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Home » Project Management

Projects: Managing the Tasks

Submitted by James Higginbotham on July 19, 2006 – 6:15 pmNo Comment

Whenever you are ready to execute a project, you must be prepared to manage the tasks. Task management is often a full-time job and requires that you, as a ministry leader or manager, not do anything else. Otherwise, your time will be divided and one of your duties will suffer (what suffers actually depends on what you consider the least priority, which may or may not be your project). Here are some tips on how to manage your project tasks:

  1. For each milestone, expand out the tasks that need to be done for the next 2-4 weeks and no more
  2. Determine who on your team is available during that time and if the skillsets you need are available
  3. If skillsets are missing, adjust your timeline or your milestone tasks
  4. Otherwise, ask your team where they feel comfortable contributing based on their available time and the skills needed
  5. Have them estimate when they can complete the work, taking into account personal time with family, work schedules, and general availability
  6. Gather the estimates, estimate an end date for the work, and add/remove tasks as needed to reach your milestone date, as appropriate. Consider reviewing your list of risks to determine if the estimates take those things into account
  7. As the tasks are completed, gather metrics on how long it actually took and use these metrics when estimating the next milestone

As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done. So, start slow and simple, keep the milestones small and achievable, and build upon your successes. This is truly where your volunteers have a chance to utilize their gifts, give of their time and talent, and where they will either evangelize your ministry for good or ill. Out of these projects come a sense of teamwork, closeness, and craftsmanship. From this, it builds excitement, which leads to easier volunteer recruiting and project management in the future.

[tags]project management, ministry managment, volunteer management, church management[/tags]

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