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Task Tracking

Our world is often wild and crazy, and we rely on the constant update and communication from our teams — especially when working remote.

Our Production Team coordinates all Labor Resource Planning (LRP) directly with the Team Leaders, Members, and Founders to ensure a smooth business transition, and transparency from start to finish of projects.

All client-facing quotes and invoices are developed using Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) per project therefore it is essential that estimates, per role, is ranked, values, and maintained.

Daily Task Management

It is mandatory for all staff to maintain the status of ClickUp tasks up to date, on a daily basis.

ClickUp has an incredibly helpful “University” that can download the main points of the system in record time: https://university.clickup.com. If you’re fancy, you can even graduate the ‘University’ after completing a few courses, contingent upon your role/usecase 🎓.

During your onboarding, your Project Lead or Manager will review ClickUp with you (including the mobile app), to give you a brief overview, but feel free to dig in and explore the system yourself.

Biggest Takeaway

It is mandatory that all tasks are tracked, assigned, noted, and relayed via ClickUp as a consistent spot for company-wide communication.

Daily Task Granularity

Work load should be entered and scheduled at a task level. Generally speaking, if a task requires more than one work-day, it is not granular enough.

Break your tasks into bite-sized pieces (i.e. “Working on a project”, “Programming UI”, are not granular enough). Get into it – ClickUp enables you to delegate tasks to your team, set reminders, assign ‘T-Shirt Size’ (Sprint Story Points), and is essential to the Production Team measuring bandwith per role.

Each project’s assigned Production Coordinator will handle generating new Projects (including set-up on ClickUp), as well as general tasks/milestones in ClickUp, however, it falls on each individual Team Member to be responsible for their tasks, and completion daily.

Company Sprint Planning

Typically every Monday, the Production Team will send out a calendar invite for a company-wide Sprint Planning meeting. During this meeting the following items are reviewed:

  • Forecast for the week
  • Upcoming Project Deadlines, Milestones, and Major Events
  • Anyone out of office, remote, or traveling
  • Grainular Task Planning
  • Questions & Answers

All X Studios Staff are required to call-in, or attend this meeting, every week. It is essential that our team functions together, and is up to date on the ‘project world’ as one united team.

Daily Stand-Up

Everyday we have a quick 15 minute “stand-up” meeting team-wide. This is your opportunity to chime in with any blockers, resource needs, and items to make the team aware of.

Project Stand-Ups

For larger projects/scope, the Production Team will set-up project specific stand-ups with the team to regroup on progress, milestones, and upcoming deadlines. Sometimes Clients will be part of this meeting, but you will always be alerted when that is the case.

Pro Tip

Want to know if a meeting is internal vs. with a Client? Check the name of the meeting, if it has an [I] or [Internal] tag in name, you’re safe and it is internal just with our team.

Pre-Production Project Meetings

At the start of a project (no matter the size) the Production Team will schedule a “Pre-Production Meeting” where the assigned Project Team have a meeting of the minds, review Project Milestones, and dive into granular task/estimate tracking.

Here, we’ll align internally to ensure we’re delivering the best end result, including staff planning, production, fabrication, resources, and get aligned as a team.

Scheduling Alert

No matter working remote, or in-person, the project team is required to be a part of the Pre-Production meetings.

Sprints

X Studios works as an Agile/Waterfall operation of Sprints that (traditionally) last one (1) week lengths. ClickUp has a seperate folder for Sprints, and all uncompleted tasks within a Sprint are reported, and rolled over to the following Sprint automatically.

T-Shirt Sizes (Sprint Points)

To ensure your workload is managable, all tasks assigned to a Sprint are required to have a point value/’T-Shirt size’ added to them. This allows the Production Team to ensure you are not going over 40+ hours in a single week, and allows for easy deliniation of tasks across multiple departments/Teams.

Pro Tip

The more realistic you are in your estimates, the better managed your “traffic” will be for projects. If you have any questions, or need assistance with time tracking speak to the Production Team.

T-Shirt/Sprint Points are broken into the following levels:

  • Extra Small (XS): 1 point — A quick, and easy task.
  • Small (S): 2 points — A bit more complicated, requires a bit more work.
  • Medium (M): 3 points — A task that may take digging in, or reviewing code.
  • Large (L): 5 points — A beefy task that requires quite a bit of work.
  • Extra Large (XL): 8 points — A key component, or in-depth deliverable.

Each Engineer/Project Team Member is responsible for delineating points with the Production Coordinator (traditionally during Sprint Planning/Pre-Production Meetings) on T-Shirt/Sprint Point size. This may be adjusted based on Level of Effort (LoE) however, when in doubt, vote up and communicate.

Changing Task Statuses

While working through a project, all Workspaces inside ClickUp are organized neatly by Company, then Projects within the folder structure.

Click/tap on a folder (Company) to see what lists (Projects) are inside. You may also click on the folder itself to see all projects within for a 10,000 foot view. Same goes for all Projects.

The Production Team has organized each workspace with the following outlines of statuses:

  • Not Started – This task has not be assigned, or reviewed during Sprint Planning. Think of this as the “back burner” to be assigned.
  • Pending – This task has been reviewed, and is about to be worked on. Typically this task is assigned to a Sprint, and exact Team Member for better visibility.
  • In Progress – Currently being worked on.
  • In Review – Once work has been completed, ALL TASKS from Developers should be switched to In Review, which will notify the project responsible individual (RI). Here it can be Rejected, In Progress, or marked as Completed.
  • Blocked – If a task is waiting on another task or is awaiting feedback from a Client/Team mark it as Blocked. This should be temporary, and should not be permanent.
  • Completed – Task has been approved, and closed out.
  • Closed – Currently not used; but a deleted task, marked as Closed/abandoned.

Keep the Flow

Reminder: All tasks MUST be approved by the Project RI and cannot skip the In Review process. All updates are tracked in ClickUp for security and compliance.

Task Responsibility

It is your duty to inform the Production Coordinator, or Producer when you are out of tasks and open for new work. If you are then not assigned any new tasks, please let Production know that you are open for new work.

Adversely, if you are overloaded, and need assistance – speak up. We work as a team, and often wear different hats to get the job done. ClickUp does a great job alerting the Production Team when you are close to hitting your max hours of work per week. See above for Time Estimates to ensure you are on track, and keeping things solid.

Note

The scheduling process should occur with the consultation of Project Management. However, you are ultimately responsible for your own tasks.