Time management in a world with constrained resources is understanding how to set, measure, and build successful goal settings tools for individuals and teams. Time management, therefore, becomes a critical asset for any organization to enable proper scale.
What will we see in the following resource?
Framework
Description
SMART Goals
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based goals framework effective for solopreneurs, providing a structured and trackable approach to goal setting.
OKRs
Objectives and Key Results framework, popularized by Andy Grove and John Doerr, suitable for ambitious teams. Helps in focusing, aligning, tracking, and stretching goals, following an iterative cycle of brainstorming, communicating, sharing, tracking, and reflecting.
Eisenhower Matrix
Prioritization tool based on urgency and importance, named after Dwight D. Eisenhower. Helps in differentiating between urgent and important tasks to prevent short-term urgencies from overshadowing long-term strategic goals.
Speed-Reversibility Matrix
Framework for balancing the speed of execution with the reversibility of decisions. Helps in identifying asymmetric business bets that are both impactful and easily reversible.
Big Hairy Audacious Goal
Long-term, clear, and compelling goals aligned with a company’s values and purpose, introduced by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras.
Bullseye Framework
Prioritization framework for marketing channels, helping in identifying and prioritizing channels that drive traction.
Transitional Business Model
A model used by companies to enter a market, gain initial traction, and validate ideas while securing capital. Helps in shaping long-term vision and scalable business models.
Business Engineering
Approach focusing on designing and optimizing business models for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
Time Management Tools
Tools such as Todoist, Google Calendar, Trello, OKR Worksheet, Microsoft Project, and Jira Software used for task tracking, calendar management, productivity enhancement, goal setting, and project management.
Time Management Metrics
Metrics including cycle times, throughput rates, lead times, and resource utilization, essential for evaluating performance in project management.
4 Ps of Time Management
Prioritize, Plan, Prepare, Perform – principles to effectively manage time and ensure successful project completion.
7 Time Management Skills
Prioritization, Planning, Scheduling, Delegation, Communication, Flexibility, Time Tracking & Reporting – essential skills for successful project management.
If you’re a solopreneur, the SMART Goal framework is pretty effective.
A SMART goal is any goal with a carefully planned, concise, and trackable objective. To be such a goal needs to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. Bringing structure and trackability to goal setting increases the chances goals will be achieved, and it helps align the organization around those goals.
The SMART Goals framework helps keep these objectives:
Andy Grove, helped Intel become among the most valuable companies by 1997. In his years at Intel, he conceived a management and goal-setting system, called OKR, standing for “objectives and key results.” Venture capitalist and early investor in Google, John Doerr, systematized in the book “Measure What Matters.”
The OKR will make your team leverage four superpowers:
The Eisenhower Matrix is a tool that helps businesses prioritize tasks based on their urgency and importance, named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States from 1953 to 1961, the matrix helps businesses and individuals differentiate between the urgent and important to prevent urgent things (seemingly useful in the short-term) cannibalize important things (critical for long-term success).
The key take here is to prioritize activities that are important and not urgent so that those activities will be in line with the long-term goals of the organization.
To be sure, you will jump from time to time to urgencies.
As short-term business needs require us to do so, but at least you’ll have laid down a schedule for important, non-urgent, and yet strategic activities that, no matter what urgency comes, you got to execute!
Imagine the case of a social network that continuously deals with the site crashing due to too much traffic, thus putting patches here and there to fix the issue.
Yet, not having any time allocated to solve the infrastructural issue which will prevent this issue in the future, and it will enable the company to sustain a higher level of traffic in the long term.
This is what happens to companies that don’t have at least a bare-bone plan set for important and strategic goals.
Via Positiva: Set The Focus Area
Once you have defined what tasks not to focus on, which usually are not important and not urgent, that paradoxically often require most of our short-term attention span.
You can define the positive area within which you want your business to move.
