Trello uses card metaphor to help you track your important projects

COMPUSCHMOOZE



 

 

When I got my first “middle management” job a few decades ago, I started keeping track of a to-do list by hand. The system I used ranked project priorities using the letters “A, B, C” and “On Hold” or “Follow Up.” As a project’s status changed, I would move it to a different part of my list.

Then, on a business trip, leafing through the airline magazine, I came across what I thought was a clever way to manage projects, the Scan Card system, which seemed to offer a perfect way to manage this process.

Scan Cards used square index cards placed into slots in a portfolio binder. You wrote the project title on the top of the card, and notes about the project below. Putting the project cards into the pages allowed you to quickly scan the project titles, and you could move cards from one column of slots to another as they changed priority. It worked very well, but as technology came along, it seemed to make less sense to write out project cards by hand. As I gained access to minicomputer word processing systems, and later, personal computers, I moved my project list from the cards into a word processing document. Each afternoon, I painstakingly updated it from handwritten notes made during the day, moving projects among sections of the document depending on their priority status.

Over the years, many software programs came along promising to help manage project lists efficiently, but none of them offered the kind of flexibility and compactness that the Scan Card system provided. I use several tools to organize emails and documents by project and client today, including Microsoft’s OneNote digital binder, but I missed the Scan Card concept so much that I even thought about going back to it.

After going out of business in the 1990s precisely because people stopped using handwritten project planners, Scan Card was revived recently by new investors (www.scancardorganizer.com/). It’s gotten a little pricey, though, with leather organizer binders selling for $60 and up.

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when I finally decided to check out Trello (trello.com), a project management tool I had heard about from one of my clients. The client had teams collaborating on several projects and was using the browser-based Trello system to track the tasks in these projects.

The Trello interface reminded me instantly of the Scan Cards concept. You create a Trello project list or “board,” and then you can create multiple columns in the board that act as buckets for the project cards you create. Each project card can have a detailed description on it, and when you add project notes to update the progress of the task, they are date- and timestamped automatically as the notes are saved.

Moving a project or task from one status bucket to another is as easy as moving a Scan Card from one slot to another— you just click and drag it with your mouse.

Trello also keeps an automatic running log of changes to each project; lets you attach documents and files to a project card, and can assign color-coded labels to cards. You can set due dates and even incorporate a checklist in a project card.

The free version of Trello is perfect for individuals who work alone. You can set up an unlimited number of boards, lists, and cards, and even share access to projects with other people. If you work in teams where multiple people need access to the same project cards, Trello costs $9.99 a month per user. A more powerful enterprise version is also available. Trello has apps for iPhones and Android that work the same way as the browser-based version, and your data automatically synchronizes across all the platforms.

Because of the card metaphor that Trello uses, it’s much easier to quickly scan projects throughout the day to see what needs to be addressed. I won’t be giving up the other “repository” style tools like OneNote, but I am pretty sure Trello will be the Scan Card system I use for that daily action list for a long time to come. 

steve@compuschmooze.com or on Twitter @PodcastSteve


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