When To Assign Tasks To Multiple Team Members

Teamwork is essential to completing projects on time. Once tasks are assigned, team members need to execute their tasks with conviction and focus. In most cases, simple tasks can be handled by individual team members. But when it comes to bigger, more complex tasks, multiple team members need to be often involved.

Who's Responsible?

If a single task is assigned to multiple team members, who's responsible for it? Ideally, you'd say that each assigned member is responsible. But let's face it, we all have busy schedules. If a task is assigned to multiple team members, each member may think that another member is handling it.

Let's take an example. If a task is assigned to both Alice and Bob, then Alice might think that Bob's doing it while Bob thinks that Alice is doing it. And given the constant stream of emails, notifications, meetings, and the buzz of business, Alice and Bob may fail to communicate with each other. The result? The task may get missed entirely. And by the time Alice & Bob realize what's happened, it'll probably be too late.

Apple's DRI Solution

Apple's Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) system clearly and unambiguously allocates responsibility for tasks. The system is pretty simple too. Each task is assigned to one (and only one) team member. This way, there cannot be any ambiguity or uncertainty.

This system has been adopted by a number of companies such as Gitlab and Tettra. It's clearly worked for Apple and seems to be working for others too. But what do you do when a task needs multiple team members to collaborate?

What About Collaborative Tasks?

It'd certainly be nice if all tasks could be independently executed by an individual. But in reality, tasks often require teammates to collaborate with each other. In such cases, how does DRI work?

DRI has a simple solution. Instead of assigning a task to multiple team members, break the task into smaller chunks, and then assign each chunk to a single team member. Each chunk should be small enough that a single person should be able to handle it. If a chunk requires the involvement of more than one person, it just means that the chunk is not small enough.

Breaking Down Complex Tasks

Let's say your marketing department wants to publish a case study about one of your most successful clients. While publishing the case study may seem like a single task, it actually has lots of moving parts.

You'll need to:

1. set up an interview with the client,
2. conduct and record the interview,
3. write the case study,
4. create accompanying artwork or graphics,
5. proofread everything,
6. publish the case study on your website, and
7. include the case study in the email newsletter.

If you assign the task of publishing the case study to Alice, Bob & Eve, there's less clarity in terms of who's responsible for what. Instead, as per the DRI system, you should think of each item from the above list as a separate task and hence assign it separately.

Don't Break Down Too Much

When you start breaking down tasks, you may be tempted to break them down too much. For example, the task of publishing a case study can be broken as follows:

1. email client about setting up an interview,
2. send a calendar-invite for fixing the interview date,
3. conduct and record the interview,
4. transcribe the recorded interview,
5. write an outline for the case study,
6. fill in the outline, thus completing the case study,
7. select a royalty-free image for creating artwork,
8. edit the royalty-free image, thus completing the artwork,
9. spell-check everything,
10. proofread everything,
11. create a blank webpage for publishing the case study,
12. copy-paste the completed case study,
13. include the completed artwork,
14. draft relevant email-copy for the newsletter,
15. proofread the newsletter-copy, and
16. send the newsletter.

The above list is clearly far too specific. Most businesses, especially SMBs don't need this level of accountability. While breaking down tasks seems to be useful, it shouldn't lead to an obsession.

Finding The Middle Ground

Clearly, there's ought to be some meaningful middle ground between not breaking down tasks at all and breaking them down too much.

But here's what I've learned: Bigger the company, greater the level of breakdown required. And the reason behind this is two-fold.

Firstly, large companies have lots of employees and different employees handle different things. For a large company, for instance, the person who writes the outline for the case study may be different from the person who'll actually write the entire case study.

Secondly, the allocation of responsibility typically concerns large-companies. Small businesses and teams just know who's responsible for what. This is especially true for teams with under 25 members. Most companies with under 25 employees have a flat organizational structure. In such companies, tasks can usually be assigned to multiple team members without causing confusion or chaos.

BoardBell's Primary Assignee Structure

BoardBell is built specifically for SMBs. The platform lets you assign tasks to multiple team members. However, to maintain clarity with regard to responsibility allocation, the first assignee is considered to be the primary assignee.

In BoardBell, you assign a card to Alice, Bob, and Eve. As Alice was assigned first, she's the primary assignee. When you open the card's expanded view by clicking on the card, each assignee will be listed, in the order of assignment.

But once you close the card's expanded view, only the first assignee will be visible, along with a numeral indicating the number of non-primary assignees. Continuing the above example, you'll see 'Alice + 2', indicating that Alice is the primary assignee and there are two other assignees.

Conclusion

The whole point of Apple's DRI system is to clearly allocate responsibilities. If you're a small team, you may be able to assign tasks to multiple team members and still maintain a clear sense of who's responsible for what. In either case, BoardBell's primary assignee system can help you assign tasks optimally. Sign up for free to try it out!