Build a Team Task Management App

Introduction

All small business owners have one thing in common: they want their companies to stop being small. If your startup has finally secured its position on the market and now your team enjoys lines of customers waiting to be served, it’s high time to start tracking the in-house operations electronically. We all love post-it paper sheets and good old highlighter pens, but let’s face it — these are effective only when it comes to marking your food in the office fridge. This article is going to tell you everything you need to know about an ultimate tool for workflow organization — task management application for teams. And by everything we mean not the basic “buy this program” advice, but analysis of available options on the market and search for a solution that would fit your (and only your) team perfectly.

Types of Task Management Applications

There are two basic types of applications aimed at task management. None of these types can be called good or bad, it’s just different purposes of each and the different feature set correspondingly. Find the average characteristics of both application types below:

Personal To-do Apps

• targeted to a single user
• very limited functionality — shopping and to-do lists
• create new task feature is the core
• tasks can be labeled differently
• no option to see a to-do list of another user
• comments on tasks are disabled
• minimal integrations supported
• can be replaced with default Notes app

Task Managers for Teams

• aimed at collective use by the limited group of people
• users can create tasks separately and correlate them later
• tasks can be classified by various types and filters
• supports in-app communication tools like comments and messages
• multiple integrations like Google services, calendar, email agents, etc.

As you can conclude from this quick comparison, basic to-do apps have low compatibility with the office setting. Their limited (although useful in the life beyond work) functionality makes them similar to writing down what you need to do on the sheet of paper, the only difference is that you type the list in your smartphone. Such programs are most likely known to every smartphone owner, but what is task management software for a team? The foremost fact you should realize about it is that team management applications are the part of enterprise software — an IT segment aimed at serving the needs of organizations. Team task managers are similar to personal to-do apps in nature, as at the end of the day they’re also aimed at helping users get the work done timely. But the main difference between them is hidden in the app architecture: team management application has multiple levels of projects, tasks, and subtasks that can be connected to each other or absolutely independent. Even though every employee has his own role and duties, this does not mean they are once and for all defined and cannot change depending on situation. The main purpose of the software here is to put every action of every team member together, so that the team won’t lose anything during the evolving operations.

Wait. What’s Wrong With Ready-Made Task Management Software?

According to Statista, spending on enterprise software has reached $352 billion globally and is expected to grow to $391 billion by the end of 2018. Being that giant, this field definitely has some high-performing tools for managing teams and organizing the workflow. So what are the reasons to build a team task management app on your own instead of buying a ready-to-use solution? Actually, there’s quite a few.

• Existing team management apps are trying to suit every single team out there. Meaning, your team can forget about personal approach, as software solutions for team management developed elsewhere know nothing about your actual needs. They can be either too simple, which then provokes the need to implement extra products in the daily office routine, or too complex and frightening for everyone but IT specialists.
• You’re paying for a certain feature set that you won’t use at its max. Keep in mind that if you signed up for certain team management platform because of its cosmic functionality, chances are your team will ignore a lot of these fascinating extra features like 75 various task labels and statuses most of the time. It’s not hard for software developers to overload the program with unnecessary options, yet this does not answer the question of how to build a task management app that would be efficient and to-the-point in terms of use.
• Task managers available cannot effectively serve businesses with extra or complex activities in workflow. Beyond question, task managers available were developed with the kindest intentions — boost productivity, optimize business processes, and make the workflow smooth and stressless. However, add to your business routine one unusual process like inventory tracking, big data processing, logistics operations, field works tracking, and so on — and you’ll see how fast the ready-made software would fall to pieces.
• Data safety isn’t always on point. Be aware that when using an out-resourced task management application, you will have to share all the operations-related information with the company owning that app. The question of cybersecurity should be your top priority when it comes to business matters, so do not fall for cheaper offers from companies that have no acknowledgement on the enterprise software market.
• You will always rely on some third party after adopting ready-made enterprise application. Let’s face it, anyone who is reaching for SaaS has no control over the functionality of software or the way it performs. The architecture, UI/UX, features, and technology stack were defined long before you’ve decided you need this program in your life, so no wonder it’s not built basing or\n your particular needs.
• You are investing in someone else’s business instead of your own. Despite the fact that almost all the task management applications claim to have a free version with great functionality that would effectively serve the teams who are not ready for investment just yet, do not expect much from them. Distribution of enterprise software is a business, naturally it has to be beneficial for its owners. Free versions of such apps are made to demonstrate the app’s potential and provoke your interest in upgrading the program to its premium version, not to help your company grow voluntarily.

Key Features of a Viable Task Management Application

Having experienced all the hazardous consequences of the out-resourced team task management apps, we concluded that there is by far nothing more stable than a custom task manager created for a particular team. As it-cortex.com reports, three major reasons behind the project’s failure include breakdown in communications (57%), lack of planning (39%), and poor quality control (35%). Great news is that an efficient team management app can drastically decrease the rates of the listed above troubles, that’s why you should definitely consider to build a task management program for your team. While the technology stack and the details of UI/UX design change from one project to another, the feature set of a potent team management app is quite easy to define. Most likely, the basic functionality of a task manager for a team would be obvious even to those who haven’t used such types of software much. In 9 cases out of ten, the core features of such application would look as follows:

• Create and follow up tasks
• Task classification (by status, deadlines, people involved, etc.)
• Filtered search
• Attachments
• Comments
• In-app messages
• Schedule & calendar
• Integrations (Google services, CRM, Dropbox, etc.)

As you can see, there’s nothing groundbreaking in any of this functions, we’ve all seen and used them in other applications from social media to Notes and Calendar default smartphone programs. What is far more interesting than these primitive for a modern user features, is the custom functionality that can be added to the app’s settings to meet the requirements of your particular staff at max. Having analyzed the needs and professional routines of numerous teams (ourselves included), we’ve come with the following functions required for a custom task manager to be useful and productive: