As digital process consultants it’s important for us to practice what we preach. We want our project management to be accessible, open, and effective through the use of digital technology. Earlier this year we sat down and decided that Trello would be the main component of our project management. So far we have managed the large scale development of cloud based software, custom websites, and application development through Trello and are incredibly pleased with the results.
Here are the reasons why Trello has fit so well for us:
- Power Ups – Trello integrates with a wide range of other applications we were already using such as Google Drive and Harvest. It also has a number of other useful Power Ups such as automated burn down and gantt charts. The best part about these Power Ups is that we can customize projects with only the required features. This means our clients don’t have a bunch of meaningless features connected to their projects.
- Visual WBS and process groups – Trello allows us to organize an entire project’s Work Breakdown Structure into logical processes. From here we can easily label and decompose items through work packages. Combined with the Elegantt Power Up the visualization of a project is excellent and effective. Assigning specific team members and deadlines to work packages makes monitoring and controlling easy.
- Client access – Trello is incredibly easy for our clients to access and interact with, and we know they really appreciate the visual aspects of it. In terms of storing communications and documents Trello is wonderful, and keeping track of approvals is easy. It’s also nice that project members and stakeholders can engage each other using unique @handles, choosing all or specific people to talk with.
- Flexible to scope changes– From a project management standpoint having a system that allows for agile development and scope shifts is important. Trello allows us to deal with change requests, scope updates, and document updates without ruining the overall flow of the project. We have found Trello is able to accommodate agile, predictive and iterative projects.
- Perfect for our size – Other popular project management softwares (such as Basecamp) charge a set monthly fee for unlimited users (around $20 / month). Trello charges a nominal per user/month fee (about $5 per user / month). With a small team like ours (currently at four) the price is incredibly reasonable considering all of the bonuses it offers us.
If you’re an organization that runs a higher number of internal participants in a project you might consider moving towards an online project management tool that doesn’t charge per user, but if you have a company that operates with less that five participants we highly recommend giving Trello some serious thought. So far it has fit our needs perfectly and allowed us to improve our efficiency and client communication.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we structure our projects using Trello, shoot us a message!
