For those of you who read my earlier post about Sublime Text, here is another amazing tool that you absolutely need to get familiar with instantly, Trello.
Trello is one of those really intuitive tools, that once you get to know it, you can’t live without it. Some might call it a “project management application”, but I think it’s so much more than that! It is a web-based collaboration tool for organising and managing almost anything.
Trello is developed by Fog Creek Software, it is free(!), and according to their website, it is going to stay that way:
“Yup, Trello is free, now and forever. That means we’ll never take away everything you love and put it behind a pay wall. So feel free to fall in love—it’s here to stay. If only more of life were like that!” (source: https://trello.com/tour)
I first started using Trello while working as a web developer for one of Denmark’s largest tabloid newspapers. In my team, we used it both for organising and managing within the team, but also for sharing and collaborating on projects with external developers.
Trello was the perfect tool for this, and it was really easy to manage projects, assign tasks, create checklists, but also to review what we as a team had earlier agreed upon.
Later I started working as a web project consultant for one of the largest banks in Denmark. In the beginning I used to have a whole bunch of handwritten to-do lists all over my desk, but then I remembered Trello. I quickly plotted my to-do lists in and presto! Everything became so much easier!
Now several of my co-workers have joined in, and we have created various different organizations, broards and cards, where we are both managing own projects and assignments, but also collaborating on larger projects – Thanks Trello!
Last week I even started working with the Trello API in my spare time – and by now I’ve already created a dashboard for monitoring one of my organizations with latest activities, custom notifications and general metrics.
So my question to you is: Why haven’t you signed up for Trello yet?!
I could give you a recommendation link to Trello and earn Trello Gold free for a month or so, but this would diminish the validity of this post (that I really like Trello!). Therefore you’ll just get this clean link:
Stay tuned for various tips and tricks for Trello – and maybe a post about their API.
Is there anything particular you would like me to write about? – Please let me know! :)
Hi Søren,
Nice write-up. Have you tried Asana (https://asana.com/)? It’s a different take on solving the same challenges, I guess. I’ve ended up using this instead of Trello, but primarily because it was already used by some people in our team. So I’m still considering Trello.
Also, the personal dashboard sounds great. I’ve been experimenting with something like that myself (Asana tasks, unread/untagged articles in pocket, unread mails etc.). Perhaps you could share some screenshots?
/Mads (@madsdj)
Hi Mads,
I’ve actually tried Asana earlier, but I found Trello to be a lot lighter and more intuitive. Besides that I just love all the small tricks and features that Trello facilitates and supports.
At this point, I don’t think that my dashboard is that interesting to you because I have to blur most of it:
I might try to make a more “public” version in the future :)
– S