Task Cards

How to create and use Task Cards on your matter management boards with information on them such as: Status, Start date, Assigned to, Priority

Our example here is a matter-management board to be used on the buy-side of an M&A transaction involving the purchase of shares. Whoever is organizing the work (Senior Associate? Project Manager...) has the Admin rights within the software to organize the board’s set-up,

The column headings are the same ones that are set out in the Guide. The “To Do: Not Started” column has already been loaded with cards for the different tasks we’ve thought of. You can see cards for tasks grouped by Due Diligence, Issues, and Document categories.

In this example the various post-closing phases (e.g. like registration of the share transfer, integration of the target business, purchase price adjustment) would be included on a separate board; that makes it easier to focus on the work at hand.

These headings here would make sense to most M&A lawyers - but you can tailor the headings so they capture the phases that meet your project management and reporting needs.

To add a new task, click on the “Add” button either at the top left, or at the bottom of the “To Do: Not Started” column. This opens the “Add task” window, which allows you to add basic information to create the card.

You will want to indicate the category of work that the task belongs to. There’s no right or wrong answer; you simply have to decide what makes the most sense to you and how your team works.

Click on “Add” to actually create the card. You can see that a new card has been added to the bottom of the To Do: "Not Started” column.

You can click on the title of the card to open the “Task details” window. Here’s where you can complete the rest of the information on the new task card.

You will want to fill in all the information you currently have (you can always add or change the information later):

• Start date / Due date fields: Assign dates, if relevant and known
  • Since not every task is equally date-dependent, maybe you don’t want to use dates, but adding dates is very helpful as it allows you to track work against a timeline.
• Assignee field:  While a task may involve different people at different times in the process, now is the time to assign to this task to the first person who has to work on it. You can change the Assignee as the card moves through the process.
• Priority field: Labeling a task as a High Priority will create a very visual cue by putting a little exclamation point beside the title card - you can filter the board using any of the fields (it can be so helpful to see all the "High" priority items and their status.)
• List field: This is the category for this task - use the drop down to choose the category that best fits (for you.)

• Description field: You can add more details here - but only do so if this adds value (otherwise you are wasting time.)

• Attachments field: Link to any important document(s) related to this task.

• Reminders field: you can create a trigger that will send an email reminder to the person or the people on a task, reminding them, for example, that the deadline to complete the phase that they’re working on, is fast approaching.

• Comments field: you can add comments that are relevant to this particular task.

FYI: Most software gives you an audit trail so you can see who created the card and tracks each time it’s amended.