Time management: designing projects efficiently
"Time is money"—a statement that most agencies would likely agree with immediately, as time is often scarce in their daily work routine. This stress factor, alongside high customer expectations, competitive pressure, and simultaneous shortage of skilled workers, often leads to excessive pressure on agencies.
The result of this constant pressure from all sides is often a project with a very tight schedule, aimed at meeting customer expectations as closely as possible and simultaneously maximising the agency's value. To make this strategy work, it is essential to have a thoughtful and realistic time management of employees to promote a high utilization rate and avoid costly idle times. At the same time, employees should not be overburdened. The right degree of utilization is critical! To achieve this, project activities need to be planned, deadlines set, and execution controlled.
Below you will find five important tips for efficient time and project management that will satisfy not only your clients but also your team.
The 5 Best Tips for Time and Project Management
1. Plan Realistically
Successful time and project management requires proper planning. Ideally, the planning should not be done in isolation but developed in a team and discussed together. The experts can provide a clear estimate of how long specific tasks will take and what the realistic deadlines should be. Part of planning also involves defining absences, vacations, and downtime early to avoid bottlenecks in the team and unnecessary stress. The project should ideally be divided into individual milestones, simplifying the team's ability to keep an overview and synchronize their time management with the plan.
2. Set Priorities
Clear priorities for tasks help the team to structure itself. For organizing tasks, a four-quadrant matrix can be created based on the parameters of importance and urgency:
- Priority A: Top priority tasks are those deemed both important and urgent; these should be addressed first.
- Priority B: Next, set a suitable date/deadline for tasks that are important but not urgent.
- Priority C: Subsequently, the less important, but urgent tasks should be completed. These often time-intensive tasks can often be delegated to appropriate team members.
- Priority D: Tasks that are neither urgent nor important should be removed from the to-do list.
3. Embrace the Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, helps employees focus on the most important aspects of a project. The rule states that 80% of the (project) goal can be achieved with 20% of the total (time) effort; the remaining 20% requires 80% of the effort. For project planning, this means that 20% of the time can complete 80% of the project. Therefore, a positive error culture should be promoted to allow employees not to spend 80% of their time on the last 20% of the goal, and to feel permitted to deliver "perfect" work.
4. Identify Time Wasters & Disruptors
Naturally, one cannot dictate how employees should work, but it is possible to show how an efficient, productive work environment can be created. Company-wide, regular blocks in calendars can be used for concentrated work and processing tasks. Fixed time-slots for checking and responding to emails help to avoid unnecessary distractions and interruptions. Agreeing on a single communication channel within the company—Mail, Slack, Teams etc.—ensures that one doesn’t get lost in a flood of messages and waste time searching through chat threads and attachments.
When discussing time wasters and disruptors, one must also mention smartphones. Alerts, ringing, vibrating, messages, emails, or pop-ups; any smartphone activity can disrupt concentration—even a switched-off phone within sight can distract. After such an interruption by a smartphone, it typically takes an average of 25 minutes to fully regain concentration for the task. Therefore, to give your projects and also your employees undivided attention, the right environment must be actively created.
5. Utilise Suitable Business Software
Specialised business software for agencies like MOCO helps holistically in optimising project business. A central, cross-functional software reduces data chaos and often saves money and nerves. MOCO provides agency software support in customer acquisition and enables simple time tracking, a clear resource and personnel planning, as well as digital invoice management.
With MOCO, projects can be managed more efficiently, and employees can be optimally deployed. High employment utilization helps companies again to avoid costly idle times of workforce and thus increase profitability. Thanks to the seamless integration of MOCO and Tidely, projects can be viewed from a liquidity perspective and integrated into the overall corporate finances. Tidely is the comprehensive solution for liquidity management for SMEs and startups, with which you can plan and professionally manage your liquidity planning.
Through integration, receipts and billing data from MOCO are automatically imported into Tidely, providing a real-time overview of the liquidity of each project.
Learn more about MOCO and Tidely!
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