Why is it important to make notes for the technical project manager?

One of the challenges for a technical project manager is keeping things in the loop. There are situations when you receive a bunch of information from the dev team, stakeholders, clients, SEO team, design team, etc. The project manager is the one who has to keep those things clear, organized, and in the cycle. I have tried a lot of things to reach that goal, and I am still sure that the most proper way for that is – making notes. You can have them in your notebook, paper book, phone, Google Sheets/Docs, etc. As for me, I do it in two places: in Google Sheets and in my phone’s notes. Sometimes, the most important things, I also keep in a third place: a paper notebook. Why do we pay such attention to them? It’s because not having the right info at the right place and the right time can ruin the whole process of communication with internal and external teams. And yes, this is mostly the project manager’s responsibility. The first thing I do when I start my work is opening my notes and moving forward with my schedule. Usually, I have the following columns there:

Project Name – stands for relating the rest of the fields to a particular project.

Task Description – stands for stating the issue that needs to be fixed or the goal we want to achieve for the current project.

Task Links – usually, I put Jira ticket/task links there for immediate access.

Assignee – it is useful to see who the responsible employee for the current task is.

Priority – I mark it with three types of priorities: medium, high, and urgent, using appropriate colors – peach, orange, and red.

I always have this sheet with me, especially during meetings with teams or stakeholders. It never lets you down and always supports.

During a working day, it saves me approximately 20 minutes; during a working week, 1.5 hours; during a month, 6 hours – almost a full working day.

Summarizing this article, I can say, that you gain 3 important things: Time, Cost, and Quality.

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