- [Scott] This video is sponsored by Rewind Backups for Trello, more about them a little
later in the video. If you clicked on this video, you're probably already using Trello for your project management needs, but are you getting the
most out of this tool? Well, in this video, I want to show you five different things you should be thinking about so you can get the most out of Trello whether you're managing a small business or an entire team, five different steps you should take so you can optimize your Trello setup. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more
done and enjoy less stress. And let's dive in with the first step or the first thing I
want you to think about and that really is your lists or your different stages. At its core, Trello is based on the Kanban method, the method of moving cards or moving tasks through different stages. However, I find that far
too many Trello users are not using it or optimizing Trello in such a way. In this particular example, you can see I have a fairly
straightforward setup. I've got five different lists, Ideas, Tasks, In Progress, Pending, and Complete and the goal is to create cards on the left hand side of the screen and move them over to the right hand side. However, you want to be very specific as to what each of these stages represent, making sure that you don't
have too many or too few for your needs. So for example, many people ask me, "Scott, why do I have a Pending List, or sometimes I'll label this Waiting For?" I find this can actually be
one of the most valuable list in all of my Trello setups. Sometimes there can be a card which is simply out of
your hands at the moment. Maybe you've ordered these books and there's nothing else you can do at this point in time until they arrive, or maybe you're still waiting to hear back from these vendors so I don't want to leave
them in In Progress because this might build
up very, very lengthy and may not tell the entire story. This is a perfect opportunity to split or separate these lists so I can tell this
information not only to myself but to every member whom
I'm collaborating with. So if you happen to have a list which is growing exponentially, that may be a clue for you to split that list into another list, making sure that you can come into Trello at any point in time and get a great snapshot view of what is going on. Now in step number two, we want to add some more valuable
information to our cards. You're already going to be familiar with adding things such as a due date or labels or members to your cards. These are essential aspects to get the most information
out of the tasks and the things that you're managing here within your Trello board, but often something that is missing is how much time or how much effort is going to be applied to those cards and how much time been
spent actually working on those cards as well. So in this case, we're going to make use of a Power-Up called Card Size by Screenful. Now the good news is is that this is a free Power-Up so it will not cost you
anything additional. So let's go in here and
look at this card here and let's say there's this New Article, it's assigned to me but I want to estimate how much effort it's going to take. Well, here under the Power-Ups header, you can see that there
is the Card Size button. If I open this up, it gives me three different fields which I can start filling in. So maybe in this case, I'm going to say that this
article's probably going to take me a total of six hours. Immediately, it's going to fill
in the remaining slot here, meaning that there are
six hours remaining. I'm just going to hit Save here so you can see what this looks like on the card itself, so not only can I see
it here within the card, but if I close the card, I can see that it has an
estimated time of six hours. Now, if I come up here
to the Card Size icon, I can click on Settings, and I can choose to add other things to the front of the card as well, including the amount of time spent or the amount of time remaining, but I'm going to leave
those unchecked here just at the moment. Let's go ahead and add another one here. I'm going to add a size here to this one. Maybe this one is going to be only three hours in case, I'm going to hit Save here and let's go back, and maybe this Redesign website which is going to take
an awful lot more time. I'm going to come down here to Card Size and I'm going to pick another number. One of the things that I like is that it will include some of the more recent sizes as well. So maybe you have some standardization or some common size durations, you can easily click them down below here. In this case, I'm going to say 12 and I'm going to hit Save. So not only can I see the differences in these sizes between these cards but Card Size also allows
us to view this data in a few different ways. So I can see that I have
assigned about six hours of work, but there are a total of 15 hours which are not assigned. I can also filter this by label or I can filter it by list so if I want to see where
the bulk of that load is. But let's go back into this first one where I said it was a size of six but maybe I've spent about
two hours today on it so I'm going to select two. You can see right here it's immediately going to
show me how much is remaining so it's going to calculate
this data automatically as I adjust the amount of time spent on this particular project so I can keep track of it along the way. This is a fantastic way to get the most out of Trello and making sure that
you're not overallocating or underallocating your
staff along the way. Now, whether you choose to install the Card Size Power-Up
or some other Power-Up, you may be fearful that those changes may alter your Trello boards, or maybe you're a little worried about inviting new members to your boards and what they might do as a
part of the editing process. Well, that's nicely why
I use Rewind Backups for all of my Trello boards and why it's one of the top
three most installed power ups right now. If you want to back up
all of your Trello data, if you want to go back in time in case you make a mistake, you can do so with Rewind
