“Regular” Approach to Personal Task Assignment

This article takes about 10 minutes to read and could be useful for project managers, producers, or similar roles willing to improve the task management processes and the performance of the team.

Hi all! New month = new article, so here we go again. As always, I’m not trying to convince anybody that my experience is the only true way to do things. I'm just sharing my thoughts about the things that work for my company.

I am a big fan of “Regular Show”. In fact, it’s my favorite cartoon series. It’s not only hilarious and entertaining but also has some job-related situations. Look, they even have daily morning meetings.

The park manager - Benson - keeps yelling all the time but to his surprise, the team succeeds no matter what. How would I approach such a diverse team? How to make them feel comfortable with each other? Well, my team is a diverse one too and I think I’m doing good. I hope these wonderful characters created by J. G. Quintel will help to illustrate my point of view in the best way possible. Let’s have some fun! :)

To become the World’s Best Boss, I have to develop my team and the task management process. To do so, I look at the team as I look at an IT product development process where “Developer” is me, “Product” is my team, and "Tasks" are... well, tasks. In fact, there are a lot of similarities between Team Development and Project Development processes.

My own team trifecta consists of:

- right software (assign tasks to relevant people);

- constant updates (teach & learn);

- transparent pipeline (clear hierarchy and responsibilities).

I have to admit that it’s just the tip of the iceberg but let’s focus on these three aspects for now. Let’s look at them step by step.

Right Software

When you are developing your app or game, you probably will start with an idea, a concept. But once you have a clear goal, you need to choose the set of tools that’s the best for reaching that goal. You have to install the chosen software to your work station and this set up is similar to the groups you need to form in order to create balanced and effective teams.

You won’t draw your UI using MS Word art functions, I presume you will use graphics editor instead. Moreover, you can use different graphic editors for different purposes, e.g. MS Paint for quick sketches and Adobe Photoshop for the real job.

Furthermore, the same results may be achieved with different approaches – and you have to bear that in mind also. For example, my best friend is a UI artist. He used to work in Photoshop for years but then he got his hands on Blender – and now he creates assets in Blender and then just polish them with Photoshop. The outcome is pretty the same but it’s faster than to draw things from scratch – and time is the most valuable resource we have. So different software has different “powers” and you have to keep them in mind when you try to solve a task. You can even use SWOT-analysis to figure out Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of the assembled team as you do with your product.

The same with people – you have to identify who is good at certain tasks and form a balanced team out of that. That’s the obvious thing but I keep repeating “balanced” just to warn you that team of juniors and team of seniors together will give worse performance than two mixed balanced teams.

Okay, you got your setup, next you need to assign tasks with the personal approach. Yes, there is no “I” in the “Team” but there are three in “Individual”. Every person, every “software”, has skills, qualities, and unique vision which you have to take in count when you assign tasks. If you have two equally skilled people and one of them is in love with cyberpunk style and the other one loves anime, you probably would like to give a new cyberpunk art task to the first artist.

Besides personal qualities, you have to segment your team by some other criteria to choose which tasks should be delegated to whom. I like to classify my team with two attributes: skills and motivation. Because it reflects both emotional and rational aspects of daily routine, and I believe that the most effective workers are both skilled and engaged in their tasks.

In this example let’s call these 4 types after Regular Show characters (clockwise): Skips, Benson, Mordecai & Rigby, Pops.

Skips – this type of worker is extremely reliable. Being a perfect example of great skills and high motivation, he performs his tasks in time and with a top-quality. You can provide him with a high level of autonomy and spend minimum time on task management. But this type is not a multi-tool, you have to complete him with gurus of other specialties.

Benson – this type is also quite reliable. Benson is a tired, often burnt-out but still very skilled specialist. His work has high quality because of the great experience and high self-respect (he just can’t afford himself to do the job with “Ah, whatever” attitude) but the pace can be upsetting because he is not as enthusiastic as you would like him to be. So to get a satisfying result you need to spend additional time to inspire him.

Pops – this type can show good results if you spend enough time on task assignment. He is ready to accept challenges and to learn something new but he is not a very skilled worker. He requires guidance but that’s a good time investment since you can grow him into Skips one day.

Mordecai & Rigby. These guys require even more time for preparation and direct – and I mean A LOT. It can be your time or you can attach them to Skips/Benson but time costs are inevitable – that’s the fact. That’s a reason you became a leader, to face such challenges and overcome them :) Try to recall why your company has hired them in the first place and find the right approach. Or maybe you will understand that it's better for both sides to just let go?

What’s important: you have to assign tasks evenly. Yes, it’s easier to rely on Skips but a leader has to develop the team comprehensively. Keeping three other types on the track is the best strategical investment of your time resource.

Constant updates

Of course, it would be great to attach freshmen to the senior team members but you can’t overload them with the newbies. In real life, you have to work with the resources you have. For example, my own studio doesn’t have enough experienced professionals to handle the flood of fresh blood. To make sure that tasks are assigned correctly and that deadlines are fair you have to take the responsibilities yourself. Giving out the task, you start the 4-step machine: assignment + control + guidance + feedback. The good leader has to understand exactly what is going on while the task passes through each stage – that’s why I have to develop myself from different angles.