When setting up experiments and tasks, I argue that a key way to look at it is to understand the dynamics between speed and reversibility.
In fact, when moving forward with your business, speed is critical.
Yet, it also needs to be balanced with whether an experiment can be reversed or not.
Another dimension of asymmetric betting is given by how impactful the idea can be to the business. When we have asymmetric bets that can have a high impact and are easy to reverse, we get to the “Jackpot” and go into an “All-In-Mode” of action! And how easy to reverse.
The notion of a big hairy audacious goal was first introduced by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. A big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) is a clear and compelling long-term goal guided by a company’s values and purpose.
Prioritize Idea: Idea Generation, Funneling, And Prioritization
The first step in the process is to create an idea funnel.
This starts from the understanding that, with the proper context, anyone can generate great ideas.
And that most of the ideas will be absolutely worthless, once you’ll try to execute them.
Thus:
Create the context for ideas to flourish.
Understand that most ideas will not make it to the pèrioritization funnel.
Understand that even the ideas that will make it will probably fail.
Once you have this set, you can use various prioritization frameworks for ideas.
I personally like the Bullseye Framework, which is simple and easy to execute.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
It’s fine to have ideas that don’t seem to make sense in the long-term and yet they do make sense in the long run.
And vice-versa.
Once you do accept di dichotomy, you’re set to enable your team to unlock massive potential.
Organizations create strategies to define overarching goals and how they intend to reach them. Tactics describe the individual steps and actions that allow the strategy to be carried out.
A transitional business model is used by companies to enter a market (usually a niche) to gain initial traction and prove the idea is sound. The transitional business model helps the company secure the needed capital while having a reality check. It helps shape the long-term vision and a scalable business model.
It is essential to choose the right one based on individual needs before investing any money.
Each tool offers features designed specifically with project managers in mind.
Evaluating Performance With Time Management Metrics
Time management metrics are essential for evaluating performance in project management.
They provide a way to measure the effectiveness of time-related activities and tasks, enabling managers to make informed decisions about allocating resources.
Time management metrics include:
Cycle times: the amount of time required for a particular process or activity within a project; this could range from hours for small tasks up to months for larger ones depending on complexity and scope.
Throughput rates, how quickly teams complete tasks compared against their set goals while lead times indicate how long it takes between starting work on a task until completion (this includes both planning/preparation stages as well as actual implementation).
Lead times,
Resource utilization measures how efficiently resources are being used by measuring the amount of output achieved per unit input (e.g., number of products produced per hour).
And more.
By tracking these metrics on an ongoing basis, managers can identify areas where improvements can be made or problems addressed before they become too costly or difficult to fix.
What are the 4 Ps of time management?
The 4 P’s of time management are:
1. Prioritize – Identify the most important tasks and focus on those first.
2. Plan – Set goals, create a timeline, and develop strategies to reach them.
3. Prepare – Gather resources needed for success and be ready to act when necessary.
4. Perform – Execute the plan with diligence and determination to achieve desired results efficiently.
By following these 4 Ps, project managers can effectively manage their time and ensure the successful completion of projects.
What are the seven time management skills?
Those comprise:
1. Prioritization: Identifying and prioritizing tasks based on their importance and urgency is essential for successful project management.
2. Planning: A good plan will help you stay organized, anticipate problems, and maximize resources.
3. Scheduling: Developing a timeline with milestones helps ensure that the project stays on track and meets deadlines.
4. Delegation: Knowing when to delegate tasks can free up time for more important work while also helping build team morale and efficiency.
5. Communication: Keeping stakeholders informed of progress is key to maintaining trust in the project’s success as well as ensuring everyone understands their roles within it.
6. Flexibility: Unexpected changes are inevitable, so adjusting plans quickly without compromising quality or timelines is essential for successful project management.
