Post written by

Forbes Technology Council

Good project management is essential for any team tackling large, multi-faceted initiatives. This is especially true in the tech industry, where individual tasks are often highly specialized, complex and time sensitive. Without a solid process in place, it’s easy to lose track of progress and issues that may arise.

To find out how leaders can keep their teams’ tasks organized and transparent, we asked a panel of Forbes Technology Council members for their top project management tips. Their best answers are below.

1. Create Squad-Based Teams 

What helps our teams manage tasks is breaking down team silos with squad-based development to reduce miscommunication among team members. Squads are small, flexible teams that are responsible for the end-to-end delivery of each product. Each member is involved in sprint planning so that every person is allocated specific tasks that cumulatively match the capacity of the squad. – Sanjay Malhotra, Clearbridge Mobile

2. Directly Align Tasks And Performance With Company Goals 

Make sure everyone is aligned with the organization’s critical objectives with specific, individual performance goals paired with measurable outcomes. Tie the individual contributors’ performance directly to the organization’s goals with frequent progress reviews. This will naturally motivate your team to keep its eye on the ball and to avoid tasks that do not contribute to overall success. – Kevin Vliet, Target Corporation

3. Use AI To Tackle Menial Tasks 

The champions of the IT department have been struggling through some less-than-ideal work environments. It’s long been the fate of IT pros to handle mundane tasks that “keep the lights on.” Yet with the dawn of AI ops, noise reduction and alert clustering can be automated, granting IT pros the time and opportunity to focus on initiatives that drive the business forward. – Chad Steelberg, Veritone

4. Follow Kanban Principles 

While this system originated in the dev world, we at HyperGrid extensively use Trello and Kanban principles for organizing across the company. This has proved very useful as a way to quickly inspect and see how backlog is growing, who is overloaded and help with the reprioritization of tasks. – Manoj Nair, HyperGrid

5. Make Sure Employees Are Working On The Right Tasks 

Unless employees are busy doing the right tasks, the business will suffer. Let intelligent data drive the framework, determining what each employee should focus on to achieve specific tasks. – Manish Sood, Reltio

6. Train Everyone On Time Management 

One-on-one time management training will help employees get the most out of their personal work times, which will help smoothen workflow among teams. Much emphasis, especially for tech employees, should be placed on blocking extended periods of time to focus on one sole task without distractions and breaking up longer projects into smaller, easily digestible parts. – Scott Stiner, UM Technologies