What Is a Task Management Software
Many people find themselves at a certain point in their life looking for a task management software to help them refocus and keep their finger tips on what is important. Task management products organize, schedule and ensure that tasks get done on time. On short it can boost your productivity. By being better organized and more focused on what you have to do, you save time and reduce stress.
Good task and project management software was hard to find a few years ago when people were using Outlook. Nowadays productivity has become almost an obsession of geeks everywhere, so the increasing request for such tools generated a large base of good task and project management solutions. There are a lot of choices to help manage the tasks, ranging from standalone applications to web-based services.
What exactly are users looking for?
Most of them are actually looking for a personal organizer application to put some order in their busy and messy life. These personal organizers generally take the form of the so called To Do List applications where users create a list of tasks for which they set a start date, some deadlines and a priority – something very simple.
The Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology
Most of the to-do-list applications these days adopt, to one degree or another, the GTD approach to task management according to the work-life management system by David Allen that provides concrete solutions for transforming overwhelm and uncertainty into an integrated system of stress free productivity.
The problem, though, with To Do lists and personal organizers is that are only good for your work. Task management or task tracking software is more than just a to-do list. In a business many of the tasks are collaborative and require multiple team members to fulfill several tasks in a single project. In this case you need an application where assignments could be made, all tasks could be tracked, and completed work could be archived. This is a true task management tool.
Users sometimes need to manage multiple projects and delegate work to resources, schedule tasks in time or even create plans. This is a further step to an upper level: project management or project planning software.
A major problem with task management applications is that they require too much effort on users part. It is easy to spend too much time on organization, and not enough on getting things done. Too many apps spoil the productivity. Task management apps should flow, should make using them easier than writing things down on a piece of paper.
Benefits of a task management tool
- helps you to organize, assign and prioritize tasks
- allows you to establish goals and milestones and to manage deadlines
- no need to remember all tasks and more productivity using reminders
- entire work integration, effort delegation for increased efficiency and reduced costs
- the break down of complex tasks into smaller deliverables that can be controlled with minor difficulty
Task management software is an essential component for organizational and business operations and can make scheduling the project simpler. RationalPlan is such a project management software.