Task Delegator

The Task Delegator is a convenient type of 11"x8" paper sheet designed specifically for aiding teams with delegating tasks for a project. It may be used by itself for simpler assignments, or in association with assignment description sheets for more complicated job descriptions.

The advantage of using one of these sheets is that it provides a fast visual reference, one which allows some democratic input from team members before an arrangement is settled. Each sheet can assign tasks to a team of up to 13 members, up from the 5-member team assignments for its first edition.

Inspiration
In the fall of 2008, the Streaming Media Production class at Bishop Hall of Ferris State was in a state of chaos. There were numerous videos that needed to be streamed to the servers, in preparation for Ferris developing FerrisState.TV as the new home for all Ferris TDMP activity. Connie's class was ultimately divided into teams, with different teams having to figure out who would be doing what task for every task involved in getting each video ready for streaming to the server.

Each video required each team to have a banner designer, site manager, graphics manager, encoder, and producer. Connie's overall initial setup for how to have each group that formed each class session decide who was doing what task was utter chaos, but nobody was sure of a better way to figure out task delegation. Nobody, that was, until the Dozerfleet founder got a sudden idea for a task delegation chart. But where to find the inspiration for how to shape it? A Google search soon yielded an image of a Simon.

First edition
The Dozerfleet founder soon downloaded (and started printing off) several grayscale images of that Simon game, having had the logos stripped and the spaces cleared away in Photoshop. The print-out became Task Delegator 1.0, capable of assigning up to five team members with specific titles. This tool, however, became one of many sources of envy from other classmates. Connie thought the idea of using a modified Simon as an organizational tool was highly unorthodox, but went along with it when she saw how practical it was for class purposes. The earliest known version of the Task Delegator dates to 9:59 AM EST on Tuesday, November 11th of 2008.

Evolution
To make the Task Delegator infringe a little less on any pre-existing design patents for the Simon, it was given a re-design around 5:00 PM EST on Saturday, November 24th of 2012. The redesign allowed for up to 13 task delegations. An option exists in this version for "squaring" the design, allowing the 13 spots to become zones in which a set of tasks can be divided into a sub-task, with teams divided into sub-teams. This allowed for up to 139 task assignments, more than most teams utilizing a Dozerfleet Labs Task Delegator would ever need. The version featured below for download is the Mark II.