Team Tracking with Trello

Trello can do some really neat things and Joel Spolsky said it’s real ability is to manage lists of lists. I’ve seen two applications, lately, for manging individuals on a team using Trello. As a consultant, I’ve seen a lot of teams and been in a lot of work spaces. One thing I often see are status boards showing where everyone is. Maybe they are in the office. Maybe they are out sick. Maybe they are at lunch. Regardless, maintaining these is difficult, even for electronic systems. When I worked for the Fed, I had a script that would automatically mark me in when I started my computer. But having access to this information everywhere, especially on mobile devices, is better. And Trello comes to the rescue.

I’ve made a sample board, using Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the premise:

You can see the actual board here. And with Worf and Dax spending that much time together, it’s not wonder they got married.

In addition, many offices have calendars showing where people will be day-to-day. It will have future statuses for vacation and teleworking. I’ve created a sample 5-day telework schedule using Deep Space Nine as the background, again:

The live board is also accessible. In both cases, the schedule can be easily updated and changed when ground-level circumstances change. Neither is perfect, but for small organizations, this can really meet the need, and it takes only a few minutes to set it up.