J A Epperson Analysis & Advisory Ltd

(SEE MY APPROACH TO THIS TOPIC IN TWO MODULES IN MY ONLINE COURSE – “MY XYZ’S OF EXCELLENCE,” DAY 8 – THE LETTER M – MEANINGFUL MEASURABLE MILESTONES AND ON DAY 9 – THE LETTER P – PLAN PREPARE PLAN)

By Jeremy McAbee, October 8, 2020

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home was becoming increasingly common. However, in the wake of the coronavirus, work from home (or WFH for short) has become the new norm — and a lot of professionals are working from home with kids. 

In this article, we’re taking a deep dive into how to work from home with kids, how to create a workspace at home, and how to develop a manageable work-from-home schedule that your whole family can benefit from.

Why is there an increase in work from home parents?

According to research out of Stanford, 42% of the U.S. labor force is working from home full time. The cause of this new “working from home economy” is clear: the coronavirus pandemic. 

According to Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, “The stigma associated with working from home prior to COVID-19 has disappeared.” What’s more, Bloom says that a number of corporations are developing plans for more work from home options beyond the pandemic. In fact, a separate survey indicated that “the share of working days spent at home is expected to increase fourfold from pre-COVID levels, from 5% to 20%.”

Naturally, many of these now-remote employees are working from home with kids. On top of that, many of those children are attending virtual school from home. That means these work from home parents are not only adjusting to new working environments and a work from home schedule for themselves, but they’re also balancing their jobs with their duties as parents, tutors, and classroom assistants to their children. 

Common challenges of working from home with kids

The challenges of working from home with kids can vary greatly depending on factors like how many kids you have at home, their ages, and any special accommodations or needs they may have. For instance, a newborn baby or a toddler will likely require more time and attention than a high-schooler, although teenagers present plenty of unique challenges of their own. 

Some of the most common challenges facing work from home parents include:Power the Modern, Agile EnterpriseCrush your 2020 goals and keep moving forward with Wrike’s work management platform.Get started for free

Time management

Maintaining a regular schedule can be extremely challenging when working from home with kids. Not only do you have to manage your own time, but you have to manage your children and ensure they’re taking care of their schoolwork, if they’re of school age. 

Managing time and a busy work schedule can be even more complicated if your child or children are five years old or younger, which means you must be extra diligent about creating a manageable schedule and having the necessary support systems in place. 

Interruptions 

Probably the biggest challenge of working from home with children is dealing with interruptions.  These always seem to come at the most inopportune times — like when you’re on a Zoom meeting with colleagues, managers, or clients. Even if you’re not in a virtual meeting but are concentrating on a work task, interruptions can derail productivity. In fact, according to one study, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task at hand after an interruption.

Switching from “work mode” to “parent mode”

Another common challenge for work from home parents is switching gears from “work mode” to “parent mode”. This can be tough, even after 5:00 p.m. when most people are typically done with work for the day.

In fact, separating your work life from your home life becomes significantly more challenging when working from home. Work duties and parental duties can easily bleed into one another without the physical separation that comes from working in one distinct location and living in another. This is why creating a designated workspace in your home can be so beneficial for work from home parents. 

How to create a workspace at home

The importance of creating a workspace just for you goes beyond the psychology of training your now-WFH brain to recognize work actually needs to be completed in your home. A physical workspace also helps to remind your family that you are, in fact, not 100% available to cater to their every need. Setting down rules on how to get your attention can also help to ensure you get some time to concentrate. A starter project you may even consider giving your child is to make a sign for your office door that you can update with “In a meeting” or “Busy until 2:00” messages. 

If creating a physical barrier simply isn’t a possibility (e.g. your kids are too young, you’re the only adult home, etc.), you may instead consider setting up both you and your children in the same room, but perhaps in different corners. One for your work and one for theirs. Many schools are providing online instruction and assignments. Turning half your office into a pseudo-classroom can help everyone stay focused and on task. 

Make use of noise-cancellation — for you and your team

We’ve all been in meetings where there is suddenly a siren in the background or other auditory distractions that derail the call. Considering it takes an average of 16 minutes to re-focus after reading an email, reducing the number of distractions both you and your team encounter should be top-of-mind. Now that you and your children have been thrust into the same environment, make use of both a noise-canceling headset and your microphone’s mute button whenever you are on a call. If you’re the only one home, having a video baby monitor available to watch your kids can help you keep an eye on them even if you can’t hear them. If total separation isn’t possible, consider giving the noise-canceling headset to your child (it may help keep them focused on their tasks/entertainment and stop them from attempting to join your meeting). 

