Managing Whitespace Activity

As you’re managing and working on any business project, there are tasks to complete yourself and tasks to assign to others. Then, these tasks need to be monitored to ensure quality completion as they are feeding up to the overall objective of completing the project.

This is how many project management processes and solutions work. And they really help move projects forward within a team.

But what about the tasks that you have that don’t fall into any project plan? All businesses have them. How do you manage those tasks?

These are called the Whitespace Tasks, or your Whitespace Activity - the work that you do that falls between planned projects, but still needs to be managed and tracked within your daily schedule and, hopefully, your project management solution.

Here is a list of the common whitespace tasks that need to be tracked

• Internal status meetings with team members and supervisors
• Checking and responding to your email
• Backing up your computer
• Updating a meeting agenda
• Making updates to your website content and design
• Any other task that falls into an ongoing pattern but doesn’t impact a specific project or goal

As you can see, tasks like this all have their own place in your daily and weekly work schedule. You just need to know how to manage them so your effort is tracked and you can schedule in the tasks you need to complete for the projects you are a part of as well.