Blog

5 Tips to Patch Up the Productivity Hole

One of the main goals of a project manager is to ensure that the project team works with increased productivity. This does not mean that the team works with remarkable efficiency. Instead, being productive means working on the right tasks that lead to  timely completion of a project.

But how can a project manager ensure that the team members work with increased efficiency? What are some tips that can help project team members to be more organized and efficient with their time? The tips mentioned in this post will help identify and patch up any productivity hole, resulting in increased efficiency.

1. Keep Meetings Short

Meetings are probably the most common reason for decreased productivity. The length and abundance of meetings can kill productivity of team members. As a product manager, you should aim to minimize team meetings. In case frequent meet ups are necessary, you should at least consider to make them short by imposing a time limit.

For increased productivity, you can consider using video conferencing apps to organize virtual meetings. The benefits of this can be manifold. This can save time of employees and also conserve energy as employees can attend meetings from the comfort of their own place.

2. Set Aside Email Time

A lot of time is spent sifting through emails. They also get a lot of flak resulting in reduced productivity. To patch up this productivity hole, you should consider setting aside a time for going through emails. The best time to tackle emails is either during the early hours of the morning or late at night. You should deal with all emails in one swoop instead of tackling them individually when they arrive in your inbox.

3. Eliminate Unimportant Tasks

You should use work management software to assign only the most important tasks. Avoid allocating tasks that are unimportant and not part of the key project requirements. In the agile approach, key deliverables are the first priority. Once that work is done, the team can work on other superfluous tasks that while not necessary can result in improved project outcome.

4. Avoid Micromanaging

Micromanaging projects results in wastage of time and possibly game-changing ideas from employees. Instead of micromanaging, you should give flexibility to employees to complete work within the specified timeframe. This will result in improved productivity and also help generate business-changing ideas from employees.

5. Use Cloud Collaboration and Storage Tools

Lastly, you should consider using online team management and storage services. Online services save costs and time when managing a diverse workforce consisting of both remote and non-remote workers. The online collaboration software makes it easy for you to manage team, supervise their work, and ensure timely completion of tasks.

The above productivity hacks can help improve efficiency and effectiveness of project team. They can work effectively in completing tasks within the allotted time. This will lead to improved product outcome and increased profitability.