WHY NIGERIAN BUSINESSES SHOULD USE TRELLO

One of the things we’ve decided to do as an agency this year is to be more technology reliant in our processes. In our 3 years, we’ve definitely tried our hands at various offerings from tech, It’s hard to stay in the communications industry and not be informed and absorbed by technology.

Trello [Credit: @Google]

It’s a new year and we want to do something different. We want to use technology to advance our internal processes.

I’ve had a Trello account for quite some time but I’m going to be honest with you, I wasn’t really using it to its full potential until now.

In all honesty, this is my way of saying that it was driving me nuts that we had to keep producing jotters and reading long minutes of meetings without allowing me the avenue to consistently track productivity by the hour.

Team boost session — Understanding Trello [Credit: IBK]

For those asking, we have always used slack for daily reports but as a team lead and CEO, I wanted a tool that captures productivity on the go. Our HR team had done a great job at this but i wanted the same access to this information and something that gave the team insight into what I was also achieving and my progress with such tasks. I also didn’t want people to just talk during Monday meetings, I wanted my colleagues to talk the work! (see that I did there?!).

We needed a tech tool to help with our ongoing campaigns, weekly to do’s, implementation of our new internal structure while aiding my vacation plans (shhh don’t tell the guys!). I had first signed up for wrike as I thought trello might be a bit too basic for us. I loved wrike because it was integrated with our G suite account but there was no way we were going to pay 9:80 dollars per team member. So there we were, back to phase 1! Trello it was.

For those of you asking; Trello is a project management tool that makes use of boards, checklist, cards and much more.

I’m writing this review after using Trello for 8 days. It’s important to state at this point that, I’m a very organised person, I live for journalism, to do lists, deadlines and targets. My approach to tasks, leadership and technology have had an effect on my use of Trello. My experience might be totally different from yours.

PROS

1. It’s a seamless tool for people who love to do lists. Think of it like this, instead of taking your notepad everywhere, you take Trello everywhere. Which is so amazing because you could be out of the office but still place a card in your board for a team member to handle.
2. I love that you have due dates and get notifications up to 2 days or 5 minutes before the task is due. It’s perfect for meeting reminders too.
3. It was easy for us to adapt to using Trello as we just downloaded an existing template. I love that there are different templates for the different objectives of your team. From HR templates to sales to and design.
4. I haven’t had reasons to engage in many verbal reminders. I don’t know if this should even be a pro but it definitely is for me. If you run a startup you know you spend a lot of time ensuring productivity is at its peak. I haven't had to do so many verbal reminders, I literally just set a due date/time on Trello. I track everyone task to see who is really working and ideas don’t get lost without implementation as there are instant notifications for these.

CONS:

1. If I’m being honest, I watched about 2 YouTube videos before I got a hang of its UX. I’m still trying to use Trello for slack and some other parts of Trello like the butler service.
2. My team was a bit overwhelmed by Trello and its integration into our processes. We also had loss of information sometimes across our 2 major communications channels (Whatsapp and slack). It just seemed like a lot for them and to be honest I understand why that could have happened.
3. Some team members did not adjust quickly. As a CEO or team lead reading this, it’s important to note that Trello is only a tool and will not fix foundational problems i.e, If someone doesn’t have the habit of writing or making reports, Trello doesn’t create an automatic change in approach to communication. I mean it’s been a week but if you had other means of project management and people weren’t following it, Trello won’t automatically fix that.

4. You can’t access it if you have no internet. I wish its developers will look at an offline version or ability to save files even when your internet connection isn’t stable.

By,

Debbie Larry-Izamoje,

Founder Image Boosters