One handy feature of video conferencing tools like Zoom is a push-to-talk (PTT) option when muting your microphone. Utilizing features like this can further help to reduce background noise and reduce the number of times you have to mute/unmute yourself while on the call. 

How to work from home with a baby

Working from home with a baby can be particularly challenging since they require so much time and attention. However, here are a few tips to help you stay productive while tending to your baby.

Take advantage of naps

Most babies tend to take multiple naps throughout the day. If your baby is a napper, you can take advantage of these pockets of time to get some work done. In fact, you may find that tackling your most intensive tasks during naptime is a good strategy, since you know you will have a certain amount of time that’s totally distraction-free while the baby is conked out. 

Work when they’re content and calm

Of course, most babies don’t nap the entire day, and you’ll likely have more work than can be done during naptime alone. The second best time to work from home with a baby is when they are at their calmest, typically right after they wake up or after they eat. 

Use a baby carrier

Another strategy is to use a carrier that allows you to “wear” your baby while you work. A standing desk setup plus a carrier can help you remain productive while keeping your baby close and content.

Overcommunicate with your colleagues

Nothing spells disaster more than leaving your co-workers in the dark. If they’re unable to get in contact with you to answer questions, collaborate on projects, or get information so they can do their job, the likelihood of something falling through the cracks increases dramatically. Utilizing group chat statuses and clearly defining what hours you’re available can help to let others know what your workload looks like and when you’re available during the day. 

To further increase collaboration, consider implementing an online project management tool like Wrike to create a single source of truth for your teams. By keeping all information in one spot and centralizing communication, you can ensure everyone stays well-informed on projects’ and deliverables’ statuses. 

Don’t beat yourself up

The fact of the matter is that working from home with kids — particularly a baby — is a real challenge. Do the best you can to communicate with your teammates and managers, create a reasonable work schedule, and be as productive as possible. But also give yourself some grace and try not to get caught up in feeling guilty.

How to create a work from home schedule that works for everyone

Parents know their children’s attention span never seems to last long enough. No matter what project or entertainment you give your kid, you know they’re only going to stay distracted for so long. The good news is you can use this to your advantage to time out your tasks during the day. Studies have shown multitasking is detrimental to productivity, and the advantages of breaking up a large project into smaller ones can also be incredibly helpful. Timing yourself to work on one task at a time should not only help ensure your efficiency, but also help keep an eye on your little ones. 

Past individual tasks and daily schedules, creating a shared calendar with project deadlines and milestones can help keep everyone aligned with what needs to be finished by when.

Be (and stay) flexible

We all know something going perfectly to plan almost never happens — especially when taking kids into account. Planning as much as you can will help identify roadblocks and potential issues that may crop up over the next few weeks — but it won’t account for everything. Bake in some flexibility when planning out your time. 

Any tools you use to collaborate with your colleagues should be able to handle rapid changes. Dynamically changing due dates on deliverables (and accurately extrapolating that to dependencies) should be something your tools can easily accomplish. This will help to simplify your processes when change occurs.

Wrike can help work from home parents stay on track

The processes that worked for you in the office may no longer work now that you and your team are distributed. Now is the time to look at what your workflow management processes are and see how they can be improved. Doing this now will help to alleviate potential issues from this radical workplace change, better prepare you for future business growth, and minimize familial distractions during the workday.

Wrike’s own remote workforce has been sharing tips and tricks from our home offices all over the world. Additionally, you can take advantage of Wrike’s free trial to learn more about how to manage the future of work.

Learn more about Planning and Preparation on Day 9 of My XYZ’s of Excellence – 26 Days to Excellence in Business Leadership and Life “One Day at a Time” online course.

(SEE MY APPROACH TO THIS TOPIC IN MY ONLINE COURSE – “MY XYZ’S OF EXCELLENCE,” DAY 9 – THE LETTER P – PLAN PREPARE PLAN)

All of us at monday.com; Oct 7 this is an 8 min read

Managing a single task is straightforward enough — you put in the work and submit it for review when it’s finished.

In reality, a typical project consists of many moving parts that must work together to meet deadlines. Just one part breaking down can cause delays and financial losses.

Keeping everything on the right track isn’t easy. This is why every project needs to have a system in place to monitor and evaluate its progress.

It sounds obvious enough, but how do you actually do it?

In this article, we’ll provide an in-depth look at what project monitoring and evaluation is, why it’s important, and how to implement it in your organization. We’ll also give you an actionable template you can customize and put what you’ve learned into practice.

What is project monitoring and evaluation?

