Series: Task Management Tips for TeamsPart 4
How to Set Assignees and Due Dates: No More “Let’s All Do It” or “ASAP”
About this series
“Task Management Tips for Teams” is an eight-part series, plus a bonus article, for teams that have just started using a task or project management tool. The tips apply to any industry, and you can read the articles in any order.
- How Should You Group Your Work?
- How to Write Tasks People Understand
- How Small Should Tasks Be?
- How to Set Assignees and Due DatesThis article
- How to Reply to Comments
- How Should You Report Progress?
- How to Write When Working with People Outside Your Company
- How to Close Out TasksComing soon
Bonus: “How to Write So Teammates Who Speak Other Languages Understand” (coming soon)
Even after you split up the work, nothing moves if “who” and “by when” stay vague. Work that a meeting settled with “OK, let’s all work on it together” is still untouched by the next meeting. It happens in every industry.
Note: this article is written by the developer of GeckoFlag.
The short answer: one assignee, and a due date with a reason
Pick one person who sees the task through to the end, and give the due date together with why it’s that date. With just these two in place, “I thought someone else was doing it” and “I didn’t know it was that urgent” almost disappear.
Why one assignee
When several people are assigned, each assumes someone else will do it. And when it’s late, nobody knows whom to ask.
Any number of people can help. But decide on one person who sees it through to the end. If the work is genuinely shared, split the task itself (how to split tasks is covered in Part 3, “How Small Should Tasks Be?”).
How to choose the assignee
- The requester decides, but checks with the person: if you add an assignee without a word, you create work nobody agreed to take on. A quick message is enough to confirm they can take it.
- If no one is decided yet, the requester holds it for now: a task with no assignee never catches anyone’s eye.
- Reassign before time off or a transfer: before going on leave, check the tasks assigned to you and decide who will take them over.
- Regularly check tasks with no assignee: once a week, look for tasks whose assignee is empty.
How to set due dates
1Write a date
“Sometime next week” or “end of the month” means different things to different people. Whether “next week” means Friday evening or Sunday night is known only to the person who wrote it. Write a date, such as “Friday, October 23,” and add a time if the time matters.
2Add the reason
If it says “because the files go to the printer on October 26,” the assignee can judge for themselves whether the date can move. Due dates with no reason are less likely to be kept.
3Don’t pad due dates in secret
If you quietly give a date earlier than the real deadline, people eventually see through it, and then no due date is trusted. If you want a buffer, say so honestly: “The deadline is the 26th. I’d like time to review it, so the 23rd would really help.”
4Set a start date too
A due date alone doesn’t tell you when to start to finish on time. With a start date, you notice sooner when work that should have started hasn’t.
5Say so as soon as you know you’ll miss it
A due date is something to discuss as soon as you know you can’t meet it. Speaking up the week before leaves more options than telling people on the day itself (how to say it is covered in Part 5, “How to Reply to Comments”).
Rewriting “ASAP”
| Common wording | Rewrite |
|---|---|
| ASAP | If I can have it by 3 p.m. tomorrow, it’ll be ready for the evening meeting |
| When you get a chance | Anytime this week is fine. I’ll set the due date to Friday, October 23 |
| Urgent | I need it today. If that’s hard, please let me know by noon |
| Whenever | There’s no due date, but please give me a status update once in November |
Some work really has no deadline. Even then, decide when you’ll check how it’s going, and it won’t be left forgotten.
A common stumbling block: everything is “Priority: High”
Priority is the order compared with other work. If everything is “High,” nobody knows where to start. When you raise a priority, also say what can wait.
An example of what can happen
At a meeting with a client, both sides agreed, “We’ll look for photos on our end too,” and then each waited for the other to get in touch. The day before the deadline, it turned out that neither had looked. Since then, the team checks “who does this, by when” at the end of every meeting and turns it into a task on the spot.
How to set this in GeckoFlag
- Each issue has one assignee. When none is set, it shows as “Unassigned,” so issues without an assignee stand out at a glance.
- You can set a start date and a due date. Fill in both, and you can check the period on the Gantt chart.
- Under “My Issues” on the dashboard, you can check the open issues assigned to you.
- Administrators can see the Gantt chart for every project and every member. It helps you check whether work is piling up on particular people.
- You can name priorities and choose their colors freely (up to 10).
You can try the actual screens in the demo.
Summary
Choose one assignee who sees the task through to the end, and confirm it with them. Write due dates as dates and add the reason. Next time, we’ll look at how to write the comments you exchange on a task.
SeriesAlso see Part 3, “How Small Should Tasks Be?”
SeriesNext: Part 5, “How to Reply to Comments”
RelatedWhether a small team needs a tool at all is covered in Part 4 of our beginner series “Your First Project Management Tool,” “Does a Small Team Really Need One?”