Backups for Trello. And if you're not already using Rewind for your Trello boards, you can go to rewind.com/scott-friesen and get $50 when you
subscribe on this page. Be sure to see the link in the description for more details. Now, the next step in getting the most out of your project management right here within Trello is by adding automation. How often have you told your team or maybe just told yourself that when I move something
from this list to this list, I need to remember to add this label, I need to remember to add a due date, I need to remember to add myself or do something else along the way, and how often have you or some member of your team forgotten. Well, by making use of Trello Automation, we can add a variety of
rules to any Trello board which was going to make
your life so much easier. No more forgetting a certain step, no more forgetting to add
a particular individual. Let's go back to my board here and show you a quick example. So let's say in my case, when I drag something into my Task List, I want to remember to add
the New Project label, I want to remember to add a due date of let's say three days from now, I also want to remember to add myself to that particular project. Well, that's a lot of
things which I could forget or I could waste an
awful lot of time with, but with Trello Automation, it is so much easier. Let's add a new card
for this example here. So this is a completely new task. It's fresh, It's got nothing else on it but when I drag it over
into the Task List, watch what happens, new project, due date three days from now and I'm assigned to it and I didn't do any of this manually. Maybe you have a certain
step or a certain phase within your project where you need certain things to happen on a regular basis. Now, speaking of making
our lives so much easier, the fourth step in our process is adding some quantitative data directly to our Trello board so we don't have to go looking for it or do some other type of manual count. Wouldn't it be nice if we could put some dashboard information directly here within our
project management board. So here at the top of the screen I've installed the Dashcard
Power-Up Dashcard/Track. And with this power up, we can add a number of
different customized or template information so we can keep track of what's going on not only in this board but perhaps across multiple boards. So in this case, maybe I want to take a
look at some of the cards which have not been touched in a while. So in either case, I can choose to customize the options here or I can just add it
immediately to this board so it's going to place
it in the first list at the very top, but of course I can drag this and move this wherever I want. Maybe, I'll even want to
create a separate list just for my tracking cards. In this case, it's telling me that I
have five stale cards on this board. And yes, this is going to be dynamic so as I edit or change things, this number is going to change as well but it's more than just a number. If I click on this extra special card, you can see down below, it will tell me exactly which of those five cards are stale and if I click on it, it will open up that card directly as well so I can go in, take a look around, and maybe update that particular card. Now, if I don't like the way that this is displaying this information, no problem. I can edit this card as well. If I come down here and
select Explore and edit, I can take a look at the details So for example, here, it is looking at any card that was last modified
earlier than 14 days ago. Well, maybe that's too much, maybe I want to look at anything that hasn't been modified in seven days or something like that, I can select Edit filters and I can say, let's, yeah, let's bring that down to seven days and save it here and then down below, it's going to show me which of those cards fall into that category so you can be very, very specific. Keep in mind, you can add as many of
these cards as you like. If I come back here to
the Dashcards button, I can select Customize, and now I can upload my own background, I can give it my own name and filter this information
any way that I like. So this Dashcards feature
can really enhance the level of information and the amount of detail which is shown on any of your Trello boards. Now, the final step in
our optimization process is to look at your Trello
data in a different way. Although you may be very comfortable in working with your cards and your lists in this Board View, keep in mind that Trello
also has what they call a Timeline view, and it's very much like a Gantt chart view where we're seeing the
exact same information that we saw in the Board View, but perhaps in a more meaningful way. If we jump back to the Board view, it can be difficult to see that this is actually spanning over a few different days, and this one is actually
spanning over several weeks, but if we look at the Timeline view, we can see that a lot more clearly and the great thing is, is that we can work
within this view as well. So maybe this create
this onboarding letter is actually going to take a
little bit longer than I thought, so I'm going to stretch it
out here across the weekend into next week. If I need to adjust the
timeframe for this project, no problem, I can drag it and move it to maybe next week sometime. In addition, Trello gives us the ability to filter and view this information in a variety of different ways. So whether I want to
break it down by member or maybe I want to break it down by the different labels that we have, we can view that information here as well. And of course we can click
on any of these cards and start to work and look at the details within it as well. So for some of you, you may actually end up
spending more time here within the Timeline view even than the Board view itself. And don't forget to back
up all of your Trello data with Rewind, go to rewind.com/scott-friesen to receive $50 when you subscribe. Now, if you found this video helpful, you might find the other content right here on the Simpletivity channel helpful as well. Thank you so much for watching and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
