When dealing with a large volume of items, tasks, todos, etc. try to Kanbabize your work and workflow. Put a few Kanban swim lanes together on paper, whiteboard, JIRA board or use any of the online tools like Trello – https://trello.com/ to organize your work. Your goal is to move items from left to right and across the finish line to “Done” or some finish state as effectively and efficiently as you can eliminating unnecessary delays and waste.

Also, if you’re working as part of the team to get a lot of things done in a crunch time, treat it as an Agile Sprint with 2 week “release” increments and setup some of the Agile ceremonies to help you get aligned with the team and get stuff done. Here are the best practices from Agile that I’ve employed on team activities ranging from standing up Offshore Delivery Centers (ODC) to getting through a backlog of large volumes of unsigned SOWs. Offer this type of “Sprint” to your customer, you’d be surprised how it gels and aligns all parties together to act as a team and get it done:

• organize a team
• assign or understand roles & responsibilities
• assign a lead, “Scrum Master”, PM to drive it
• make sure everyone knows we’re treating a project as Agile
• setup a Sprint cycle to 1 or 2 week increments
• Setup daily or every other day “Stand-up” meeting or call to align on what has been done, what individuals are working on next, any obstacles in a way
• Capture status and share Stand-up meeting notes, action items with everyone after the meeting