Starting with yourself is a good step but sooner or later (“sooner”, hopefully) you'll have to engage the team in constant self-improvement process. It shouldn’t be a problem because most of the grown-up people are like to grow in their sphere. Nobody likes being in stagnation, right?

The task itself schools the executor but what with the rest of the studio? In the digital era, it’s easy to find sources of knowledge: educational courses, industry events, digital magazines, YouTube, and so on. But it’s not only about acquiring knowledge, it is also about saving it. You have to create a convenient database for your team. As for me, I like to use Notion. Confluence is awesome too but you can use any format you prefer, even Google Spreadsheets.

As I collect the feedback about my approach comparing to other companies’ philosophies, I see that some of them don’t see a point in collecting knowledge, especially for technically oriented roles. Well, I can’t argue with the fact that our sphere is developing at the light speed but isn’t it better to have a summary of basic knowledge that could be used by newcomers? Yes, it’s hard to maintain a clean and updated system of knowledge but you can have a library of links at least, to cut the time on looking something on the web or save the time of the senior team members for the future. As a lawyer, I got used to linking my knowledge to some external sources because you can’t memorize everything but you have to know where to look up the specific subject. For instance, you are a game designer. You keep playing all the different types of games on different platforms and see some interesting solutions of, let’s say personal offers system. You can notice it and forget by tomorrow OR save in your database a short note that will ring a bell when you will search the “Offers” tag a year later.

What also works for us is an educational meeting twice a month where some of our co-workers talk about something new they’ve found out and how it can be used in our work. Do you remember the example with Blender from above? Finding new approaches and implementing them is a big part of self-development. For many participants, it’s just a form of activity and I don’t have to make them learn. But if you have problems with motivation in your team, I remind you that positive motivation and stress should be in balance. Either your colleagues are relaxed too much or you are pushing them too hard - as Benson did in Regular Show! I bet Benson never heard of psychological Yerkes-Dodson law and that increasing stress and arousal levels could help to focus motivation and attention on a particular task, but only up to a certain point—then it becomes ineffective.

Regarding the stress, don’t forget to keep a lookout for conflicts inside the team. As you might know, there are two types of conflicts: positive and negative. You have to identify it at the right moment and reduce the effect of negative conflicts. But we are not about conflict management today so let’s move further.

 Transparent pipeline

I think that it’s important to keep roles separated to some extent. Let me explain. When you are working on the project you have a clear understanding of the development steps. For example, we were creating a new 3D model of an airplane for the flying mode of our vehicle-combat game. What is the purpose? The end goal is to deliver the new content to the user. But what’s in between the concept and release? The model has to be approved and then passed to the front-end developer. The artist doesn’t send it to the Analytics department and he doesn’t keep it until further notice. This has to be an automated process – the Pipeline. And it has to be clear to all the gears of this beautiful system.

Even in one department, you have to separate responsibilities. Otherwise, the roles become mixed and people may depend too much on the pace of others (of course you can't completely get rid of dependence, that is the upside and the downside of the team play). When I assign tasks, I don’t write one task for two people even if they are going to work as a team. One task = one person, that’s it. That doesn’t mean that “One goal = one person”, no-no-no. When I set a goal, e.g. “Create a notification system for achievements”, I split this construction into a number of little bricks that are assigned to different people. When there is a task that is supposed to be done by two or more members, like “Create the visuals of notification bar”, I create two similar tasks called “Visuals of notification bar” but fill them up with the different responsibilities and checkpoints for each member - and assign them to different people. To refrain from getting the task list polluted by clones, use tags, segmentation, and other ways of filtering the list. These features are available even in free software, for example, Meister Task is capable to filter tasks by Tags, Deadlines, Title, Executor, Link tasks to each other, and so on.

So I try to list all the possible connections and responsibilities so the pipeline and zones of authority become clear and visible to everyone in the team. Because when they see their personal amount of tasks they see the borders of their responsibility. In other cases, it’s easy to start pointing fingers. “It’s your job!” – “No, it’s yours!”, “She had to do it” – “No, you were assigned for that!”… Been there, done that.

When I create the roadmap, I write tasks without assigning them to an actual person, I use tags to identify the role: Front-end, UX, 2D art, 3D art, QA, Game design, Analytics, Marketing (that are our “branches”). As we come closer in time to the planned tasks, I double-check them to make sure that everything in the roadmap is relevant to the current project condition. If it’s OK, I start assigning tasks.

Each project has at least 1 member of each “branch”. I define the priorities and assign people according to their personal qualities and working experience, pair them, set the pipeline, and monitor the work process on every task so in the end, the whole studio can learn something from this task.

I called my approach “Regular” just for a fun reference to my favorite show but it is pretty regular indeed. Let’s do a quick recap for “Regular” assigning:

1. Do the segmentation in order to balance the performance capacity of your team properly.

2. Take in count the personal features of your teammates.

3. Control tasks to watch and learn from the live experience.

4. Educate yourself in different ways.

5. Help your team to learn from external and internal sources of knowledge.

6. Keep track of that knowledge.

7. Set the flat or spiky hierarchy inside the team and stick to it.

8. Link the roles to each other to create the pipeline.

9. Limit the personal responsibilities of each team member.

I hope that my experience can be useful for some of you and if you have something to discuss – welcome to the comments!