Task management is the process of managing a task (or task portfolio) through its life cycle, including planning, testing, tracking and reporting. Task management can help either individuals achieve goals, or groups of individuals collaborate and share knowledge for the accomplishment of collective goals. Tasks also differentiate by complexity, from low to high..

Effective task management supposes managing all aspects of a task, including its status, priority, time, human and financial resources assignments, recurrency, notifications and so on. These can be lumped together broadly into the basic activities of task management.

Managing multiple individual or team tasks may require special task management software which is available on the Web. Specific software dimensions support common task management activities. These dimensions exist across software products and services and fit different task management initiatives in numerous ways. In fact, many people believe that task management should serve as a foundation for project management activities.

Task management may form part of project management

Project management

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...

 and process management

Process management

Process management is the ensemble of activities of planning and monitoring the performance of a process. The term usually refers to the management of business processes and manufacturing processes...

 and can serve as the foundation for efficient workflow

Workflow

A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...

in an organisation. Project managers adhering to task-oriented management are known for having a detailed and up-to-date project schedule, and are usually good at directing team members and moving the project forward.

Task Life Cycle

• Ready
• Assigned
• Terminated
• Expired
• Forwarded
• Finished
• Failed

Following state machine diagram describes different states of a task over its life cycle. This diagram is referenced from IBM.

Activities Supported by Tasks

As a discipline, task management embraces several key activities. Various conceptual breakdowns exist, and these, at a high-level, always include creative, functional, project, performance and service activities.

• Creative activities pertain to task creation. In context, these should allow for task planning, brainstorming, creation, elaboration, clarification, organization, reduction, targeting and preliminary prioritization.
• Functional activities pertain to personnel, sales, quality or other management areas, for the ultimate purpose of ensuring production of final goods and services for delivery to customers. In context these should allow for planning, reporting, tracking, prioritizing, configuring, delegating, and managing of tasks.
• Project activities pertain to planning and time and costs reporting. These can encompass multiple functional activities but are always greater and more purposeful than the sum of its parts. In context project activities should allow for project task breakdown, task allocation, inventory across projects, and concurrent access to task databases.
• Service activities pertain to client and internal company services provision, including customer relationship management and knowledge management. In context these should allow for file attachment and links to tasks, document management, access rights management, inventory of client & employee records, orders & calls management, and annotating tasks.
• Performance activities pertain to tracking performance and fulfillment of assigned tasks. In context these should allow for tracking by time, cost control, stakeholders and priority; charts, exportable reports, status updates, deadline adjustments, and activity logging.
• Report activities pertain to the presentation of information regarding the other five activities listed, including graphical display.

Task Management Software

Task management software tools abound in the marketplace. Some are free; others exist for enterprise-wide deployment purposes. Some boast enterprise-wide task creation, visualization and notifications capabilities - among others - scalable to small, medium and Fortune 100 size companies, from individual projects to ongoing corporate task management.

Project management and calendaring software also often provide task management software with advanced support for task management activities and corresponding software environment dimensions, reciprocating the myriad project and performance activities built into most good enterprise-level task management software products.

Software dimensions criss-crossing nearly all lines of task management products include task creation, task visualization, notifications, assign resources, compatibility, configurability, scalability, and reporting

• Task creation encompasses collaborative capabilities for turning ideas into actions (tasks). Includes activities involved before setting tasks, particularly patterns of collaboration involving planning
• Task visualization encompasses presentation of tasks, most often through time and list forms. Priority visualization encompasses classification (e.g., budget, time, stakeholder) and mechanism (e.g., color code or text). Calendaring covers scheduling (e.g., availability, meetings, appointments and other potential conflicts) and notifications.
• Notifications encompass configurable settings for informing past, present and pending deadlines.
• Assigning resources encompasses the ability to delegate tasks and tools to single or multiple people.
• Compatibility encompasses the ability of a task management environment to connect to other systems, software and environments. It includes setting a structure and restrictions on communication going from the task management environment to other software, systems and environments.
• Configurability encompasses ability to add, remove and manage functionality and usability in task management environments.
• Scalability encompasses ability to perform a task properly when a change in the quantity of users is done to meet the specific task requirements.
• Reporting encompasses presentation of information by displaying either in tabular or graphical display.