7. Time Tracking & Reporting: Regularly tracking time spent on each task allows managers to understand better how much effort was put into each part of the project, which can be used for future planning purposes
The theory was developed by psychologist Edwin Locke who also has a background in motivation and leadership research. Locke’s goal-setting theory of motivation provides a framework for setting effective and motivating goals. Locke was able to demonstrate that goal setting was linked to performance.
Timeboxing is a simple yet powerful time-management technique for improving productivity. Timeboxing describes the process of proactively scheduling a block of time to spend on a task in the future. It was first described by author James Martin in a book about agile software development.
A SMART goal is any goal with a carefully planned, concise, and trackable objective. Be such a goal needs to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. Bringing structure and trackability to goal setting increases the chances goals will be achieved, and it helps align the organization around those goals.
The Pomodoro Technique was created by Italian business consultant Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management system where work is performed in 25-minute intervals.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a tool that helps businesses prioritize tasks based on their urgency and importance, named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States from 1953 to 1961, the matrix helps businesses and individuals differentiate between the urgent and important to prevent urgent things (seemingly useful in the short-term) cannibalize important things (critical for long-term success).
Prioritization plays a crucial role in every business. In an ideal world, businesses have enough time and resources to complete every task within a project satisfactorily. The MoSCoW method is a task prioritization framework. It is most effective in situations where many tasks must be prioritized into an actionable to-do list. The framework is based on four main categories that give it the name: Must have (M), Should have (S), Could have (C), and Won’t have (W).
An action priority matrix is a productivity tool that helps businesses prioritize certain tasks and objectives over others. The matrix itself is represented by four quadrants on a typical cartesian graph. These quadrants are plotted against the effort required to complete a task (x-axis) and the impact (benefit) that each task brings once completed (y-axis). This matrix helps assess what projects need to be undertaken and the potential impact for each.
Andy Grove, helped Intel become among the most valuable companies by 1997. In his years at Intel, he conceived a management and goal-setting system, called OKR, standing for “objectives and key results.” Venture capitalist and early investor in Google, John Doerr, systematized in the book “Measure What Matters.”
A SMART goal is any goal with a carefully planned, concise, and trackable objective. To be such a goal needs to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. Bringing structure and trackability to goal setting increases the chances goals will be achieved, and it helps align the organization around those goals.
The planning cycle enables organizations to perform activities successfully and achieve goals across projects of various sizes. The planning cycle is most effective for small to medium-sized projects.
Activity-based management (ABM) is a framework for determining the profitability of every aspect of a business. The end goal is to maximize organizational strengths while minimizing or eliminating weaknesses. Activity-based management can be described in the following steps: identification and analysis, evaluation and identification of areas of improvement.
Critical success factors (CSFs) are elements that must be met for an organization to achieve its goals. A critical success factors analysis might help businesses identify the opportunities based on the goals and missions of the business both short and long term.
AIOps is the application of artificial intelligence to IT operations. It has become particularly useful for modern IT management in hybridized, distributed, and dynamic environments. AIOps has become a key operational component of modern digital-based organizations, built around software and algorithms.
Agile started as a lightweight development method compared to heavyweight software development, which is the core paradigm of the previous decades of software development. By 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was born as a set of principles that defined the new paradigm for software development as a continuous iteration. This would also influence the way of doing business.
Agile Program Management is a means of managing, planning, and coordinating interrelated work in such a way that value delivery is emphasized for all key stakeholders. Agile Program Management (AgilePgM) is a disciplined yet flexible agile approach to managing transformational change within an organization.
Agile project management (APM) is a strategy that breaks large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. In the APM methodology, each project is completed in small sections – often referred to as iterations. Each iteration is completed according to its project life cycle, beginning with the initial design and progressing to testing and then quality assurance.
Agile Modeling (AM) is a methodology for modeling and documenting software-based systems. Agile Modeling is critical to the rapid and continuous delivery of software. It is a collection of values, principles, and practices that guide effective, lightweight software modeling.
Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA) is certification in the form of guidance and training for business analysts seeking to work in agile environments. To support this shift, AgileBA also helps the business analyst relate Agile projects to a wider organizational mission or strategy. To ensure that analysts have the necessary skills and expertise, AgileBA certification was developed.
Agile leadership is the embodiment of agile manifesto principles by a manager or management team. Agile leadership impacts two important levels of a business. The structural level defines the roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators. The behavioral level describes the actions leaders exhibit to others based on agile principles.
Bimodal Portfolio Management (BimodalPfM) helps an organization manage both agile and traditional portfolios concurrently. Bimodal Portfolio Management – sometimes referred to as bimodal development – was coined by research and advisory company Gartner. The firm argued that many agile organizations still needed to run some aspects of their operations using traditional delivery models.
Business innovation is about creating new opportunities for an organization to reinvent its core offerings, revenue streams, and enhance the value proposition for existing or new customers, thus renewing its whole business model. Business innovation springs by understanding the structure of the market, thus adapting or anticipating those changes.
Business modelinnovation is about increasing the success of an organization with existing products and technologies by crafting a compelling value proposition able to propel a new business model to scale up customers and create a lasting competitive advantage. And it all starts by mastering the key customers.
A consumer brand company like Procter & Gamble (P&G) defines “Constructive Disruption” as: a willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. According to P&G, it moves around four pillars: lean innovation, brand building, supply chain, and digitalization & data analytics.
That is a process that requires a continuous feedback loop to develop a valuable product and build a viable business model. Continuous innovation is a mindset where products and services are designed and delivered to tune them around the customers’ problem and not the technical solution of its founders.
A design sprint is a proven five-day process where critical business questions are answered through speedy design and prototyping, focusing on the end-user. A design sprint starts with a weekly challenge that should finish with a prototype, test at the end, and therefore a lesson learned to be iterated.
Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO, defined design thinking as “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Therefore, desirability, feasibility, and viability are balanced to solve critical problems.
DevOps refers to a series of practices performed to perform automated software development processes. It is a conjugation of the term “development” and “operations” to emphasize how functions integrate across IT teams. DevOps strategies promote seamless building, testing, and deployment of products. It aims to bridge a gap between development and operations teams to streamline the development altogether.
Product discovery is a critical part of agile methodologies, as its aim is to ensure that products customers love are built. Product discovery involves learning through a raft of methods, including design thinking, lean start-up, and A/B testing to name a few. Dual Track Agile is an agile methodology containing two separate tracks: the “discovery” track and the “delivery” track.
Feature-Driven Development is a pragmatic software process that is client and architecture-centric. Feature-Driven Development (FDD) is an agile software development model that organizes workflow according to which features need to be developed next.
eXtreme Programming was developed in the late 1990s by Ken Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Ward Cunningham. During this time, the trio was working on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) to help manage the company payroll system. eXtreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology. It is designed to improve software quality and the ability of software to adapt to changing customer needs.
The ICE Scoring Model is an agile methodology that prioritizes features using data according to three components: impact, confidence, and ease of implementation. The ICE Scoring Model was initially created by author and growth expert Sean Ellis to help companies expand. Today, the model is broadly used to prioritize projects, features, initiatives, and rollouts. It is ideally suited for early-stage product development where there is a continuous flow of ideas and momentum must be maintained.
An innovation funnel is a tool or process ensuring only the best ideas are executed. In a metaphorical sense, the funnel screens innovative ideas for viability so that only the best products, processes, or business models are launched to the market. An innovation funnel provides a framework for the screening and testing of innovative ideas for viability.
According to how well defined is the problem and how well defined the domain, we have four main types of innovations: basic research (problem and domain or not well defined); breakthrough innovation (domain is not well defined, the problem is well defined); sustaining innovation (both problem and domain are well defined); and disruptive innovation (domain is well defined, the problem is not well defined).
