Google Docs is great for getting everyone literally on the same page. But sometimes it can be difficult to turn that feedback and group brainstorming into actionable tasks for people to go away and do.
Thankfully, Google has implemented ‘action items’ to help with this as part of the built-in commenting functionality. Here’s how to get started.
1. In your Google Doc, select the text you want to comment on:
Imagine this situation: you’re leading a project kick-off meeting. From the looks on people’s faces, you know that they have questions, concerns, and reservations about the project, but so far they’re not voicing them. Their reasons don’t matter, but you need to cut through the ice. It’s time for a pre-mortem.
A pre-mortem is a way to create a ‘safe space’ to express sentiments that could be construed as negative. It’s a simple enough concept: you imagine it’s 18 months in the future and the project has been a failure. The job of the pre-mortem is to identify in advance why that might happen.
Trello recently added a new ‘Power-Up’ giving users the ability to add ‘custom fields’ to cards. This means you can add at-a-glance detail and context to your whole board.
Let’s say you’ve got a whole raft of things to get done in the day. How can you see which is most important, without going into each card? Trello now solves your problem by enabling you to surface custom fields such as importance:
Handling teams with interconnected tasks can be a hassle. This can’t happen until that is done, and that can’t be started until someone finishes with some-other-thing. If you’re managing a project or are merely one of the team members, you need to know who is working on what and when to move things along. For example, if you’re re-launching a coffee subscription-box website, design won’t start until the team decides the best strategy to increase subscriptions and you plan the content to display.
The more tasks in your project, the more confusing this can be, and the more likely someone will drop the ball. Then everybody’s on four legs searching for the ball instead of getting work done.
Fortunately, Asana’s task dependencies features — available only in Asana Premium — can help you control a team’s workflow and track the critical path. If you know how the project pieces rely on each other, you can create the entire workflow ahead of time, and then watch as tasks fall like dominoes.
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