The TADA'S of new task creation
As part of our company-wide training we have identified 5 things that will help make the use of wrike more consistent and successful. We wanted to share these with the community in-case it helps anyone else.
The TADA'S are an easy way to remember the following steps when creating a new task:
(Note we do have the Labs Work Load Allocation feature enabled and have that as part of our account setup instructions.)
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Title |
Make the title verb/action based. I.E. “Create Training Agenda” as opposed to “Training Agenda” |
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Assigned |
Always assign a task when it is created. If you don’t know who to assign it to, assign it to yourself until you find out. |
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Description |
Provide a clear description of the task that contains all the necessary information for someone to take action to complete the task. |
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Allocation |
Populate the Allocation Custom Field with 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% of your available time for the days scheduled. |
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Scheduled |
Enter a realistic schedule for the task including a start and end date. These dates can change, but there needs to be a starting point. |
We have found that when these items are followed a user will get the most out of wrike such as My Work, Dashboards, Timeline, Workload, and Reporting. So far this has been very well received and provides a good laugh when shouting TADA in your best broadway voice during a training session.
Jacob, this is amazing! Thank you for sharing these tips, it's great to learn about the processes your team comes up with in Wrike. Can't wait to hear more :)
P.S. I can imagine how fun the training sessions must sound!
Hi Jacob,
can you switch on a light in my "dark room"? What do you mean with "Allocation Custom Field"?
Hi Jörn,
We use the Wrike.com/labs feature called "Task-based Resource Allocation" That feature adds a custom field called "Allocation" to all tasks that may then be viewed on the Workload view (similar to the Timeline View, but shows how much time that person is allocated for).
When we first launched, that feature worked on %'s, now the workload view will convert the % we enter on a task to hours in the workload view (appears to assume an 8 hour day). We are toying with the idea of switching to estimating allocation in hours but we are really just focused on building the behavior of thinking about and entering some estimation of the time a a task will take.
Here is a google slide that has some screen shots of where the allocation field appears (once enabled in labs and then added to the root/parent folder via table view) and what the workload view looks like.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OCnMPzbuyVrlNFaDi4U0HNn2mEgCCRkVo2jbzM2J020/edit?usp=sharing
Hope that helps!
Jacob.
Thanks Jacob,
very interesting approach. So if you create a new task do you "skip" the duration part of the task (which could be in a sample 3 hrs.) and just enter 20% into allocation?
I'm not sure how I deal with the "When do you want this task to be done" section.