Template Creep - What to do when your template works against you.

When I first started working in my current role, project and task management consisted of a giant spreadsheet filled with tasks and status notes for every activity for the next year. While it was nice that everything was being tracked, managing current workflow in a spreadsheet has definite limits, especially when the team using it doubles in size. Over the next 6 months I worked with the team to move over to a task management tool I had used in a previous position; Asana.

For around 18 months, all was right with the world. Team members were owning tasks, everything was getting tracked, and stuff was getting done. It was only a matter of time before growth and the speed of the work we were doing conspired to to change that. The team grew again, not as drastically as before, but more hands in the tool meant more room for error. Around this time we explored several different options to create a better task management experience for our team within Asana.

One template to rule them all

Marketing in our industry consists of many similar campaigns promoting similar products. A small list of essential services make up the main product mix. Some of the team worked to develop a universal template, a holding place for every piece of collateral, copy, and design. This template would be a master check-list to ensure that we continued getting stuff done.

It failed miserably.

Print collateral was developed for digital only campaigns, work got duplicated, things were forgotten. It many ways, the giant checklist was the same thing as a huge spreadsheet. A confusing and bewildering bucket to catch everything.

The team had always had a flat structure, and funneling all aspects of project creation through one or two team members was creating a bottle-neck. There was no opportunity to double check concepts, and often stakeholders missed the chance to comment, tweak, or review work. This meant that work got duplicated, discarded, or stopped altogether.

The only template you need

In order to contain the template bleeding we began rapidly prototyping new methods to create task lists and projects in Asana. Originally, the marketing manager was the task "owner", with the team working on subtasks. Under the new system, various team members took responsibility for pieces in their field specialty and took responsibility for ensuring that subtasks were assigned, dates were placed, and that the campaign stayed on track.

The scramble created a variety of new "templates" ranging from work flow tweaks, tasks, and projects layouts. The result was a modular system designed to work in the moment, not a catch-all master list.

Less work about work

While the transition process is still on-going, I've found renewed energy in owning the process instead of blindly trusting a master template. While creating each project from a set of modular blocks is more tedious than relying on a template, each team member has more ownership in ensuring that pieces are completed on time and correctly.

Question for discussion:

How has your team's task management approach changed over time?