Using Trello For Your Projects

What tools do you use to manage your projects? Do you track them using lists, a bullet journal or a project management tool like Trello? With Trello, you can create a meal planner, a weekly to-do list, manage clients and development projects. You create as many board, cards and lists as you need.

Using Trello For Your Projects
Photo by: RawPixel

With all of this flexibility, it can be a challenge to figure out how to best work with Trello. Use the following tips to make this project management tool work for both your personal and professional projects.

1. Create a projects board

If you are like most people, you may have more than one project to keep track of. A projects board can help you to plan which projects that you want to work on next. Some people like to plan the next six months or year out. Use this board to provide on overview of what you are working on.

2. Make one board for each project

It may be tempting to place all projects on one board. You may find that it grows rather quickly and becomes hard to manage. A single board for each project keeps things simpler and cleaner.

3. Create as many lists as you need

Trello is based on the Kanban method, which starts with three lists: To-Do, Doing and Done. For some projects, these three lists are all you need. For other project, you are going to need more. Make as many as you need.

4. Give your labels meaningful names

Trello provides different colored labels with no names. It is up to you to decide what they mean. You can use these labels to help manage your tasks. For example, you may use red for Stopped or Blocked tasks, yellow for waiting and orange for annoying issues.

5.Use the inspiration boards

Why create a board from scratch? Trello has a public library of boards that others have created and are available for you to use. Use one these boards to get started on your next project.

Looking for more tips and inspiration on how to use Trello?

Trello’s blog has helpful tips and tutorials on using this project management tool more productively and creatively.

3 Dashboard Design Tips

Dashboard design sounds simple. You want to create a way of presenting data to your users that is clean and easy to understand. Easy right?

3 Dashboard Design Tips
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No, dashboard design is more difficult than it seems. You need to consider your users before you can decide what data to present to them and how.

Ask these questions before you start building

  1. What data needs to be show to your users? You want to track a small number of key metrics. Not all data should be on a dashboard. Some data belongs in a report. If the data your considering is a summary or analysis, it may work better as a report.
  2. How am I going to present this data? You can choose to display the data as a chart, gauge, totals or a simple table.
  3. What actions do you want the user to take? Should they click on a link to open a report, update some information or do nothing?

Sketch out your design

After you researched and learned what data the user wants to see, you need to decide how to organize the data. You may find that you have too many pieces of information to present to the user. Sketch out your dashboard before you build it to determine what pieces of data go where. An easy to read dashboard has from 5-9 pieces of information on it. Remember that less is more.

Keep the design simple

You want your users to be able to scan the dashboard quickly. Help them by choosing to limit the number of pieces of information, colors, fonts and other UI elements. Your design should be minimal.

By asking questions before you build a dashboard, sketching out the design and keeping the design simple, you can give your users key pieces of information quickly.

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