This week’s tools are two that I am very familiar with. In my former life as a full-stack web developer, slack was an essential communication tool for our IT department. I worked in a very small department (5 people); however, we needed a way to quickly and easily share information regardless of where we were. We used it to share code between programmers, coordinate efforts to fix an issue, and update teammates.
I loved Slack and the ability to tag posts. It made it sorting and searching for information more accessible. It is an easy-to-use communication tool. I also used it when I taught a class that worked with an outside organization. They organization, CodePath, offered support to the students in the class. They used Slack as the main communication tool where you could find someone to help 24/7.
Trello is another tool I used as a professional developer. Kanban-style boards are used quite often for project management in software development. Trello is one of my favorite Kanban boards because it allows for multiple users and is simple. I have also used it in my personal life to organize my projects. In Kanban-style each list is a different status.
A few years ago, I used it with my project management class group during my instructional design graduate certificate. We used four statuses: to do, in progress, under review, and complete. Each week we met on Monday and created a list of tasks under the to-do list. Each group member selected the tasks they wanted to work on. This made it easy to know who was responsible for each task and the status of the job without having to be in constant communication. It was also easy to help pick up someone else’s slack when necessary. The final features I enjoyed are the ability to add custom tags and checklists. I have used some of the paid automation features as well and loved them all. I would recommend Trello to anyone as an organization tool.
Check out my weekly work board: https://trello.com/b/4v06HjSf/weekly