Action Method makes it easy for marketers and business professionals to project manage while on the move, says Damian James, senior digital designer at RPM
Developed by Behance
Supporting devices: iPhone, Android, iPad
Action Method is a cross-platform project and task management app. Its main function is to manage a project and all its elements including planning your action steps, tracking time, delegating tasks, setting target dates and scheduling events. You can also add reference materials as notes, sketches, links or files, and you can store tasks or items for later use. Action Method is particularly popular in the creative industries; in fact, Apple uses it in the US in its creative department and it’s highly regarded for helping both individuals and businesses complete multiple projects.
Functionality
Accessible anywhere: What’s great is that whenever you log in, from whichever device you are using, Action Method automatically syncs. This means once you have created or amended a project it updates on all your devices, which is really useful if you’re on-the-go or using multiple platforms.
Fully scalable: The app is also helpful for personal use, as well as professional because it’s fully scalable. Whether you’re writing up a shopping list, planning your personal time or managing a business with multiple projects, it can benefit the user by helping them to map out their tasks in a clear, concise fashion.
Direct scheduling: If you’re managing a team, you can allocate tasks to a person with their email address. That request will then be sent to that particular person and they can respond to it. You can also add a schedule and a timeframe to it, so the recipient will know how long you expect it to take, or you could set up a person with their own project so you are able to track how much work they’ve got, and whether their inbox is too full.
Easy categorising and search: If you’re working with a larger team, you can categorise tasks and projects for each sub-team using the Groups function. There is also colour tagging if you want to highlight various projects or tasks differently. If you’ve got hundreds of projects with dozens of tasks within each project, you can quickly search specific projects and tasks within the system.
Nag and appreciate: If a task hasn’t been completed by a certain time and the staff member allocated that task hasn’t logged in to confirm it is finished, you can send a ‘nag’ – a gentle reminder to get something done. You can also send an appreciation to someone to show that you like the way they are working.
Time management: Action Method schedules people’s time so they can plan ahead. You can easily customise your projects, action steps, events and team members. Everything is interchangeable so you can move one task to another project or group, or you can reallocate it to a new person. You can also participate with others in a forum-like area called ‘discussions’ and there is the option to organise face-to-face meetings.
Easy prioritising: The app makes it very easy to prioritise tasks. You can shift and rearrange the list of tasks you need to tackle, and you can see how long your project manager is hoping it’s going to take you to do something. You have the option of placing items on the backburner, which is ideal when you’re juggling multiple tasks and working out priorities.
Design
Action Method has been designed extremely well in that it is very user friendly. The interface is simple, intuitive, clear and very responsive. It is also very graphic in the way that it presents information. Blocks are used for each project and task, which are presented in Post-it style notes that you can move around the screen and rearrange depending on what’s more important.
Overall opinion
Action Method has all the basics that a good project management solution should offer, but it’s not trying to be too clever. It really is the virtual equivalent of a whiteboard or post-it note system. My only criticism would be that Action Method doesn’t have Gantt charts, which I know are used by many project managers. They would be a great feature to help visualise the overall summary of a project.
