How to delegate tasks to team members

At Halden Architects, Elena Ruiz, the principal, mentions the stair on Northstar Offices to Priya Shah on her way to a client meeting: "Can you have a look at the stair details?" Priya hears "mark up what you think is wrong" and plans to do it next week. Elena means "revise the details for the new riser heights before Thursday's issue". On Wednesday evening Elena opens the set, finds the old details, and redraws them herself until nine.

Nobody did anything wrong, and the result is the one every principal knows: the work comes back to the busiest person in the studio. "Have a look" had no outcome and no date. Priya didn't know the details were going out on Thursday. And Elena never heard Priya agree to Thursday, so she couldn't know it wasn't happening.

Most delegation advice says assign the task, then check in. It skips the step in the middle, where the other person takes the work on, and that step is what Arkscape, a project tracking tool for architects, designers, and engineers, is built around. Without it, checking in is how you find out the work was never accepted.

Choose the work and the person, then write it down

A principal who keeps every decision becomes the studio's bottleneck. Keep what only you can do: the client relationship, fees and contracts, and design direction at the reviews that set it. Delegate the rest, especially the work that runs on a date: coordination with consultants, schedules, detail revisions within a direction you've agreed, and the chasing.

Choose the person by two questions. Who has room this week? And who would this help grow? A project architect who has never run a consultant coordination meeting learns it by running one, with you at the next review.

In a spreadsheet, the team workload tracking guide shows how to read who has room from a plain task list, with no hours logged.

In Arkscape, open the project group's Reports tab before you assign and read Workload by person. It shows the open cards each person is responsible for, how many are overdue, how many they completed in the period, and how many are still awaiting their answer.

Then write the request so it can't be misread. A delegated task needs four things written down:

1. The outcome, as a title that says what done means.
2. The date, and whether it's fixed.
3. Why it matters, including what waits on it.
4. What done looks like, so you both know when it's finished.

Elena's corridor request, written properly:

Stair detail revisions
Due: Thursday, 10am (fixed: the set issues Thursday afternoon)

Why: the riser heights changed after the level 2 floor build-up
was revised. The contractor prices the stair from this issue.

Done looks like:
- Sections 1 to 4 revised for the new riser heights
- Handrail detail checked against the new heights
- Sheets updated in the issue set, with revision clouds

It takes two minutes to write. It saves the evening Elena spent redrawing.

In Arkscape, create a card with the outcome as its title and set the due date. Put the why in the notes, which hold up to 5,000 characters, and use Add checklist for what done looks like, so each item can be ticked as it's finished.

Ask for a yes, and treat a no as information

Send the request and ask for an answer: yes, or no with a reason. Make it easy to say no: a decline on Monday costs a conversation, and a silent miss on Thursday costs the issue. Until you have the yes, the task is still yours.

A decline with a reason is the system working. "I can't by Thursday, I'm on the Harbor Clinic door schedule until Wednesday" tells you exactly what to decide. You have four options:

1. Move the date, if it isn't fixed.
2. Take something else off their plate, and say which.
3. Give it to someone else.
4. Keep it yourself, knowingly, this time.

What you shouldn't do is reassign it silently or push it back to them unchanged. If you insist, say so out loud and take the other work off them.

In Arkscape, choose the card's Responsible person with Assign to.... They get a request in Ark Requests, the inbox button on their board, and answer with Accept or Decline. Until they accept, the card stays off their Ark and shows "Invited, not yet accepted" under Responsible. If they haven't read it in the app, an Action items email reaches them after about 5 minutes. Making yourself Responsible needs no acceptance.

Declining opens Decline invitation with an optional message of up to 500 characters, which you read in the Updates tab of your Ark Requests. To give the card to someone else, use Reassign to... in the Responsible menu; the previous person is told. A request nobody has answered yet can be withdrawn.

Check the work, not the person

Agree at the start when you'll look: the midpoint of a week-long task, or the morning before the date. Then read the work. Has the checklist moved? Has the date changed? Is there a question waiting for you? Ask only about what the work can't tell you.

Leave the method to the person doing it. If Priya revises the stair in a different order than you would, or draws the handrail differently but correctly, that's hers to decide. Review against what done looks like, not against how you'd have done it. If you do need to finish it yourself, say so, and say why. Quietly redoing someone's work teaches them not to bother next time.

In Arkscape, open the card and expand its History to see what changed and when: dates, notes, completion, and every assignment step. For a whole project, the Delegation panel in the group's Reports tab shows Assigned, Accepted, Declined, Median time to accept, Acceptance rate, Waiting on someone now, and Open with no owner. Reports never include time online or login activity: they show the work, not the person.

Completing a card someone else is Responsible for asks Why are you completing this card?, and an answer is required. The Responsible person receives it, so taking work back is never silent.

A delegation routine in Arkscape

1. Before assigning, read Workload by person in the project group's Reports tab.
2. Create the card: the outcome in the title, a due date, the why in the notes, and what done looks like as a checklist.
3. Choose the Responsible person with Assign to... and agree when you'll look at it.
4. The next day, open the card. If it still shows "Invited, not yet accepted", have a word in person. Read declines in the Updates tab of Ark Requests and decide the same day.
5. At the agreed point, read the card's History and checklist before asking anything.
6. Each week, read the Delegation panel for what's still waiting on someone and what has no owner.

Group reports follow the plan of the group's owner: every Business plan includes them, and so do the Connect and Pro Personal plans. Assigning, accepting, declining, and card History work on every plan, including Free.

Where this method stops

Who may sign drawings or approve a design change for issue is set by your firm's policies and professional rules. Delegating a task doesn't delegate that authority, and Arkscape has no approval workflow.

Someone doing a task for the first time needs coaching alongside it, which a well-written card doesn't replace. Firms that plan by hours need timesheets, which Arkscape doesn't have: this method shows open tasks and dates, not hours. And if the same person accepts and misses dates repeatedly, that's a conversation about workload or performance, not something to fix with more tracking.

Common questions

What tasks should a manager not delegate? Decisions only you can make: the client relationship, fees and contracts, hiring, and the design direction you're accountable for. Delegate the work that follows from those decisions.

How do I delegate without micromanaging? Agree the outcome, the date, and one check-in point at the start, then read the work instead of asking the person. Step in only if the work shows a problem.

What if someone accepts a task and then misses the date? Ask what changed, agree a new date, and tell whoever was waiting. If it keeps happening, look at their workload before anything else.

How do I know if my team has accepted their tasks? Ask for an explicit yes, and keep the tasks without one on a separate list. In Arkscape, a project's Reports tab shows how many cards are awaiting acceptance and who they're waiting on.

Read next: how assignments work on Arkboards, how architects and engineers work together, and how to manage multiple projects at once.