So as I stated in the blog before this one, this week in class we talked about project management and as part of the assignment we each had to set up a work flow page and make a bunch of actionable tasks in order to complete the large project that we chose to break up. I made a Trello dashboard to keep the tasks for my Grad blog in order, but on top of that dashboard I also have a Trello page for my senior capstone, a Wrike account for my branding job at Quinnipiac University, a slack account for my journalism capstone class, and a click-up account for my internship this past summer. Plus calendar reminders from google calendar and outlook calendar when it comes to Student Programming Board events and class assignments. So basically to say the least I have a lot of scheduled things and constant reminders inundating my phone at all hours.
This is why overall, I do not like project management apps, or at least I don’t like how many of them there are. After the week experiment I found that making small tasks to complete in order to complete a much larger did nothing at all to help me complete anything faster or in a more efficient way. I can understand using a project management application when it comes to a larger company because it lets other people see your progress, but breaking up my own personal assignments just for myself helped me with absolutely nothing. In an article written by Fast Company they describe that unfortunately there is no way to make one application do everything you want but there is a way to centralize all the applications. “A ‘container’ concept enables employees to access all of their work applications from one single place,” he says. “The container additionally supports roles based on restricting access to applications and the employee’s function. All enterprise apps including desktop web, native mobile, and hybrid apps should be made available to employees through this container” (Vozza).
During this project, we were also asked to watch videos that explain the importance of project management and my biggest issue with each video is that they had great insight into how to be an exemplary worker, but it didn’t make me think that project management was a necessity for the individual person. In the 5 steps to planning project management, I found that it’s easier to create a timeline and breakdown the job into tangible steps in a very visually and written out with different colors and then to post it up on the wall so you can constantly see it, but it doesn’t constantly pop up and induce stress and anxiety. I also understand that for many other people it might not be the best practice, but it works for me.
But that’s just the point, each project management app is a rigid design, because it is made to be simple for everyone to use, but that doesn’t mean it works fantastically for all types of humans.
Another portion of a different video was the 7 Work Habits You Need to Succeed, and two of the habits were don’t gossip and build in a buffer to allow time. First of all gossip, it’s funny because in the workplace, gossip skyrocketed after these project management applications were introduced because they have individual chat rooms and now all anyone does is talk poorly about other people in the office. And on the other hand, allowing buffer time, makes no sense if you’re wasting time making sure your updating all your checklists and assignment dashboards.
The final video we watched was about working smarter not harder, but this is my biggest problem. For most people since project management apps haven’t been in their lives the whole time they have been working it becomes more work to remember to update all the time. I am someone who thinks if a large hand written calendar or a To Do List works then you should be left to make it and because of that you should not be regarded as being less efficient.
So during all my frustration I wanted go back to the epicenter and see what project management really was. After looking on Wikipedia as to what the actual description is, it said “information usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, quality and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.” Now thanks to all the phone, computer and tablet apps this definition is nowhere near close to what it started as. People think making trivial little tasks and then marking them as done is helpful, and creating cute backgrounds with color coded labels is going to get a job done faster and better then, if everyone just made a big calendar and made sure everything gets done by the dates previously determined. It’s ridiculous.
So yes, I understand that I need to learn these new apps in order to work in any company because these are what most places use, but no it does not mean I have to love them and use them to organize my own life. I firmly believe that for the individual person getting constant updates about their unfinished business is just stressful and doesn’t actually push them to do anything and in turn wastes their time.
taylorsniffen.com 