From no project management experience to helping run a team
Throughout my college years I was always the unorganized person who doesn’t usually plan things. From forgetting assignments, and cramming them last minute, to forgetting where I placed that file on my drive and spending hours trying to find it. I was truly a mess, however there is one thing that began to really help me get my act together. That one simple method is called Kanban, typically used by small teams and engineers, it is a fantastic method, read more here .
How Trello saved me from complete disarray
I was once watching a stream where someone was developing some app, I can’t really remember the topic, but I saw him dragging cards, and staying organized with incredible speed and ease. This is where he caught my attention, not the cutting edge tech he was creating, but the simple tool he was utilizing to help keep track of what needed to be done. He was using Trello, a service for using Kanban boards, I began trying to apply these to simple minescule tasks as a sort of ‘play test’, I was hooked. I began to rapidly use these on a daily base with any tech, or itemized task that I had. Breaking these tasks into small bitesized chunks and easily being able to organize them gave my inner project manager a nice injection of seratonin. I began to become more organized, with my projects at least, you would never be able to tell I am organized if you looked at my workspace. Trello boards easily became my goto tool for just about any project.
How did a website help run a team?
Trello offers a teams feature which easily allows you to invite others to view and edit your board, creating a cohesive team platform for tracking tasks. The second month of the Flatiron School’s Data Science program has really put me and my beloved boards to the test. A portion of this assignment was to work as a team to assist each other with any blockers that may arise, and serve as a resource for all other teammates who are going through this gruling bootcamp. Well it was recommended to utilize a google sheet in order to track things between teammates, I wasn’t a fan of this method, so I brought up to my team there are loads of collaboration tools out there to help us. In comes my recommendation to use Trello, we had some growing pains getting everyone used to this tool, however it became a massive asset. We would post any blockers we had in the board, and typically there would be 4-5 people responding to the card within hours. We would be able to keep track of what others are working on as well, it really just allowed us to be on the same page when it came to our projects.
Conclusion
Trello is a phenomenal solution that allowed us to not have to scroll through a google sheet and hope we are looking at the proper cell for information. The fact that we were able to integrate this with Slack as well was a massive boon, overall it generally caused all of us to be more productive and allowed us to work as a more cohesive team in the end. Looking back, I am not sure how I personally would have managed my own project without using about 6 different boards to keep track of all of my tasks. Trello is an extremely powerful tool that I would recommend to any small team looking for a more effective way to collaborate.