Trello Analytics—Objectively Quantifying Project & Task Management

Trello helped popularize Kanban style list-making applications as it took on the world by storm. The tool, which is incredibly simple to use, has been adopted by people around the globe to help facilitate planning, project management, and task management. In the personal world, the tool can be used for anything from wedding planning to chore tracking, while in the professional world, users leverage the tool to help with everything from web development to marketing campaign planning. While the tool is powerful, we hear from our clients all the time, “I wish I could analyze my team’s Trello usage and understand where processes are breaking down and where we can get better.” If that’s a key imperative for you, stick around, we can help.

History of Trello:

Released in September of 2011, Trello now boasts one of the largest user bases in the world when it comes to Kanban styled list-making applications. Launched by Fog Creek at a TechCrunch event, the application was quickly recognized as one of “The 7 Coolest Startups You Haven’t Heard of Yet,” by Wired. While Lifehacker said, “it makes project collaboration simple and kind of enjoyable.”

In 2014, Trello went on to take $10.3 million in funding and was spun out as a standalone entity. By 2016, the platform had more than 1 million daily active users and over 14 million total signups. In January of 2017 it was announced that Atlassian had an intent to purchase Trello—a deal that was completed to the tune of $425 million.

Unfortunately, Trello doesn’t offer a native analytics suite, so is it possible to apply data-driven management to your Trello processes? If you could add objective analysis and process optimizations towards your Trello usage, why would that be important and what effects could it have on your team and organization?

Evaluating Broken Processes:

Most of the time, taking a deep dive into your internal processes happens for one reason—something has broken. However, to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of any given process, you need to be able to capture and analyze data in real time.

There are many common downfalls of inefficient processes: energy and time-intensive steps and bottlenecks end up leading to lower quality results. When a process breaks down, you and your team may assume that the process in its entirety is at fault—leading to brainstorm sessions, process design, and a new implementation. While sometimes this solves the issue, there are a few problems:

It’s costly to dedicate significant time developing new processes
It can be distracting to you and your team

It can take a while to get right and ensure everyone is following the new guidelines set in place
Most importantly—it likely could have been fixed had you known exactly where the problem(s) were versus blowing it up and starting over.

Using Peoplelogic to Protect and Optimize Processes:

Professionally, most of us rely on Trello to define a structure, provide scalability, and deliver consistency. To accurately and objectively measure the efficacy of a process, you need data. Fortunately, Peoplelogic connects to your Trello account with the click of a button and allows you to aggregate, structure, and analyze your team’s Trello data automatically.

Out of the box, you'll get Trello analytics around:

Card Created
Card Status Changed (the movement of the card across the board like from backlog to In Development)
Card Assigned
Card Due Date Changed
Card Unassigned

Attachment Added
Attachment Removed
TODO Created (this is equivalent to a subtask)
TODO Updated
Card Updated (rename the card or update the description)

Card Closed
Card Deleted
Card Reopened
Card Resolved

You’ll get untethered access to all the data your team is generating in Trello, but what is even cooler is that Peoplelogic can connect to all the other tools your team relies on and deliver automated recommendations, insights, and summaries about how work is getting done, where inefficiencies exist, and exactly how to fix them—across your teams and across your organization. We give you a holistic understanding of your people, your productivity, and your performance. Our goal is to give you the insights you need, when and where you need them, so you can continue to lead happy, engaged, and productive teams to continued explosive growth.

No matter what processes Trello is managing for you and your team, you’ve got to ensure that you can continue to measure the effectiveness of those processes and optimize at a moment's notice for your own, and your team’s sanity. To start uncovering the story hidden within your team’s Trello data—give Peoplelogic a try. You can get started with a 30-day free trial, getting insights, recommendations, and Trello analytics in a matter of minutes.