Introduction
Imagine that you are already a member of an IT team. Let's say you've become a manager. Your main task is to organize the workflow and make sure that everyone follows it. One of the ways to do it is to visualize this workflow, all the current tasks with their deadlines. It would be convenient if all these tasks were stored in one place and everyone had access to them. Luckily, there exists the Kanban model! The point of this model is to visualize all the tasks by making a plan out of them. The plan is then posted on the Kanban board.
Let's find out how such a board works. We will review the Trello board as one of the most popular Kanban boards around.
Getting started with Trello
To get started, you need to go to the Trello website and register there. The next step is creating a board. You can use a ready-made template and transform it to fit your needs. For example, you and your dream team are developing a website for the Tattoo World salon. Then you enter the name World Tattoo Site and choose a beautiful background. After creating the board, you may also make it public to customers to show your plans and progress on the features you are developing.
Trello lists
Next, you can plan your actions, what and when you will do. Meetings, discussions, assignments, and much more. In Trello, you can create as many lists as you need via add a list. Press add and enter the name of the list. For example, you can create an Organizational Matters list to post all the information on the upcoming meetings there.
Lists are also called columns. Each column represents a class of tasks that you intend to do. And in each column, the corresponding tasks will be placed on separate cards. Now let's move on to creating such cards.
Trello cards
So, your immediate task is to gather a meeting of the whole team. You create a Current meeting card.
Great, but so far you are the only one who knows about it. Click Members to add everyone who will be present at the meeting. If you want to contact one of them personally, you can write a message and tag your teammate (using @person_name). In the card, you can also leave information about the time and place of the meeting. For example, you decided to make a zoom conference and left an invitation link in your message.
Cards options
What else can you do with your card? Let's quickly explore the basic things we can add to it. If you take a look at the right, you'll see that there are a lot of options. However, here we will discuss only the three most important ones.
The first option is adding the labels. They are visible on the outside of the card and help to distinguish a single card from the rest. Labels can be named differently, and each can represent a card with a distinct type of information: urgent, done, in progress, under review, and so on. Each label has its own bright color for convenience, which can also be customized. For example, your meeting is very important and should take place very soon, so you put an urgent label on the card. This allows all participants to see that the meeting is soon.
Also, if you want everyone to remember about the meeting, you can set the due date. This is the second important option of the card. Choose the desired date and time on the calendar. Profit! Now everyone knows when the meeting will take place.
The third important option is checklists. Let's say you want to discuss a number of important issues during a meeting: the sections on your future web site, the placement of the contacts of the salon and portfolios of the masters, and programming it all. Then you can create a checklist with your agenda and cross out the tasks that have already been finished.
Moving tasks to another list
After your meeting, the Current meeting card is no longer needed. However, deleting it is not an option, because it stores important information, and simply leaving it in the Organizational Matters column won't do any good too. You can put the label Done on the card, but it's still going to be an eyesore.
In this case, you can create another column for Already completed tasks and move the card there. To do this, simply drag the card from one column to another.
Pros and cons of Trello
Now you know the basics of working with Trello and you might already see its advantages and disadvantages. Of the advantages, one can single out:
clear interface
useful and easy-to-learn features
low entry threshold
unlimited columns and cards
a huge selection of design tools
the ability to visualize the task plan
the ability to store all tasks in one place
On the other hand, Trello has its drawbacks:
suitable only for small teams with a foreseeable number of tasks
no constant reminders about unfinished
there is no way to analyze the work that was already done and get any statistics on it
Now you know what advantages Trello boards have and what they can be useful for.
Conclusion
In this topic, we've looked at what the Trello boards are and how to work with them. We really hope that you can use this information to better organize your team's work and cope with even the most complex tasks!