Product May 22, 2019 A New, Agile Way to Work: Hubstaff Tasks Project Management Dave Nevogt — 6 min read Here at Hubstaff, we get pretty excited about tools that help us work better — especially if they can be adapted to any team. Hubstaff Tasks is one of those tools. It’s Agile project management software that allows teams to easily work together and accomplish their goals more efficiently. It was built for the same reason we started Hubstaff: to help growing businesses run better. After refining, testing, and using it ourselves on a daily basis for the last few years, we’re proud to announce it’s ready. Cue the confetti cannon! Try Hubstaff free for 14 daysGet startedGet a quick tour of Hubstaff Tasks What is Hubstaff Tasks? In four words: a pretty big deal. And we’re not just saying that because of the tens of thousands of hours we’ve spent fine-tuning it. It’s a big deal because teams can finally focus on their most important work, by using project management software that basically runs itself. Here’s what we mean. It’s built with the best parts of Agile in mind, including sprints, automated workflows, visual boards and more. The app is intentionally simple and streamlined for more clarity in managing projects. Agile project management with kanban boards Hubstaff Tasks uses visual, kanban-style boards to provide a central location for all of your projects and tasks. Each project is broken down into tasks, and each task has a description, checklist, team members, comments, and attachments. All your job details, living happily together. That way, anyone can pick up the task when it’s on their plate, and know exactly what’s going on. Skip the daily status calls, time-consuming spreadsheet updates, and lengthy email threads. Use the sprints feature to plan work and focus your team’s efforts. Drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to build sprints, review what’s on your plate, and assess workloads. Hubstaff Tasks is pure productivity, harnessed and used to run your new favorite project management tool. How much do we love Hubstaff Tasks? Let us count the ways. Workflows that work for you Hubstaff Tasks is both robust and flexible. You set the initial workflow in a way that makes sense for your team, and the software takes it from there. You can start from scratch, or use one of our 30+ templates. Each column within project boards represent a step of your process, so it’s easy to see where a certain task is and who is responsible. You’ll never be unsure of a project’s status or who is currently working on it, thanks to our agile workflows. Business templates Choose from one of the following or build your own. Standard To do list List-building process Project and time management Project management Getting things done Sprint Pomodoro technique MoSCoW method Content Blog management Content amplification Social media content Email broadcast SEO audit Podcast management Human Resources Hiring Performance review New hire onboarding Developers and technical Development Programming Technical support QA A/B testing Bug tracking Product teams Product development Feature roadmap Agencies Google or Facebook advertising Link-building process Website design Video marketing Customer-facing teams Sales Customer support Demo/walkthrough IT support Event planning Make progress in one click Once your workflow is set, you can move a task to the next step, automatically assign it to the next person and send them a notification in one click. One. One! This really is the beauty of Hubstaff Tasks. Once the parameters are in place, it manages itself. Goodbye, hot potato projects “Who’s doing what?” That’s not a thought any manager wants to have. When a team isn’t clear on responsibilities and doesn’t know what needs their attention, it isn’t just chaos; it’s time and money out the window. Hubstaff Tasks was created with the goal of making handing off a task as easy as possible. The sprints feature and detailed tasks make it simple to know what needs to be done and what it’ll take to finish a task. No more miscommunication, no more dropping the ball. Everything is crystal clear and kept with the task so that anyone can jump in and contribute when needed. You can even assign multiple team members when more than one person is working on a task. Where’s that project? Open folder. Open spreadsheet. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Send an email, wait for a response. Search your inbox. There’s a much better way to find out the status of a project that doesn’t involve a slow, building frustration. One way to think about Hubstaff Tasks is as a visualization of work. At any time, you can see what’s in planning, in progress, and complete, and who is assigned to each task. Dig in, and you’ll see even more details and comments that clear up the status of a project in a second. Going over budget = no longer an issue Of all the things a business owner can lose sleep over, the fear of going over budget (and thus, working for free) shouldn’t be one of them. At least not when Hubstaff Tasks can prevent it. Because Hubstaff Tasks was built for Hubstaff time tracking, using both together provides a comprehensive tool for managing your business. Get a clearer view of each project’s status and profitability. See where a project is at in Hubstaff Tasks, and then use Hubstaff to see how many hours have been tracked to that project, and how much budget remains. Real-time updates show you which projects are on time and on budget so you can keep them that way. Subscribe to the Hubstaff blog with more tips An overview of Hubstaff Tasks features Sprints Create custom agile sprints for your entire organization and get a quick view into what the focus is for that week, two weeks, etc. The sprint view shows you all the details about the task including the project, status, labels, assignees, estimate, and due date. You can also quickly filter the list by any of this data to see more refined results (for example, you could decide to only show Adam’s marketing tasks). Checklists! A planner’s dream Ah, the satisfaction of crossing things off a list. We love it, too. That’s why we built Hubstaff Tasks with checklist items. Add them (and cross them off!) to each task as you go. Comments worth reading Managing projects from your inbox: not great. Having all discussion, updates, and details about a project in one place? Much better. Hubstaff Tasks allows for comments and conversation, so any new information is sent to the whole team and can be referred back to later. Estimates Add a time estimate to each task so your team can better understand the amount of work required. Is it a quick job that should only take a couple of hours? Or is it a clear your schedule, all hands on deck situation? Adding an estimate can help you allocate needed resources and make sure small projects don’t go over budget in a heartbeat. Daily/person view Click on any team member to see what they’re currently working on and what’s coming down the line. Team members can use this as their daily to-do list, and leaders can manage workloads and utilization. Automated status updates Get a daily automated email with an update of your team’s progress for the day. Open your daily standup and feast your eyes on a summary of which tasks were completed, as well as progress made on others. You will also be able to automatically send reminders to your team to complete their status updates for the day, week, or sprint. Customize the timing and questions you want the team to answer, and review them when you’re ready, with the list of active tasks in each team member’s sprint. In short, those are the highlights. But, there’s even more to explore. Get the full benefits by taking Hubstaff Tasks for a test run with a free 14-day trial. Time tracking + project management: A match made in productivity heaven Hubstaff Tasks was born out of a desire to help businesses work seamlessly. If you’ve used Hubstaff before, you know how helpful time tracking can be in illuminating inefficiency, relieving the hassle of cumbersome processes, and generating reports that you can use to make business decisions. For us, creating Hubstaff Tasks was the next logical step. The more you can connect tools and gather data on how your business operates, the better it can perform as a whole. And while there are tools built to integrate with others, Hubstaff Tasks was built specifically for Hubstaff so nothing works better together. Feedback Have you tried Hubstaff Tasks? What do you think? Let us know in the comments. If you haven’t had a chance to try it out, sign up for your free trial or check out our guide to getting started. Category: Product, Project Management Most popular Workforce Management Crafting a Comprehensive Workforce Planning Strategy: A Guide During John F. Kennedy’s 1962 tour of the NASA facility, he met a janitor who, when asked what he did for NASA, replied, “I’... Management What Is Quiet Quitting? Uncovering a New Trend in the Labor Market Once again, a subtle phenomenon has emerged in the workforce. This trend, called “Quiet Quitting,” is stealthily resha... 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