Work Management

A few years ago at Viessmann, Professor Martin Viessmann and his son Max (now co-CEO) realized how important it is for their heating and air conditioning company to enter the era of smart devices and the Internet of Things. In addition to incorporating product innovations, he also wanted to improve the internal workings of the company, guiding Viessmann’s activities and operational teams into what he calls “the era of effective collaboration”.

Understandably, the Viessmann family believed in the importance of mastering technology. Viessmann is a century-old company, and for Martin and Max, the organization has always needed to continually modernize its products and its work to continue to prosper decade after decade.

This is where Alexander Pöllmann, Smart Office & Collaboration Manager at Viessmann, comes in. You were responsible for planning and implementing the “workplace of the future” and for embracing the “age of effective collaboration” at Viessmann. This would allow the century-old company to enter the world of ultra-modern and advanced home appliances.

This is where Alexander Pöllmann, Smart Office & Collaboration Manager at Viessmann, comes in. You were responsible for planning and implementing the “workplace of the future” and for embracing the “age of effective collaboration” at Viessmann. This would allow the century-old company to enter the world of ultra-modern and advanced home appliances.

Facilitates Project Coordination

The concept of work management is gaining popularity and is meaningful to many people, at least in theory. However, in practice, what is work management and how can you make your team’s project coordination less stressful and clearer? Effective project management helps teams organize activities, manage responsibilities, and coordinate tasks to achieve shared goals.

As the Viessmann example illustrates, a work management platform allows teams to easily coordinate, whether in the office or on a remote or distributed team. Let’s see what it consists of.

Work management orders the context within the collaboration. The what and how and where you and your team do the work. As you can imagine, due to the different tools that people use in their work, the connection between context and collaboration doesn’t come naturally. Especially in a remote work environment. You need to carefully consider how your technology resources can help you bridge this gap in a transparent way. These three tiers of technology resources will help you more easily link context and coordination.

Communication

You probably have already got a range of communication tools at your disposal, such as email, Zoom, and Slack. Your group now wishes to find the right balance to communicate with these tools and determine which of them to use based on the form of contact.

Clear communication is also important when defining project requirements and expectations. Preparing better project proposals can help teams communicate objectives, responsibilities, timelines, and expected outcomes before work begins.

Coordination

As important as your communication tools and content repositories are, it’s difficult to collaborate and coordinate effectively as a team without a work management platform like Asana. This last layer provides clarity, such as knowing who is doing what and when, and provides context for the work your team is doing as the sole source of referrals.

Adding this layer of coordination and a single source of referrals to technology resources with a work management platform is vital for successful teams. It provides an active system with which anyone can view, analyze and manage team priorities from a single place.

Much of the work we do involves continuous or repetitive processes, although you probably haven’t even realized. Once you have a clear idea of what your team needs to achieve and who is doing what and when, a great way to save time and effectively implement your plans is to know which processes can be optimized. By finding repetitive processes that can be automated, your team will be able to work more efficiently and effectively to achieve goals.

Defining the boundaries of each task through scope management also helps teams understand what work is included, prevent unnecessary tasks, and keep project activities aligned with their objectives.