What Is the Future of Task Management?

February 2020 #CollabTalk TweetJamAfter years of strongly-worded community feedback, Microsoft has been making major progress in their efforts to create a unified strategy around task management. While Microsoft has made a number of investments in project management tools and capabilities (MS Project, Project Server, Project 365, Planner, Wunderlist, To-Do, Outlook), the competitive landscape has continued to expand…with no clear winner. In fact, Excel has largely remained the tool of choice for many project managers. With the rise of agile and kanban-based task management tools, Microsoft finally began making a move, leading to the latest efforts to consolidate task management across workloads — with Planner and ToDo at the center of their strategy.

If project and task management is your passion (or part of your role), then you will not want to miss the next #CollabTalk TweetJam on Wednesday, February 26th at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern as we convene to discuss “The Evolution of Task Management.”  Participate in the discussion with other members of the community as we share ideas, discuss pain points, and agree-to-disagree on the tools, methodologies, and KPIs that drive our businesses.

You can join the community discussion using Twitter and the #CollabTalk hashtag or your favorite Twitter platform. You do not need to be an “expert” to participate in the online conversation, and can ask questions, comment on the questions posed, or just “lurk” in the background. These online discussions are open to anyone — you do not have to be on the panel to participate.

This month’s tweetjam and our amazing stats are once again being sponsored by our friends at tyGraph.

If you have never participated in one of these tweetjams, it’s pretty simple: anyone can jump in and share their thoughts, or just lurk in the wings and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Either way, it’ll be a TON of content to consume in a single hour. You can follow the live session using the Twitter UI of your choice (Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, whatever). How it works is that I’ll post a series of questions every few minutes, and people will respond to Q1, Q2, Q3 and so forth with A1, A2, A3, always including the #CollabTalk hashtag with their answers. Feel free to reply as often (or as little) as you’d like, ask your own follow up questions, share relevant links, re-tweet others, and engage with the audience.

The questions we will discuss during the session include:

  1. How has the nature of task management changed/evolved over the past decade?
  2. What are your primary tools for task management, and why?
  3. Within your organization, what are the gaps for end user adoption of task management?
  4. What do you think will be the impact of Microsoft’s task management consolidation strategy?
  5. What is the role of AI and automation in your task management activities?
  6. What can organizations do to improve adoption of their project and task management activities?
  7. What guidance would you like to provide to Microsoft as they move forward with their task management strategy?

As always, there will be side-questions, side-conversations, and wise-cracking throughout. This is open to the public, so please join in the discussion! The dialog is usually thought-provoking but also fun.

Participating on this panel (so far):

  • Al Eardley (@al_eardley), head of modern workplace at CPS (Corporate Project Solutions)
  • Jared Shockley (@jshoq), senior systems engineer at Microsoft
  • Erica Toelle (@ericatoelle), Office Apps & Services MVP and Microsoft Compliance consultant
  • Sarah Haase (@sarahhaase), Microsoft MVP, corporate collaboration evangelist & librarian, organizer of SPS Twin Cities
  • Rick Garcia (@SilentRick), SharePoint project manager at United Airlines
  • Phil Worrell (@worrelpa), ICT engineer and business analyst at Swisscom
  • Randy Drisgill (@drisgill), SharePoint MVP and branding and design expert at Rackspace
  • John White (@diverdown1964), SharePoint MVP and cto at UnlimitedViz and tyGraph
  • Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), SharePoint MVP and owner of Focal Point Solutions
  • Ed Senez (@edsenez), president at UnlimitedViz and TyGraph
  • Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), SharePoint MVP and owner of Focal Point Solutions
  • Nick Brattoli (@Byrdttoli), Microsoft MVP, founder and lead consultant at Byrdttoli Enterprise Consulting
  • Kevin McDonnell (@kevmcdonk), senior technical architect at Ballard Chalmers
  • Fabian Williams (@fabianwilliams), Microsoft @OfficeDev @VisualStudio & @XamarinHQ MVP
  • Jennifer Mason (@jennifermason), SharePoint MVP and vp of workforce transformation & learning at Planet Technologies
  • Laura Rogers (@WonderLaura), SharePoint MVP, consultant, and owner of IW Mentor
  • Harry Brelsford (@harrybrelsford), ceo of SMB Nation
  • Eric Riz (@rizinsights), SharePoint MVP and ceo of Empty Cubicle
  • Darrell Webster (@DarrellaaS), Office Apps & Services MVP and co-founder REgarding365.com
  • Virgil Carroll (@vcmonkey), head monkey at High Monkey
  • Sherman Woo (@SPsherm), business solutions consultant at Uptempo Consulting, co-founder SPS Vancouver
  • Nikkia Carter (@ladygwenavear), worldwide modern workplace tech strategy lead at Microsoft, worldwide commercial business (WCB), one commercial partner (OCP) tech team
  • Thomas Stensitzki (@stensitzki), Office Apps & Services MVP and owner of Granikos GmbH & Co. KG
  • Hal Hostetler (@TVWizard), Microsoft MVP and senior field engineer and social media coordinator for Roland, Schorr & Tower
  • Kurt Kragh Sørensen (@KurtKragh),  intranet consultant and owner of IntraTeam.com
  • Adnan Amin (@adnan_amin), Office Apps & Services MVP, #SharePoint architect and technology evangelist
  • and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Microsoft MVP & RD, founder & ceo of CollabTalk LLC

If you would like to join our panel, please drop me a line. If you have questions, please connect with me via @buckleyplanet. And thank you again to tyGraph for your support of these CollabTalk tweetjams! And finally, if you are interested in being a sponsor of a future tweetjam, please contact me at CollabTalk. Our next tweetjam will be held on February 25th.

Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is the Director of North American Partner Management for leading ISV Rencore (https://rencore.com/), leads content strategy for TekkiGurus, and is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits. He hosts the monthly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.