Collaborative Work Management: Agile for the Rest of Us

Normally, we’d all prefer to have options rather than being limited to either-or scenarios. But most teams are still stuck with binary choices, as they determine how to manage their work. For the most part, work is processed in one of two ways:

• Registered work follows a formal process, including how plans get authorized, how baselines are established, how approvals are given, and how progress is tracked and reported on.  
• Unregistered work doesn’t follow any prescribed process — people just focus on “getting stuff done.” Teams use spreadsheets, post-it notes, or manual task-management tools.

The problem? While registered work fits well with large-scale initiatives, it’s often overkill. An inordinate amount of administrative effort needs to be applied to registered work, even small-scale projects. Sometimes, the work associated with tracking and managing projects can be greater than the actual work itself. As a result, the vast majority of projects isn’t registered. Generally, only around 25% of work in any organization is registered. That means 75% of investments aren’t being centrally governed.

However, even for smaller projects, having some visibility can be important. Collaborators and managers may be interested in gaining an understanding of progress and how efforts are tracking toward completion. Simply winging it or building one-off spreadsheets for each project means no central tracking, disjointed efforts, and a number of other potential inefficiencies.

The good news is that there is an alternative to the either-or dilemma. It’s known as collaborative work management. It helps organizations with completing key activities that require a broader effort. Teams simply create, share and automate to-do lists as initiatives grow.

Collaborative work management is a simple, organic approach. To get started, a person simply creates a list of tasks that need to be completed as part of their work. As work progresses, the list can be expanded, revised, and refined. Further, the list can seamlessly be shared with others, whether they’re on the same team, in another department, or at another company.

With collaborative work management, teams get great visibility. They can track work that needs to be done, who’s contributing, completion status, and more. Business benefits include:

• Get greater certainty about business outcomes by spotting and mitigating issues early in the cycle.
• Save time and resources with a smarter way of working.
• Boost morale, engagement, satisfaction, and productivity among all stakeholders.

Within most enterprises today, getting great ideas off the ground is hard. Collaborative work management offers a way to address that issue. Teams manage efforts more collaboratively — without having to incur the overhead of a full-blown registered initiative.

To learn more about collaborative work management from Broadcom, check out Clarity.

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