Taking Control with Trello: A Small Business Guide

Just as every film needs a great director to manage the scenes, every small business needs an effective project management tool to oversee its tasks. Welcome to Trello, the versatile and easy-to-use tool that can bring order to your chaos. With Trello, you can visualize your workflow, track task progress, and ensure your team is always on the same page. Let’s go through how you can use Trello to bring efficiency to your small business.

Step 1: Creating a Trello Account

The first step to project management nirvana is to create a Trello account:

1. Go to the Trello homepage and click on ‘Sign Up’.
2. You can sign up using an email or Google account. Fill in the necessary details and click on ‘Create New Account’.

Step 2: Creating Your First Board

In Trello, boards represent projects. Here’s how to create one:

1. Once logged in, click on the ‘+’ button at the top right of the screen.
2. Click ‘Create Board’.
3. Fill in the name of your project and choose whether you want it to be a private, team, or public board.
4. Click ‘Create’.

Step 3: Setting Up Lists and Cards

Lists are used to categorize stages of your workflow while cards represent tasks. Here’s how to set them up:

1. Once your board is set up, click ‘Add a list’. A common first list might be “To Do”.
2. Click ‘Add a card’ to create a task. Give it a name that succinctly describes the task, e.g., “Create Budget Forecast”.
3. You can add more details to the card by clicking on it. Here, you can add a description, attach files, add a due date, assign members, and more.

Step 4: Managing Tasks with Trello

Trello is highly intuitive and managing tasks is a breeze:

1. To move a task from one list to another, simply click and drag it across. As tasks progress, you might drag them from “To Do”, to “Doing”, to “Done”.
2. Click on a card to edit its details or to add comments.
3. To mark a task as complete, you can move it to a “Done” list or click on the card and mark the due date as complete.

Step 5: Collaborating with Your Team

Trello truly shines when used for team collaboration:

1. To add members to a board, click ‘Show Menu’ from the board view. Click ‘More’, then ‘Add Members’.
2. Type in the email or Trello username of the person you want to add and click ‘Send Invitation’.
3. Once they have accepted the invite, you can assign them to cards. Open the card, click ‘Members’, and select their name.

That’s it! You’re now ready to manage projects like a pro using Trello.

This easy-to-use tool can revolutionize how you manage projects, whether you’re coordinating a marketing campaign or developing a new product. And remember, we’re going to take this journey together. Stay tuned for our next blog, where we’ll explore another tool from our tech stack. If you have any questions or need more personalized help, Small Business Intelligence is always here for you. Happy organizing!

Real-World Use Case: Managing a Tech Stack Implementation

Imagine you’re managing an e-commerce store on Shopify and you decide to upgrade your analytics capability. You’ve chosen to implement Fivetran for data ingestion, Google BigQuery for data warehousing, DBT for data modeling, and Looker Studio for data visualization.

Here’s how you might manage this project using Trello:

Step 1: Create a new board titled “Analytics Tech Stack Implementation”.

Step 2: Next, set up the lists representing stages of your project workflow. For a typical tech stack implementation, you might create the following lists: “Backlog”, “To Do”, “In Progress”, “Review”, and “Done”.

Step 3: Now, break your project down into smaller tasks (cards) that can be completed within one to two weeks. Here are some example tasks:

• Card 1: “Set up Fivetran connection with Shopify”
• Card 2: “Configure BigQuery as destination in Fivetran”
• Card 3: “Test data ingestion into BigQuery”
• Card 4: “Implement DBT models for Shopify”
• Card 5: “Test data transformation with DBT”
• Card 6: “Configure Looker Studio to connect with BigQuery”
• Card 7: “Create dashboards in Looker Studio”
• Card 8: “Validate and review dashboards”

Initially, place all these cards in the “Backlog” list.

Step 4: As you plan your work for the next week or two, move the relevant cards from “Backlog” to “To Do”. Let’s say for the first week, you aim to complete Card 1 and Card 2, so move these cards to “To Do”.

Step 5: As you begin working on a task, move it from “To Do” to “In Progress”. For example, when you start setting up the Fivetran connection with Shopify, move Card 1 to “In Progress”.

Step 6: Once a task is completed, move it to “Review”. Here, other team members can check the work and provide feedback. If changes are needed, the card can be moved back to “In Progress”.

Step 7: When the task has passed the review, move it to “Done”.

Step 8: For team collaboration, assign each card to a team member. You can also add a due date, attach files, or add comments for further details.

By following this process, you’re using Trello as a powerful visual tool to manage and track the progress of your tech stack implementation. Remember, the key to agile methodology is flexibility and iterative progress — so feel free to adjust and adapt your Trello board as your project evolves.

With Trello, managing complex projects becomes less daunting. Whether it’s a tech stack implementation or coordinating a marketing campaign, Trello brings efficiency to your business operations. In our next blog, we’ll explore another tool from our tech stack, so stay tuned! And as always, if you have any questions or need more personalized help, Small Business Intelligence is here for you. Happy organizing!

— Joey Holmesmeyer

Learn more about how Small Business Intelligence can help you manage your analytics implementations by visiting us on our webpage.