Using Trello to manage your projects

When you first begin your business it is easy to remember all of your clients and what stage you are at with each project. But sooner or later you will reach a point where the complex system of memory, sticky notes, notebooks and random scraps of paper just doesn’t seem to cut it any longer.

That is when it is time to look for a better system. Trello could be that system that you need for your business. It takes the stress out of project management, helps you stick to your task list, organises your team, and work towards your goals.

Become a project management master by streamlining your business and creating efficiencies all with one simple to use system.

Want to know how to do it?

What is Trello?

Before we get into how to use it, you really need to know what Trello is.

Have you ever pinned lists, notes and things from your friends onto a corkboard at home? Well, Trello is the online version of that.

Basically, you pin ‘cards’ to your board and use them to organise your projects and workflow. Those cards can contain lists of notes, tasks, shared files, or anything else that helps your team work together. The idea is for completely effective project management, you need full visibility over all of the relevant tasks, and flexibility to rearrange them if things change.

Instead of needing to email back and forth with colleagues on certain tasks, you can communicate within Trello to keep all of the information in a centralised location. That way you can easily track progress, see exactly what stage a task is at, and look back on work that has already been completed.

Organise the workload of your whole team or simply boost your own productivity.

How do you use it?

Trello is simple to use but harnesses a lot of power in its clean, open spaces.

These are the main terms you need to know:

Workspaces: You can organise multiple workspaces depending on who is involved in a project. Each workspace can be used by everyone in the business, select teams, collaborators, or just yourself.

Boards: The board is the main working unit within a workspace. You can use them differently depending on your needs – track your whole workflow and the individual activities within it, or for a single project or event. Board can be private or public, you can add members to them, and bookmark the most important ones.

Lists: Within your boards, you can use lists to group your activities and tasks. They can contain your to-do list, your in-progress tasks, or completed items. How you choose to organise your lists is completely up to you, maybe by the person responsible, the subject area, the priority level, or something else entirely.

Cards: Cards are the smallest unit within Trello and where you can dive into the detail. Include all sorts of information like descriptions, checklists, tasks, due dates, assign responsibility to a team member, upload files, and more. You can also tag your colleagues so that you can talk about individual tasks within the relevant card.

Notifications: You can keep up to date with what is happening on each board without the need for email. Trello will send you notifications based on your preferences, so you never miss a thing.

Stuck for inspiration on your first Trello board? Check out hundreds of community made examples on the Trello website

Top five tips for project management in Trello

Now that you know the basics, here are our top five tips for making the most of managing your projects through Trello.

1: Utilise multiple boards for different large projects

2: Create lists to group similar tasks together

3: Give each task its own card and comprehensive description, include subtasks, checklists, and files

4: Assign tasks to specific team members with a due date so they don’t slip through the cracks

5: Take advantage of Trello’s integrations to track time and connect with your team through Slack

Trello is a powerful tool that is simple to use. We love how visual it is and how you can design your boards, lists and cards to work inline with the way your team operates. We use it on a daily basis here at Hello Digital and wouldn’t be without it!

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