Project monitoring and evaluation is used to measure a project’s progress. It’s important because it lets you keep tabs on a project and identify potential problems.

Let’s take a closer look at these two concepts.

What is project monitoring?

Project monitoring is the process of keeping a close eye on the entire project management life cycle and ensuring project activities are on the right track.The success of a project depends on a clearly defined structure. Not having a plan would be like building a house without a blueprint — possible, but incredibly difficult with tons of room for error.

A lack of goals and measurable objectives (37%) is the primary reason why projects fail.

(Image Source)

Goals are important for any project because they act as a guide. But just setting an objective isn’t enough. You need to make it a point to check if you’re actually meeting them.

Project monitoring is all about comparing actual performance to the goals you set. If you’re not hitting milestones (e.g., delivering a prototype within a specified time), the project has a high chance of failure.

A project can be divided into five phases: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Closing, and Monitoring and Control.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these phases:

• Initiation: The initiation phase outlines the steps and processes that must be approved before any planning begins.
• Planning: The planning phase determines the project scope and details the processes for the execution phase.
• Executing: The execution phase involves carrying out the activities defined in the planning phase.
• Closing: The closing phase finalizes the project and its completion is communicated to all stakeholders.
• Monitoring and control: The monitoring and control phase involves making sure the project is on track and incorporating any necessary changes. This happens at the same time as the planning and execution phases.

Project monitoring is the ‘monitoring part’ of the monitoring and control phase.

It involves measuring project-related details (e.g., budgets, schedules, scope, etc.) against your goals to ensure you’re on the right track.

Now let’s take a look at project evaluation.

What is project evaluation?

Project evaluation is the ‘control’ part of the monitoring and control phase. It involves looking at the information you gather from monitoring and making decisions based on it (e.g., do we need to adjust schedules or fast track certain processes to meet deadlines?).

Not every project goes according to plan. Costs might exceed the initial budget, team members might miss their deadlines due to scope creep, a stakeholder may suddenly back out, etc.

But project issues are also perfect learning opportunities to identify where things in the project plan started to go awry.

This is what a project evaluation framework is all about. Evaluating why a project is heading off course allows time for intervention.

Best case, you discover an issue early enough to get back on course. Worst case, you gain valuable insights that you can use to improve future workflows.

The evaluation process happens throughout the project — not just after project objectives are met. There may also be more in-depth evaluations at big milestones, like the retrospective at the end of a sprint.

Companies waste an average of 11.4% of their investment on projects due to poor performance. Project monitoring and evaluation is a tool to help you improve a project’s overall efficiency by catching and resolving issues before it’s too late.

Let’s look at how you can get started.

How to get started with project monitoring and evaluation

Project monitoring and evaluation enables you to make better decisions about ongoing and future projects. Here’s some framework and steps you can follow to get started.

#1: Create a plan for monitoring and evaluating your projects

The first step is to create a process for how you will monitor and evaluate your projects. Start with the following steps:

• Organize your projects: You need a platform or system to capture and organize your data in one place. Use project management software to keep tabs on different phases of a project. Here’s an example of how teams are monitoring the project scope in monday.com:

• Identify responsibilities: Who will be responsible for monitoring each phase of the project and conducting evaluations? How will they determine and measure project success? Designate stakeholder roles as early as possible and create a checklist of their responsibilities.
• Record project bottlenecks: What were some issues that you or your project team experienced? Make sure to record those incidents, including how you addressed them and what the outcome was.
• Create an evaluation plan: Will you conduct evaluations every week or after each phase of the project is complete? Collect feedback from your team to get their thoughts on how workflows can be improved.

#2: Monitor performance in real-time

Whether you’re managing a construction project or launching a new product, you need a real-time view of what’s happening to monitor your projects and make informed decisions.

Here’s an example of how the team at monday.com monitors and manages project implementation in real-time:

(Image Source)

Monitoring performance in real-time enables you to track each team member’s progress and allocate resources accordingly.

The last thing you want is to work with outdated information, which is exactly the kind of issue that M Booth, a digital PR agency in New York City, experienced.

Their team was copying and pasting information from Basecamp into a spreadsheet to see everything in one place. But problems arose when one platform was updated and the other wasn’t. This meant that some employees were working with outdated data.

#3: Evaluate project reports

Was the project delivered on time? Or were there unexpected setbacks?

Answering these questions is what project monitoring and evaluating is all about. But you need to collect the right data and assess the results to find the answers.

Pull reports from an ongoing or completed project and evaluate your key performance indicators (KPIs) — metrics that gauge your project’s performance.

