Assigning work is as much about psychology as it is about executing the project. Most individuals prefer to have a clear understanding of the work that needs to be performed. Resources require focused attention to the task in order to deliver the highest quality work. Studies have shown that if an individual is juggling more than three tasks simultaneously, the efficiency of his/her work is significantly hampered.

In addition, without clear prioritization of tasks, it is human nature for people to work on tasks that they feel most comfortable with and not necessarily the ones that are most important to complete. As the project manager, understanding basic human tendencies is critical in effective execution of a plan.

Again, since projects are unique events and it is inevitable that schedule changes will occur and the assignment of work will be modified. Therefore smaller, more regular assignments to individuals will minimize confusion and produce better results. It is the role of the project manager to make sure that team members understand project and task priorities. Many teams use status meetings to review these priorities others use software solutions in tandem.

How Much Detail

Projects will always include team members with a variety of expertise and knowledge. In fact the Project Management Institute (PMI) found that 52% of all project teams are a mix of professional project managers and non-project managers. When assigning work to the resource pool, the project manager must also determine how much instruction needs to be provided.

If working within an organization where projects follow a standard process with well-defined templates and expectations of key deliverables, the need to provide detailed instructions on how the team member should perform their tasks is minimized. When working in a less structured environment, the project manager will have to use a different kind of judgment on how much instruction to provide. The level of detailed instruction in this environment will be based upon the resource expertise and knowledge. 

Successor task owners are the best source of instruction for a preceding task. Ask the recipient of the task what they need in order to perform the successor task.

If you need to provide detailed descriptions as to the deliverable, then add the description to the description field in your schedule. Many software solutions allow you to set up project templates with these detailed descriptions which will carry over into subsequent projects. This helps to minimize the duplication of effort of explaining tasks to new team members. Alternatively, a project manager may opt to attach a file with lengthy description or scope to a particular task.

Summary

Once you have detailed descriptions of what each task requires, and the resource type or skill set needed, you can then start to make resource assignments based on this knowledge. Many project teams use white boards, Excel sheets, or other manual processes to identify who is booked on what projects at a high level. However, more project teams are starting to deploy collaborative project and resource management solutions that provide a centralized place for all resource information. Depending on your project load, these solutions can assist you with making final assignments and task start dates which are based on real-time resource information.

Cynthia West is vice president of Project Insight, a leading provider of Web-based project management software solutions to the mid-market.