Design a task assignment form for an app.

Clarify:

What is this app about? – App for managing outcomes and conclusions from sprint planning meetings

Is task assignment in an office or non-office setup? – Office setup

Is this a desktop app or a mobile app? – Desktop & Mobile

Any specific country this app is for? – This app is used by teams across the globe

Target users:

Program managers (alike) – who summarize outcomes and assign tasks to devs, product owners

Devs/ Product mgrs (alike) – who are assigned a task and have to take action, respond

Managers – who need an overview of pending actions, status, person assigned to

Scope: 

Program managers

             Desktop app

User journey:

Summarize outcome - > List action points - > Identify owners for action points - >  Put down ETA - > Follow up for task completion - > Update action point status

Pain points

• Misses key action points/ tasks 
• Ends up identifying the wrong owner for a task
• Don’t get a reply from action owners. Needs a lot of follow up 
• Don’t understand the grey areas/ status of a task that are currently in flight.
• Miss focus on key blockers 

 Evaluation criteria: Impact on timelines (IT), Impact on productivity/ cost (PC), Likelihood of happening (LH)

Misses key action points/ tasks – IT High, PC Medium, LH Medium – P2

Ends up identifying the wrong owner for a task – IT High, PC Medium, LH Medium – P3

Don’t get a reply from action owners. Needs a lot of follow up – IT High, PC Medium, LH High – P1

Don’t understand the grey areas/ status of a task in mid way – miss focusing on the correct problems – IT Medium, PC low, LH Medium – P5

Miss focus on key blockers – IT High, PC Low, LH Medium  - P4

Solutions:

Evaluation criteria: 

Impact on timelines (IT), Impact on productivity/ cost (PC), Effort required to build

1. Quickly type and validate task list with participants – via recommended text, click and select options, one click participant selection – IT medium, PC Low, EF Low
2. Set up frequency of reminder notification to action owner for task completion – IT High, PC Medium, EF Low
3. Mark tasks as critical blockers – IT High, PC Low, EF Low
4. Allow provision for escalation to manager if ETA is not met – IT High, PC Medium, EF Low
5. Review user record of timely task completion, recommend buffer in ETAs – IT High, PC Low, EF Medium

 Final solution of task assignment form:

·      Create/ assign tasks  to users

·      Set up frequency of reminder notification to action owner for task completion

·      Mark tasks as critical blockers – accordingly update notification subject, mark to manager for critical tasks

·      Review user record of timely task completion, recommend buffer in ETAs

KPIs:

North star: % tasks completed within ETA

Feature level KPIs:

#tasks assigned per month

# notifications setup

#tasks by criticality

#escalations to manager

#resolutions within ETA post escalations to manager

Change in task completion rates within ETA from users at different ratings

Clarification:

1. is the assignment a part of a product or is it just something we are using internally to assign tasks
2. This will just be the design for the form and no other components of the task assignment & tracking process
3. What is meant by errors? As for assignment error?
4. What team is this? Assume it’s for engineering 
5. Why are we designing this? Do we already have tasks management applications such as servicenow or Jira?

User:

1. manager/ execs of the team
2. Team members assigning to each other 

Current process:

Manager wants to assign a task to team member, wants to find them quickly in the org, create an epic, or create a story in an existing epic. Then they want to input the progress of the tasks, title, priority, and detailed instructions and standard for completion.

For company internal purposes, task assignment needs to have a record of the structural hierarchy of the team so ie. the manager can assign to team members only or members can assign tasks to each other 

Features:

Team member auto pop up

Epic search box

Story creation

Title textbox

Progress drop down

Priority dropdown

Description of task

Drawback:

Might have team members mixed with with someone with the same name