Poor User Behavior

Hi Lila, We have the end user do the clicking. In the beginning, we would have those that wouldn't mark their tasks complete. At first, I would go in and mark tasks done that I knew were done, but we have so many projects, it would take a good portion of the day to research all of them. Thankfully, we have a very supportive manager, and he said not do to that. We sent out an email to all users telling them they are responsible for marking their work done and are responsible for following up with the predecessors if they are waiting and haven't heard anything. He flat out said unless it's a critical project (which are rare for us), it will be the fault of the TEAM if a project is not completed on time. After a few projects missed their deadlines and upset managers from other areas followed up, they talked with their employees and told them to own their tasks and responsibilities. An unseen but welcome outcome was not only did it improve the users marking their tasks done, but the communication improved greatly within Workfront. Now, if someone is going to be late, they add notes into the project explaining what the hold up is. Thus, the project manager can then help push along the hold up or readjust the project. It wasn't an overnight fix, but with management on board and believing in not micro-managing, it helped greatly. It also gave the teams a boost (after the griping was done), because they now felt they partially own the projects and hold each other accountable. Michelle Jackson Colony Brands, Inc.

Hi Lila, I'm having the same problems on my organization. To make the project flow the best possible, I end up marking the task that I assume are done as 100%. I have to admit is not the best practice because sometimes are not done it's just late. I will like to know a better way to handle this situations and encourage the team to complete their task. Sarah Maldonado Furman University Marketing Ops

Hi Michelle, Thank you for sharing your encouraging experience, and how it improved communication within Workfront. Today during "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=151&MessageKey=37e66e72-8d59-4c86-8604-e25c93678154&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer" WFPro Live 3 , my colleague @Narayan Raum and I also happen to be touching on that concept too, so if you're interested, I invite you to join us, and/or watch the recording afterwards. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore

We have a mixture of some people being very good at marking tasks as complete, and others who will not do this at all. You just hit on the key to all project management, holding people/users responsible. Until this is done and management is on board 100% or repercussions happen, such as, critical projects falling behind, it will continue. I work closely with one team very diligent to stay on top of this, it makes the workflow so much better and communications as well. The other side of this is that I have also had projects that I have had to mark tasks as completed to keep them moving. I don't like this aspect of project management. Management support is crucial. Robin Brown Wake Forest University

Hi Lila, I agree that you need alignment from top down to really crack down on this. We have departments that are good at this and some that aren't. It also helps to figure out the why. Why is it so hard for them to remember to do this? One of our repeat offender groups only has about 15% of their actual work housed in WF, so they are more reactive versus proactive about their tasks. We have created custom reports and dashboards to help them see what they need to ensure they complete tasks on time. It is also shared with the whole team, so everyone can see who has over due tasks. Our dashboards include over due tasks, certain critical tasks overdue and due within the next week, and tasks due that day. This has helped give visibility into the issues we were experiencing when one person had over 45 overdue tasks. There was also some who adopted a bit of a challenge to see who could have the lowest overdue tasks. I will also agree, that if you can get approval from management to allow projects to "fall behind" because of tasks not being checked off you will see a big improvement. They need to own their work and tasks. Hope this helps a bit, Kristina Kristina Walton Healthgrades

Hi Lila, My team has a stand up meeting each week where we go over our task and project report. The report shows tasks not marked as "In Progress" and behind schedule. It took me a few weeks of highlighting how that affects the downstream teams schedule to get everyone to start updating their tasks. Yes sometimes it results in a flurry of activity right before or during the meeting with tasks being updated but it at least gets all projects updated once a week. BTW: Our biggest issue is that "Work On It" does not actually change the task status at all. They must also manually change the status in the update panel. Aileen Aileen Taylor Cell Signaling Technology

We have support from our WW Controller. We just implemented Data Governance, which requires the PM managing the project, to keep the tasks current. The teams know that at the end of each month, we will be presenting a report directly to the Controller of all past due tasks. The teams are currently in the process of performing the data scrubbing. As someone else mentioned, it may take Leadership support. Serenna Brookman Amazon (30438)