Task management

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Example of a kanban board used in software development Abstract Kanban Board.svg
Example of a kanban board used in software development
A digital calendar in week view with 24-hour time Tine 2.0 Calendar.png
A digital calendar in week view with 24-hour time

Task management is the process of overseeing a task through its lifecycle. It involves planning, testing, tracking, and reporting. Task management can help individuals achieve goals or enable groups of individuals to collaborate and share knowledge for the accomplishment of collective goals. [1] Tasks are also differentiated by complexity, from low to high. [1]

Contents

Effective task management requires overseeing all aspects of a task, including its status, priority, time, human and financial resource assignments, recurrence, dependencies, notifications, etc. These can be lumped together broadly as the fundamental activities of task management.

Managing tasks for multiple individuals or teams can be facilitated by specialized software, such as workflow or project-management software. This type of software is sometimes referred to as a productivity system.[ citation needed ]

Task management may be a component of project management and process management, serving as the foundation for efficient workflow within 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. [2]

Task lifecycle

Example of a finite-state diagram of a task over its lifecycle published by IBM TaskLifeCycle.png
Example of a finite-state diagram of a task over its lifecycle published by IBM

The status of tasks can be described by these states:

The state machine diagram to the right is referenced from IBM and describes different states of a task over its lifecycle. [3] A more up-to-date task-state machine diagram, which is applicable to the modern continuous delivery method, has also been published. [4]

Activities supported by tasks

As a discipline, task management embraces several key activities. Various conceptual breakdowns exist, at a high level, these always include creative, functional, project, performance, and service activities.

Task management software

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

Project management software, calendaring software, and workflow software often include advanced task management features, supporting a variety of task-related activities within a comprehensive software environment. These functionalities complement the numerous project and performance tasks integrated into high-quality enterprise-level task management software products.

Key software dimensions that intersect across various lines of task management products include task creation, task visualization, notifications, resource assignment, compatibility, configurability, scalability, and reporting.

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 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.
  2. Thomas Cutting "Relationship vs. Task Oriented Management". 3 March 2010 http://www.pmhut.com/relationship-vs-task-oriented-management
  3. 1 2 "Life Cycle of Human Tasks". IBM WebSphere Process Server documentation. IBM. Retrieved 6 Mar 2024.
  4. "Anatomy of a task". Archived from the original on 2018-02-04.