July 2013 – Elementool Blog

How to Handle Stressful Situations

One beautiful summer day, I was minding my own business, enjoying a delicious lunch in Central Park,
when suddenly an urgent message came in on my super-phone – there were people in trouble! Using my ultra high speed texting skills, I quickly found out what was wrong.

At an office across town, a group of developers were under attack. Software bugs had overrun them and were mercilessly attacking their projects! The developers couldn’t handle the pressure and the bugs were getting worse and worse.
So I leapt into action!

I quickly arrived on the scene of the disaster and began kicking bugs! I took on one software bug at a time, smashed it, and moved on to the next. Soon the team was bug free and relieved to finally have everything under control.
The team of developers thanked me for helping them with their software bug infestation and asked how they could repay me. I told them that the best reward was for them to learn how to battle bugs on their own.

Then I explained to them that when you’re under pressure due to a crisis, with many things happening all at once, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lose control. But the secret is to just focus on one problem at a time. You have to ignore the rest while you deal with the problem at hand. Then, once it’s solved, you can move on to the next problem, and so on – until everything is finally resolved. And that’s my super effective advice for managing stressful situations.

We explain how to do that in more detail in our book “The Project Management Formula – The 5 Steps to Complete Your Project on Time”, written by Elementool’s Founder & CEO Mr. Yaron Sinai.

The book is a result of years of project management experience and in-depth research. It will explain the different steps of project management and show you the five simple steps for running successful project management process from start to finish.

Get the book for free right now by simply clicking on the button below and I will send it to you by mail.

The 2 Most Common Questions Managers Ask Their Team Members

Hi, it’s Allison here again.

Today I want to talk to you about the 2 most common questions project managers ask their team members and how these questions can be answered by Elementool.

The first question is:
• What are you working on?
Each project includes many tasks. And when you have a team of even a few people, you can have a few dozens issues assigned to them.
Project managers find it hard sometimes to know which tasks are currently under development, and in order for them to track the progress of the project, they need to frequently ask their team members what tasks they are currently work on.
You probably know how time consuming this can be, both for the project leader and the team.

The second question is:
• When will it be completed?
Project managers run a tight schedule. They want to be able to know if the project is progressing according to plan, and if not, they want to have enough time to make the necessary changes to the project.
Sometimes they receive phone calls or emails from clients who want to know when the feature they requested will be ready. So they need to know when tasks will be completed. Now that can be stressful.

I don’t need to tell you how going back and forth between the team leader and the team members can be frustrating. But luckily for you, Elementool offers a quick and easy solution for these two questions.

Our Priority List feature enables team leaders to see at any given moment which tasks each team member is working on, the progress status of these tasks, and the date in which they are estimated to be completed.

Here’s how it works:
• Open your Welcome page.
• On the Priority List chart select the name of a team member and click on display.
• The list of tasks will be displayed showing their status and completion date.

For a full view of the Priority List page, click on the ‘expand’ button.
This page shows you a list of all your team members and their latest active issues.
You can see the progress of each issue and their completion dates.
You can also change the priority of issues by changing their location on the list using Drag n’ Drop.

See, it’s so simple!

If you still don’t have an Issue Tracking account, I suggest that you open a free trial account by clicking on the Free Trial button below.

Application Facelift

In the next few weeks, we’re going to be making some design enhancements here at elementool.com. But don’t worry, these changes will not have any affect on the way that you utilize our site.

During the redesign process, the application functionality will remain completely the same throughout the website, so you can continue using it without interruption. Here’s a sneak peek at the changes we have in store for elementool.com.

How to Set Task Priority

Here’s an email I received from one of our clients:

Hi Allison,

I wonder if you can help me.
I watched all your clips about project management and understand the importance of prioritizing tasks.

At my company, we prioritize everything. We have 3 priority levels:
High – tasks that should be completed ASAP.
Medium – Tasks that should be completed but are not urgent.
Low – tasks that can wait until we completed the High and Medium tasks.

This works fine for us. But here’s when things become confusing.
Let’s say for example that I have 9 high priority tasks.
I remember that you said in the past that multitasking is a bad idea, and we should avoid it at any cost. So if I can only work on one task at a time, how do I know which task to pick out of the 9 high priority tasks?

Best regards,

Allan.

Allan,

That’s a very good question and I’m happy that you brought it up.
It is very common that when you prioritize tasks correctly, you might have several tasks with the same priority level and it’s hard to decide which one to work on first.

This is why we developed a new feature that will enable you to sort tasks with the same priority level by the order in which they should be completed.

We call this feature ‘Priority List’. It will be released in a few weeks.

The Priority List feature enables you to define the order in which tasks should be completed, by assigning a priority level value to each issue.

For example: Priority Value 1 means that the issue should be completed first.
Priority Value 2 means that the task should be completed second, after the issue with Priority Value 1 has been completed, and so on.

Each issue has a unique priority level value. This means that it is impossible to have two issues with the same priority level.
This solves your problem of not knowing which task to complete first.

The Priority Level value is defined by the team leader. This is a user that has permission to setup Priority Levels.
The team leader opens an issue and sets the Priority Level of this issue on the top right corner of the form.

When team members login to the account, they can see the list of issues assigned to them sorted by their priority levels on their Welcome page.
The issue with the highest priority will be displayed first.
This way, team members know exactly which issue they should work on.
An issue is removed from the Priority List when the team member who’s assigned to this issue marks it as completed.

If you don’t already have an Issue Tracking account, I suggest that you sign up right now to a free 30 days trial by clicking on the Sign Up Now button below.