Task management

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

Effective task management requires managing all aspects of a task, including its status, priority, time, human and financial resources assignments, recurrency, notifications and so on. These can be lumped together broadly into the basic activities of task management.

Managing multiple individual or team tasks may require specialised software, for example workflow or project management software. In fact, many people believe that task management should serve as a foundation for project management activities.

Task management may form part of project management and process management and can serve as the foundation for efficient workflow in an organisation. 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.

The status of tasks can be described by the following states:

The following state machine diagram describes different states of a task over its life cycle. This diagram is referenced from IBM.

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

Task management software tools abound in the marketplace. Some are free; others exist for enterprise-wide deployment purposes. Some boast enterprise-wide task creation, visualization and notification capabilities - among others - scalable to small, medium and Fortune 100 size companies, from individual projects to ongoing corporate task management.

Project management software, calendaring software and workflow software also often provide task management software with advanced support for task management activities and corresponding software environment dimensions, reciprocating the myriad project and performance activities built into most good enterprise-level task management software products.

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