There is a broad spectrum of methods that will considerably enhance the output of your team without making them unhappy and pressured at work.

In this article, we’ve compiled what we think are 3 highly efficient ways of maximizing productivity, without damaging the wellbeing of your colleagues. These are essential business skills for everyone so let’s dive right in, shall we?

1. Tap into technology

We’re living in a bizarre era — technology dramatically shortens our attention spans, yet it can also act as a remedy to these adverse effects. Science has an intriguing new field called Neuroergonomics that focuses on the optimization of human productivity by using technology and psychological loopholes.

Because we’ve advanced so much in understanding how our brain works, this has created the right environment for app developers, cognitive scientists, and productivity freaks to develop apps that help teams and individuals skyrocket their input without substantial emotional and cognitive costs.

Here are a few apps that might be useful on your next project:

• Brain FM — the app allows people to listen to music in a variety of genres that has AI-generated waves incorporated in it. These waves considerably improve a person’s ability to focus, meditate, and even sleep.
• Freedom — this service is very simple, yet it is absolutely instrumental in maintaining your focus for more extended periods. The tool allows you to efficiently eliminate all distractions like social media or app from your workflow, whether you’re using a phone or a computer.
• Focusmate — this takes advantage of a human psychological peculiarity, which, in effect, allows users to considerably improve their productivity, especially with tedious tasks. It’s sort of a digital co-working space. When accessing Focusmate, you can schedule 50-minute sessions with like-minded people that are also in need of an accountability buddy.

2. Don’t let your team multitask

While we’re used to thinking that multitasking is an excellent way of sorting out a more significant number of tasks in a shorter amount of time — it actually can’t be further from the truth. Working on multiple tasks will pretty much paralyze your productivity and decrease the quality of your work.

There is now a body of research that has unanimously concluded that multitasking is nothing but unnecessary stress to the nervous system, which is terrible in itself, but the problem is that it doesn’t really make you work better or faster.

So be very mindful when you’re going to manage task distribution. It’s best to assign larger, more cohesive tasks, which they can turn into subtasks, and focus on a single task at a time.

This is one of the reasons why the Pomodoro technique has been such a success. You work in increments of 25 minutes, and you focus on one task only.

What “productivity freaks” ultimately chase is the so-called state of “flow.” It’s a concept introduced by Hungarian Scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which is a state of peak cognitive performance, associated with a lack of awareness of time, due to being so engrossed by the task you’re working on. There’s one essential precondition — your assignment needs to be challenging enough and not too complicated to find it demotivating. You can never achieve flow by multitasking since it’s simply too stressful.

3. Gamify work

Gamification is another “trick” that we take advantage of, due to the way our brains are wired. Every single time you tick an item from your task list, your dopamine levels will elevate. You’re getting a reward for the work that you’ve done, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant.

In effect, this creates an exciting correlation between investing effort into a task you need to do with a pleasant reward in the form of a feel-good hormone. This is what gamification is in a nutshell.

By gamifying work, you’re conditioning your brain to improve your productivity, in order to get more tasks done and experience a dopamine rush once more.

Here’s a list of apps you can use to gamify your team’s workflow:

• Do It Now
• Habitica
• MindSnacks
• Fitocracy
• SuperBetter
• Thirty — Get Inspired

In one scientific trial, gamification has shown to increase the employees’ ability to learn new information by 40%. According to Gabe Zichermann, founder of Dopamine Inc., if a company manages to structure itself like a well-designed game, they’ll be able to retain their most valuable workers and engage them even more.

Conclusion

It is not an easy task to improve productivity in a project team. However, by gradually implementing these principles in your team’s workflow, you’ll be able to improve its efficiency, with no detriment to mental health and job satisfaction.

Similarly, these approaches give your team members a certain amount of autonomy, which is representative of the trust you have in them to manage their work as responsible people.

Good luck!

The post Improve Productivity in Your Project Team Without Strict Deadlines appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

With studies showing how the visualization of information can counterbalance cognitive overload, more and more project managers are turning to the use of a 60 year old Japanese method called Kanban  to help bring clarity to today’s projects and help team members achieve their goals.

Thanks to the cloud and its ever-present mobile connectivity, Kanban has been updated and is making a digital comeback in digital form.

Visual cards

The Japanese term “Kanban” means visual card. A Kanban system includes a board which has been divided into several columns, one for each project workflow. The most basic boards have three columns – ‘To Do’, ‘In Progress’ and ‘Done’. Cards are placed under each category to represent project workflows, moving through the columns as tasks progress.

This provides immediate clarity regarding any project, no matter how complex, as it allows team members to easily absorb large amounts of information and visualise what everyone is working on. In other words, Kanban boards enable smooth team collaboration, boosting team productivity.

Simple yet efficient

Studies carried out in the fields of group psychology and behavioural science show the brain processes images far more easily than it does text. By visualising information, people can counterbalance cognitive overload, which occurs when they receive too much information or too many tasks simultaneously, not being able to process information properly.

