Subscriber Question: Balancing Business-As-Usual and Project Tasks: Strategies for Success

Subscriber Question: My team struggle to manage business as usual and project tasks. We are starting to slip in both areas. Advice?

Balancing the demands of business-as-usual (BAU) and project tasks can be challenging, but it's essential for the overall success of your team. Here are some strategies to help your team manage both areas effectively:

1. Prioritise and Set Clear Goals: Start by prioritising tasks in both the BAU and project domains. Identify what tasks are critical to maintaining daily operations and what tasks are essential for project success. Ensure that everyone on the team understands the priorities and goals. Often project teams are rushing from one task to another (putting out fires) because they haven’t taken the time to identify the most important tasks.

2. Time Management and Planning: Encourage your team members to allocate their time efficiently. Implement effective time management techniques, such as the Pomodoro Technique or time blocking, to ensure they have dedicated periods for project work and BAU tasks. If for example the project manager has set aside two hours to update the budget, do not let that time be intruded upon. Emails, phone calls and IM’s all take the project team off track. It can take up to 30 minutes to get back on task after a distraction. Use productivity tools such as Notion to improve workflows.

3. Delegate Responsibilities: Delegation is key to managing both areas successfully. Assign roles and responsibilities clearly, and empower team members to take ownership of specific tasks. This not only reduces the burden on individuals but also fosters a sense of accountability and creates motivation. Delegation can be difficult in the short term, and training your team takes time. However, after the initial investment, the returns are huge. If you are not fully aware of the skills possessed by your team, consider doing a skills-audit. You may be surprised to learn that the team are more experienced than you are aware.

4. Develop a Schedule: Create a schedule or a shared calendar that outlines when team members should focus on project tasks and when they should address BAU responsibilities. Ensure that everyone has a clear view of their daily, weekly, and monthly commitments. Again, the time blocking technique works well here.

5. Use Project Management Tools: Leverage project management tools and software, such as Trello, Asana, or Microsoft Project, to streamline project tasks. You can also use multi-purpose tools like Notion to create a “second-brain” which are able to serve as openly accessible dashboards. These tools can help you track progress, set deadlines, and allocate resources efficiently. A team member should be responsible for keeping project tracking up to date.

6. Cross-Train Team Members: Consider cross-training team members to ensure that everyone has a basic understanding of BAU and project tasks. This enables flexibility and allows team members to step in when needed. This is related, but slightly different, to full delegation. Here our objective is to have team members aware of other aspects and tasks without being directly responsible. The benefit of this is they are able to step-in and assist when other team members are unavailable.

7. Set Realistic Expectations: Sometimes, the struggle arises from unrealistic expectations. This is incredibly important and often painful to implement. Ensure that stakeholders and clients understand the limitations of your team's capacity and are aware of the trade-offs involved in balancing BAU and project work. There may be push-back at first, but everyone will be happier in the long term.

8. Regularly Review and Adjust: Hold regular team meetings to review progress, address challenges, and make necessary adjustments. This helps in identifying bottlenecks and finding solutions in real-time. Be careful not to let team meetings be another source of time pressure. Consider standing meetings or set strict time caps on certain items. Also reduce the administration impact of meetings. Forget extensive minutes and presentation requirements. Those can be part of more formal meeting structures. A weekly stand-up meeting can be very effective.

9. Implement Agile Methodologies: Consider adopting Agile project management methodologies, like Scrum or Kanban. These methodologies promote flexibility, adaptability, and continuous improvement, which can be highly effective when dealing with changing priorities.

10. Resource Allocation: Monitor resource allocation closely. Ensure that team members have the necessary resources and support to fulfil both BAU and project responsibilities. If possible, consider reallocating resources based on the workload. This includes technological resources.

11. Manage Stakeholder Expectations: Maintain open communication with stakeholders. If project tasks need to be adjusted due to BAU demands or vice versa, make sure stakeholders are informed and understand the reasons behind the changes.

12. Employee Well-Being: Recognise that overburdening team members can lead to burnout and reduced productivity. Encourage work-life balance and provide support for your team's well-being. Recognition and reward will create far more effective work flows than punitive measures.

13. Continuous Improvement: Encourage a culture of continuous improvement. Regularly seek feedback from team members on how to streamline processes, reduce repetitive tasks, and optimize workloads. Also consider training if there is budget. This investment will improve confidence and productivity.

14. Seek Automation Opportunities: Investigate opportunities to automate repetitive BAU tasks or parts of project processes. Automation can free up valuable time for more strategic and creative work. Consider the automation of tasks like email reply, repetitive reporting documents, financial calculations or the production of meeting minutes (using voice transcription). Artificial intelligence is an emerging technology which will increasingly provide benefits to project managers. AI will not replace human project members but it can improve the output of project managers who are willing to learn the intricacies. However not all task automation needs to be via AI. Simple apps using low-code or no-code tools can be used. Citizen development is a low investment solution to improving repetitive tasks.

15. Batch process notifications:

Do not always have email and IM channels open. Check email or IM messages 2-3 times per day, at set intervals. There is often a sense in business settings that email and IM must be replied to immediately. However this isn’t necessary. There is a false sense of urgency in many tasks. Your most productive work will be done when distractions are eliminated.

16. Seek External Support: If your team is consistently struggling to balance BAU and project tasks, consider hiring temporary support or outsourcing non-core tasks to external professionals to lighten the load. Freelancers are a cost-effective way to hire additional support in the short term.

17. Filter Information:

Not all work needs to be handled by the project manager, or even reach them. Project managers are often slowed down by information flows that need not even have reached them initially. Let stakeholders know that certain information should be communicated to other team members before the team leader.

Remember that achieving the balance between BAU and project tasks is an ongoing process. It requires regular assessment and adjustments to adapt to changing circumstances and priorities. By implementing these strategies and fostering a collaborative and adaptable team culture, you can effectively manage both areas and prevent tasks from slipping.