The innovation loop is a methodology/framework derived from the Bell Labs, which produced innovation at scale throughout the 20th century. They learned how to leverage a hybrid innovation management model based on science, invention, engineering, and manufacturing at scale. By leveraging individual genius, creativity, and small/large groups.
The Agile methodology has been primarily thought of for software development (and other business disciplines have also adopted it). Lean thinking is a process improvement technique where teams prioritize the value streams to improve it continuously. Both methodologies look at the customer as the key driver to improvement and waste reduction. Both methodologies look at improvement as something continuous.
A startup company is a high-tech business that tries to build a scalable business model in tech-driven industries. A startup company usually follows a lean methodology, where continuous innovation, driven by built-in viral loops is the rule. Thus, driving growth and building network effects as a consequence of this strategy.
Kanban is a lean manufacturing framework first developed by Toyota in the late 1940s. The Kanban framework is a means of visualizing work as it moves through identifying potential bottlenecks. It does that through a process called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing to optimize engineering processes, speed up manufacturing products, and improve the go-to-market strategy.
RAD was first introduced by author and consultant James Martin in 1991. Martin recognized and then took advantage of the endless malleability of software in designing development models. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a methodology focusing on delivering rapidly through continuous feedback and frequent iterations.
Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD) helps businesses discover a balanced approach to agile transition and scaling questions. The ScALed approach helps businesses successfully respond to change. Inspired by a combination of lean and agile values, ScALed is practitioner-based and can be completed through various agile frameworks and practices.
The Spotify Model is an autonomous approach to scaling agile, focusing on culture communication, accountability, and quality. The Spotify model was first recognized in 2012 after Henrik Kniberg, and Anders Ivarsson released a white paper detailing how streaming company Spotify approached agility. Therefore, the Spotify model represents an evolution of agile.
As the name suggests, TDD is a test-driven technique for delivering high-quality software rapidly and sustainably. It is an iterative approach based on the idea that a failing test should be written before any code for a feature or function is written. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an approach to software development that relies on very short development cycles.
Timeboxing is a simple yet powerful time-management technique for improving productivity. Timeboxing describes the process of proactively scheduling a block of time to spend on a task in the future. It was first described by author James Martin in a book about agile software development.
Scrum is a methodology co-created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland for effective team collaboration on complex products. Scrum was primarily thought for software development projects to deliver new software capability every 2-4 weeks. It is a sub-group of agile also used in project management to improve startups’ productivity.
Scrumban is a project management framework that is a hybrid of two popular agile methodologies: Scrum and Kanban. Scrumban is a popular approach to helping businesses focus on the right strategic tasks while simultaneously strengthening their processes.
Scrum anti-patterns describe any attractive, easy-to-implement solution that ultimately makes a problem worse. Therefore, these are the practice not to follow to prevent issues from emerging. Some classic examples of scrum anti-patterns comprise absent product owners, pre-assigned tickets (making individuals work in isolation), and discounting retrospectives (where review meetings are not useful to really make improvements).
Scrum at Scale (Scrum@Scale) is a framework that Scrum teams use to address complex problems and deliver high-value products. Scrum at Scale was created through a joint venture between the Scrum Alliance and Scrum Inc. The joint venture was overseen by Jeff Sutherland, a co-creator of Scrum and one of the principal authors of the Agile Manifesto.
Stretch objectives describe any task an agile team plans to complete without expressly committing to do so. Teams incorporate stretch objectives during a Sprint or Program Increment (PI) as part of Scaled Agile. They are used when the agile team is unsure of its capacity to attain an objective. Therefore, stretch objectives are instead outcomes that, while extremely desirable, are not the difference between the success or failure of each sprint.
The waterfall model was first described by Herbert D. Benington in 1956 during a presentation about the software used in radar imaging during the Cold War. Since there were no knowledge-based, creative software development strategies at the time, the waterfall method became standard practice. The waterfall model is a linear and sequential project management framework.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
