There are a lot of ways to optimize a business. Identifying short-term and long-term goals, improving analytics, gaining partnerships, etc. And one thing that’s often overlooked by businesses is organizing projects. Digging in a little deeper, there are a lot of nuances involved with project management, such as:

• Monitoring 2 ends of a business (clients & employees)
• Handling multiple projects/resources at once
• Resolving internal conflict/delays
• Managing team productivity and well-being

All this while working on other important tasks throughout the day. You could call project organization as art... with major benefits. After all, statistics have shown that on average, 12% of company resources are saved when project planning is done right. 

Use a Project Planning Tool

Having a piece of software that’s specifically designed to handle business projects and resources is infinitely more convenient than doing it manually with a spreadsheet. While the use of Google Sheets for example is a good way to start managing projects, most of the time, it becomes counterproductive. Apart from creating a template from scratch, there’s also an underlying issue with schedule adjustments. It gets tedious pretty fast.

A project management tool can be your best friend when it comes to saving time and keeping tasks in order. Smartoo for example has a drag and drop feature which practically flattens its learning curve. Much like others in the market, it also has bookings, project phases, and even milestones for when you want to be more rewarding when certain aspects of the project have been completed.

Communicate with Intent

A busy schedule can sometimes be in the way of communicating clearly with your team. This can impact the way an employee understands a task and might lead to a different output entirely. Being more specific with your instructions, project details, and schedule adjustments is a surefire way of having a more organized team — ergo, a more organized project.

There are a lot of solutions to unclear messaging. Here are some things you could do for it:

1. Hold a quick meeting
2. Be more specific — Use the step-by-step method if necessary
3. If your team is more casual, try emojis to lighten the mood
4. Verbally ask if they understood the prompt

Utilize Project Management Frameworks

There are dozens out there, and none of them are particularly “the best”. However, since these are preferential, there’s definitely one that’s better suited for you or your team. Here are 3 of the most popular you could use today.

The Eisenhower Matrix

While technically a time management framework, the Eisenhower Matrix has got to be one of the most popular ways of tackling tasks (projects in your case) head-on. Its structure is mainly described as having 4 boxes lined up to shape like a square. Each square represents tasks that vary in urgency and importance. This may help you and your team to organize projects in a way to direct efforts towards more pressing matters.

The Kanban Board

A visually appealing management structure that segregates projects into “boards” or “cards”. Instead of having projects divided into urgency or importance like the Eisenhower Matrix, this one does so with project phases. While there are a lot of names for each process, they basically have the same concept. The leftmost card is the start of your project and the rightmost is the end, but some also put an extra (wide) card at the bottom of all the cards. The example below is specifically for project management.

Time Blocking

Time blocking is not only great for organizing projects, but also for a person’s mindset. To put it simply, time blocking is the process of using “blocks” for tasks to take up certain timeframes of your day. This lets you and your team have a clear and concise plan of action throughout the day. Additionally, it helps in fighting the counterproductive habit of multitasking.