Ryan Lopano Blog

When researching the project management websites like Monday, Trello, and ClickUp, they seemed somewhat useless. All of the things they have to offer can be done in a spreadsheet. I work a few jobs, and that’s the way I’ve done it all my life. For one of my jobs, everything is exclusively through email. All I get are emails requesting graphics for me to do, and it is that simple, back and forth. For my job at the Recreation and Wellness Center here at Quinnipiac, all of my requests come through a Word document that I fill out and then put into organized folders. These systems aren’t the best in the world, but they definitely work for what I am doing. Johann Hari points out that “we’ve built systems that fragment our attention, even when we think we’re being efficient,” and I think that fits how I’ve used these older methods. To my knowledge, these programs make the most sense when you are managing bigger teams.

I recently had an experience which made me like programs like these. Those previous examples I gave for teams that are no bigger than a handful of people, but this year, I am working part of The Agency. This is a class offered at Quinnipiac, which is meant to mimic how a real-life agency works. Part of this class, there are five sets of teams working together for four clients. With the number of people and the amount of things we are doing, these project management programs would be very useful. We just finished up with our first client this week, and we used an Excel document. After using it for a few weeks, I can confirm that it was somewhat messy. It is super hard to keep organized unless it is organized properly. This is where I can see these websites being useful.

The one I decided to use is Monday.com. This is the one I have heard the most about and believe to be the most popular. Off the bat, I really enjoy to UX or the website. It is simple to use on the back end, and it seems even easier on the front end. I was able to add all the tasks I wanted to and label if they were done, being worked on, stuck, or not started. This seems like a really genius system as it lets the boss or manager know what is being worked on, and even if you are stuck on something. It is quite simple, but it seems to work really well. Another way I can see this being good for is for a personal tracker. You can label things for different projects, so I could put all my class assignments and all the things I need to do for class, and separate them.

For the time I have played around with the site, I really enjoyed it. It seems really simple to use, but perfect if you have a big team of people to manage or work with. Even though I was skeptical, I can see how this works well in a big company or agency. I am so on board with these that I would want The Agency class to use it for our projects, that’s how organized it is.