success or a game over.
Here's what you need to do to get full points:
✅ Order is half the game: create clear, thoughtful documentation so chaos doesn't stand a chance in your project organization.
✅ Keep track of your team's progress: Record all project details such as tasks, responsibilities, and the current state of progress. This way, there will be no friction in the collaboration.
✅ Teamwork 🤝 Transparency: Make sure that all team members have access to the documentation. This way, everyone is on the same level of knowledge.
Secret Weapon for Your Project Team: The Notion Documentation
✅ Order and clarity: A documentation tool like Notion makes organizing your digital notes and collaboration in the project team a breeze.
✅ Quick access to all info: With just one click, you can find all of your team's information, comments, and shared knowledge in one place. The perfect complement to your processes.
✅ Central information source: Collect all relevant information in Notion and ensure that your project teams can work together efficiently.
✅ No confusion, no chaos: With Notion, you achieve clear knowledge documentation and perfect organization for your project team. Next-level collaboration!
Mission completed: Successful collaboration in your project team.
Boom! 💥 You're sitting at your workstation again. Mission completed! As a project manager, you've not only conquered the project organization, but also put together the perfect team, gone in search of perfect communication tools, mastered time tracking and completed the project documentation.
Your fingers may be a little sore from all the typing and you could use a cold drink, but hey, you did it.
You've played through the project team management game!
Organize project teams with awork
awork is your personal sidekick in project management - and made for you if you use your superpowers as a project manager, for example in an agency, a consultancy or a tech company.
As a project management tool, awork works like a good cup of coffee for your project: It kicks you and your team into productive mode, gets the to-dos on track and pushes the collaboration in the project team.
You are curious how this can look like for YOUR company and YOUR daily work as a project manager? Say no more. We offer tips and support at its best - just click here and get started. 🎉
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