Hello, this is Director Nakagawa.
Previously, I worked as a coder at Coding Factory.
Currently, I work hard every day as a director.
I myself have made the transition from being a coder to being a director, and I have become aware of the difficulties and challenges in progressing a project that I had not seen or noticed when I was on the production side.
In this post, I will summarize in my own words the insights I gained from my own experiences, the things I came up with while actually performing direction work, and what worked and what didn't.
I hope that this will be of some help to people in a similar situation, or to people who work on the production side as coders or designers and want to know what directors are thinking.
A director's duties are varied, but this time I would like to summarize how the director manages his or her own issues.
There are too many issues to manage
The first thing that surprised me about becoming a director was that there were far more types and numbers of things to do than in production.
While I was creating schedules, checking progress, preparing materials and holding meetings, when sudden coding corrections or production work arose, I, who have experience as a coder, would end up doing it myself. At first, I panicked because there were too many tasks.
When you add multiple projects to it, it's almost too much.
The number of cigarettes I had was increasing, and I thought to myself, "I've got to organize these somehow..." so I started looking for a good tool to do so.
Neither a "task management app" nor a "project management tool" is enough...
First, I tried using an app that allows you to easily manage tasks on your smartphone.
difficult to see…
Immediately after using it, I thought "This is great, it's so easy to register!" However, due to the limited screen size and character count, I could only manage simple tasks, and it was difficult to manage the issues that arose from those tasks, so I wasn't really satisfied with it.
The next thing I tried was a project management tool.
It allows you to register specific tasks and assign people to them, which is not possible with task management apps, so I thought "this is it!" and gave it a try...
It's hard to input...
It's great to be able to set the details such as the title, text, person in charge, deadline, and category, but it took too much time to input and edit information to manage the tasks that are being moved around quickly every day, so it wasn't suited to my work style.
Meanwhile, the growing problem of tobacco...
If this keeps up, my soul will leave me along with the cigarette smoke...
In the end, I settled on
Google Spreadsheets
I tried a lot of different services, but I couldn't find anything that satisfied me, and I was worried for days. In the midst of all this, I decided to first list all the issues, so I put them all on a spreadsheet.
Looking at the list of issues, I thought, "Hmm? Wait a minute," so I entered the items such as the date and time of issue, task category, content, person in charge, man-hours, and expected date of response, which were all found in the project management tools I had tried.
This is it!!
Using the filter function, you can see the tasks, issues, and people in charge for the day at a glance, and by hiding completed issues, you can easily see the remaining issues and effort required.
Best of all, since input and editing is not time-consuming, the time spent on management has been dramatically reduced.
Are you at least a little interested?
Now, since we're here, I'd like to show you how to actually use a spreadsheet.
How to use the spreadsheet-type task management table
First, download the public spreadsheet and upload it to your own spreadsheet, and you're ready to go.
Below is an explanation of each item and how to use it.
- No: The assignment number.
- Date of issue (time): Since issues are often emailed, entering the date and time of the issue will make it easier to search for the email by inputting when the issue occurred.
- Status: This will automatically change depending on the input. If you filter by status "Other than Completed", you will be able to see the currently remaining issues.
- Continuation No.: If a new task arises following that task, you can understand the flow of the tasks by entering the number of the new task.
- Projects: It is recommended to use conditional formatting to color-code each project for better visibility. (There is a sample setting in the spreadsheet.)
- Category: By setting the type of work, such as direction or writing, it becomes easier to understand what kind of work is involved in each project.
- Subject: The subject of the assignment.
- Content: Enter the specific details of the issue. If you enter details, the status will become "Not handled."
- Assigned to: By assigning a person in charge, it becomes easier to understand how many tasks have been assigned to you and your team members.
- Effort: By entering the amount of effort, you can see how much effort will be required for the day or week.
- Scheduled date and time of response: Enter the scheduled date and time of response, and if there are many issues, narrow down the results to only those for that day. If there are many issues for that day, sort them by time of day.
- Response details: Once you enter the response details, the status will change to "Processing".
- URL: If you contacted us via Chatwork or Backlog, you can easily find the issue by entering the URL.
- Date and time of response: By entering the planned date and time of response, you can see at a glance how many issues there are for the day or the next day. When you enter the date and time of response, the status will be "Processed".
- Response method: This is a drop-down menu to select the method by which you reported that you had responded to the issue.
- Report Completed: Once a report is marked as "Completed" or "Not Actionable," the status will change to "Completed."
- Reported To: Enter the name of the person to whom you reported the assignment as completed.
The biggest change I've noticed since using this spreadsheet to manage my tasks is that I feel more at ease.
Until now, I was simply overwhelmed with so many tasks, which made me feel anxious and impatient, but by using this task management sheet, I can clearly see how many tasks I currently have, who needs to deal with them and by when, and so on, and I now have more peace of mind.
Until now, I've always wanted to do work that would reassure my customers, but I've realized that using tools like these is also important to create an environment where I myself feel safe.
Not only directors, but also coders and designers should give it a try if they are having trouble with task management.
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