Reviewing reports can help you understand how your team is performing against their goals and pinpoint where timelines started to deviate.

Here’s a quick glance of a project report created in monday.com:

(Image Source)

#4: Improve workflow processes

If a project didn’t meet the deadline, dig deeper to find out why. What were some of the setbacks? How were they eventually resolved?

Don’t stop there though. Use our incident management template to record any incidents and how you addressed them.

(Image Source)

If anyone on your team runs into a similar issue for future projects, they can refer to the board for a solution.

#5: Focus on learning and improving

Project monitoring and evaluation lets you keep tabs on projects, evaluate their progress, and improve processes. Just making one change can have a huge impact on future projects.

For example, the team at monday.com turned hours of tedious meetings into a single 20-minute session just by adding more boards.

But we also recognize there’s always room for improvement, so the team is constantly focusing on learning and improving. That’s the additional reward of project monitoring and evaluation.

Even after implementing a new change, don’t celebrate just yet. Continue learning from and optimizing your evaluation system to make your work processes even more productive.

Conclusion

In a perfect world, all of your projects would go according to plan. Everything would be completed on time and within budget.

But that doesn’t always happen in reality — employees may miss deadlines due to personal emergencies, external stakeholders may back out without explanation, etc.

Project monitoring and evaluation enables you to identify and mitigate issues that may impact the project scope, quality, timeline, or budget. You can then take those insights and use them to optimize processes for future projects.

Use a project tracker template to monitor projects and get a high-level view of where everything stands — all from one place. You can easily customize the template and create a tailored plan that fits your workflow.

Get a project tracker template now!

Learn more about Planning and Preparation on Day 9 of My XYZ’s of Excellence – 26 Days to Excellence in Business Leadership and Life “One Day at a Time” online course.

Infographic brought to you by Wrike

(SEE MY APPROACH TO THIS TOPIC IN MY ONLINE COURSE – “MY XYZ’S OF EXCELLENCE,” DAY 9 – THE LETTER P – PLAN PREPARE PLAN)

 Guest Author, December 28, 2016

As your organization changes, your project management needs will change, too. Growth is great, but it makes the need for clear communication and task management more important than ever.  

If you’re already paying for a project management solution, it can be difficult to justify the cost and time it will take to implement a new one. Plus, adoption can be a concern in organizations where staff members are slow to accept new processes and procedures. 

So how do you know if it’s worth it to upgrade your project management tool? Here are four signs that it’s time to find new software:

You’re using several different tools

How many steps does it take for your team to complete a task? If you’re using a separate task management system, time tracker, and sending emails, there’s a good chance communication is falling through the cracks. Using several different, disconnected tools opens the door to wasted time, duplication, and missed opportunities.

If it’s been awhile since you’ve updated your software, you might be surprised to learn that many products cover several project management needs in a single system. Look for a tool that can house all of your processes and communication from the same interface to avoid confusion and missed opportunities.

Your work isn’t accessible in the cloud

Most growing companies benefit from moving their project management system to the cloud. If you’re ready to move to the cloud, you’ll benefit from faster communication, easy implementation, and ubiquitous access to all of your work. The best part? Cloud-based project management tools can save you from the upfront cost burden of a perpetual license.

New hires have a hard time learning the ropes

If you’re spending more time training a new hire to use your project management software than on their actual job, you have a problem. Your project management tool should be easy to learn so new hires and veteran employees can get acclimated quickly and start being productive. Your vendor should also offer training and troubleshooting documentation, so you don’t have to explain the ins and outs of every workflow to every team member.

Your organization is changing

Growth is a good thing, but sometimes it makes things complicated.  When you add new team members and projects, your project management software can’t always keep up — especially if you’re using an outdated system. You need to find a system that can grow with you. Many tools are scalable and offer different plans for small, medium, and large businesses, as well as the ability to add and remove users without hassle.

You have too many meetings

Isn’t the point of a project management tool to cut down on busy work and unnecessary meetings? If you’re gathering the team in the conference room for project updates and brainstorming sessions every day, your software isn’t doing enough to help. A project management solution should house discussions, progress updates, tasks, deadlines, file attachments, and more. Use those meetings to set broader priorities and solve problems. Your team can use the extra time to complete tasks and focus on delivering top-notch work.

If you’ve made it through this list and it’s clear that you need to update your project management tool, talk to your team about what features they need and what pain points they have with your current system. Use their feedback to guide the research process.

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Author Bio: 

Megan Pacella is a contributor for TechnologyAdvice.com, with specializations in B2B marketing and sales. She has also written for USA Today, Bearings Guide, 10Best Nashville, and other publications.

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