Interestingly, while it is now that the Kanban approach is gaining popularity in businesses across the world, it was first developed by Toyota in post-war Japan, when the country sought to revive its industry by improving production levels. Following Toyota’s positive results, Kanban started being recognized as a tool for eliminating uncertainty and promoting sensible and appropriate follow-through actions.

21^st Century Kanban

As today’s workforce tends to be mobile and geographically dispersed, the traditional office Kanban board is no longer functional as a central hub. Instead, digital Kanban boards have the potential to be key project management tools.

Based on the cloud, the updated Kanban board can bring together team members located in different parts of the world, offering real time overviews of the projects they’re working on, which they can access from laptops, tablets or mobile phones.

Digital Kanban boards facilitate the transfer of knowledge, joint problem solving and coordinating individual commitments. When each team member enjoys such benefits a ripple effect takes place, ultimately improving individual performances and the management of projects by bringing clarity and simplicity to processes.

The best Kanban tools also enable transparency and communication among team members, reinforcing their good behaviour and sense of personal responsibility. Underpinned by social features such as conversation chains, feedback features and activity streams, social tools offer full insight into who is in possession of what information, who is doing what and when – even showing who has or hasn’t completed their tasks on time.

By quickly obtaining information and being able to make swift decisions, team members can then connect effectively with others within the organization who can contribute to their work. This facilitates an open work culture with full transparency, self-organization and engagement as the main ingredients, eliminating the need for managers to attend endless touch-base meetings.

Key to efficient project management

We live and work in an increasingly connected and complex environment. To operate more efficiently, project managers are adopting new ways of working. They are starting to use the latest cloud collaboration and project management platforms in order to build collaborative communities within their organisations and increase their efficiency and competitiveness.

Digital boards are therefore key to enabling flatter organisational structures where managers can prioritize tasks and where team members can become more involved in the decision-making process.

The post New technologies revolutionise Kanban appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

A new business world

Already, companies are seeing the effects of new digital and social trends. New regulations for flexible working in European countries including the UK will lead workers to increasingly expect new schedule agreements. By the year 2020, employees will gain even more autonomy thanks to 5G connectivity, which is predicted to be up to 100 times faster than 4G.

Thanks to high-speed connections, it won’t be necessary for employees to live close to their company’s offices, or even in the same country. Workers could soon choose to work for employers anywhere in the world and oversee the most rewarding projects from the comfort of their homes, while being adapting their schedule to their own needs, provided they achieve the project’s goals.

Whether they are digital at the core or not, every company will be influenced by permanent connectivity. In this way, a novice electrician will carry out his job wearing a camera, while taking instructions from a senior electrician located elsewhere. Similarly, one doctor will be able to guide another’s movements in an operating room on the other side of the world, in real time. With the proper tools and documents accessible to the right people through a shared cloud, it won’t matter anymore where team members are working on a project.

What’s more, large investments in desk-bound computers are coming to an end as many businesses implement BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, meaning they won’t necessarily have to allocate large amounts of budget to reap the benefits of 5G connectivity. As well as the IT departments, employees – who prefer to use operating systems and mobile devices they know well – will have a big say in technology decisions.

Increasing productivity

By embracing new ways of working and comprehending new cloud based project management platforms, businesses are operating more efficiently and increasing their competitiveness while their organisational cultures are becoming more collaborative.

More and more, employees are using online collaboration tools to exchange knowledge, solve problems and better manage projects. By being more connected, teams are essentially becoming increasingly productive and engaged.

Changes in project management

Thanks to full service project management tools, managers and team members can work on any type of project, no matter how complex, from anywhere in the world. Cloud technology enables easy and secure access to any type of file from laptops, phones and tablets, and allows several team members to work on the same document simultaneously without version conflicts. The latest project management platforms also allow instant messaging among team members, promoting open and transparent communication.

A good example of how this can be done is the use of Kanban boards, visual systems in which task cards are placed in columns labelled ‘To do’, ‘In Progress’ and ‘Done’. While they have long been seen as useful tools, it is their digital version which is truly taking centre stage. Digital Kanban boards have the potential to be at the heart of all communications and actions, offering a clear sense of evolution as work progresses and relevant task cards are moved into the appropriate columns.

We often think of technological changes as being complex. But in truth, the always connected world enables a return to simplicity and structure, as management is made easier and people are freed from the constraints of place and time.

Business growth

Cloud technology is already helping teams to become more and more involved in decision making. Collaborative cloud based tools are facilitating communication, contributing to making team members more effective while making them feel that they are part of a tight group.

Not only are teams working on their own terms, but they are also becoming increasingly productive, ultimately driving business growth.

Thanks to cloud technology and the advent of 5G networks, an uninterrupted, always connected environment is changing the way we live and work. Within the permanently connected world, the keys to business and personal growth will be to constantly adapt, stay on top of developments and harness new communication technologies.

The post How businesses will change in the age of full connectivity appeared first on Project Accelerator News.