Defintion
Task Instruction is the Instruction found in the Task Description Field written by the Task Creator. Sometimes the images related to the Task Instruction will be pasted into the Task Comment, which consists of part of the Task Instruction.
The Task Instruction will be attached to SKUd# level, which means 1 SKUd# will only have 1 Task Instruction, and 1 Task Instruction will only attach to 1 SKUd#.
All the Task Specification (e.g. Start Date and End Date of a Task) which is modified by a particular button and is not modified inside the Task Description Field , is not regarded as part of the Task Instruction.
What Problems a Task Instruction Framework Solves
Ambiguous Task Scope which make the Task not executable
Imagine if the Task Creator wrote an instruction in the Task Description and simply told you to make USD$10 million net profit in the upcoming 365 days. Anyone with common sense will realise that this is not a Task which can be executed by one person. Instead of naming it as a “Task”, it is better to name it as an “Objective” which should be broken down into hundreds of tasks and executed by a whole company.
The more ambiguous the Task Description , the higher authority the Task Creator should assign to the Task Executor to make a decision, and the higher requirement of the Task Executor.
In this sense, a Task Instruction Framework is going to provide a benchmark on how to define the Task Scope by writing the Task Description which makes the Task executable by the assigned Task Executor.
Ambiguous meaning of the Wording
While with different culture , employment and academic background, it is very likely that each person will use different wording or technical terms to describe the same phenomenon with a Task Instruction.
For example, when a client is asking you to place an ad on Facebook, he/she may probably refer to Meta where your ads are supposed to be shown in both Facebook, Instagram , Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp.
In this case, the wording “Facebook” has ambiguous meaning that it can be referred to a Company or a particular Social Media.
While the wording with ambiguous meaning occurs in the Task Instruction, whether or not that Task can be executed accurately will be by chance, which means additional communication cost and error fixing cost will be incurred.
Even worse, imagine if your superior provides you a word inside the Task instruction with ambiguous meaning which drives you to execute the Task wrongly, do you dare to stand up and request your superior to improve the skill of writing Task Instruction next time?
Most of the time people (if not you) will not give feedback to their superior because it will take risks of being blame. While they have learnt and transformed ,next time when they encounter another wording with ambiguous meaning in the Task instruction, to avoid being blame (which is always in a higher priority than making achievement) they will become bureaucratic and will simply passively pause the task and wait for the instruction from their superior and resume the Task after the wording is clearly defined, instead of proactively suggest the meaning of the wording which they think is approproate for the Task.
Their action makes the Task not wrong as the mistakes can be avoided , while at the same time it also they also did not make anything correct as the Task Task is paused. This “not wrong but also not right” phenomenon called Bureaucratic.
This poisoned bureaucratic culture will bring an organisation to shrink (if not die) gradually. All of these are starting from an ambiguous wording inside an Task Instruction.
By applying a Task Instruction Framework, we will make sure that the Task Instruction to be as crystal clear as it can be , which in turn makes the Task Instruction executable without any trap left to the Task Executor.
Time on writing duplicated Instruction
While most of the Task Instruction of the same SKUd is expected to have same Task Objective, Task Input and Output. Repeating writing the same instruction for same Task will be a waste of time.
Task Instruction in Teamwork.com is expected to modularize the Task Instruction so a particular Task Instruction can be repeatedly used in another project.
Components of an Task Instruction
To Achieve the objective A Task Instruaction, following componets are required to be shown in the Task Instruction every time. The componets of the Task Instruction will be denoted as “[]”.
[Basic Service Scope]
The [Basic Service Scope] describes the scope of service that
[Optional]
The [Optional] component declared the condition which this SKUd
Leave a Reply