Speaker 1: Hello. Today I would like to talk about project management for freelancers and yes, especially for freelancers or for anyone who would like to hire a freelancer. How to manage projects, how to communicate on them and how project management tools can make you better as freelancer. Let's roll intro and jump in. Hello and welcome if you are new here and I am happy to see you if you are a frequent visitor. Let's very shortly sort out why project management is important for freelancers. Freelancing is a service business and it's not enough to be very good in programming to provide good service, because service is full package. You have to provide something more than just programming. Customers actually like to see their application in the App Store and income in their bank accounts, but they're not willing to hire software developers. This is just one necessary step in their way to get their own application. And we as freelancers should make this step and process as easy and smooth as possible. And to provide good service, you have to have some kind of project management tools, some kind of system to keep all information in one place, make it transparent as possible and easy to understand for customer. Okay, but let's jump into my template Trello board for freelancing projects. Trello basically is Kanban style workflow. from high perspective, it is basically moving tasks or cards between different project stages, usually from left to right, from start to the end of the project. And the beauty of Kanban boards is in simplicity. It's quite simple and almost everyone will be able to understand how to use it. Keep everything very simple, have a process, some process agreed with the customers that you will track your project on this board, on whatever project management tool is provided, but okay, we are talking about Trello. Have some process and make some reviews on the project, at least monthly, but I would recommend every two weeks make some status updates on tasks just to get feedback from the customer and so on. Avoid jargon and technical terms in these boards. Keep it simple and easy to understand for the customer. I have documentation and info section here. Basically, what I have here, it is template for project overview. I have brief description section for the project. I am writing down what this project is about. For example, iOS payment application development. And I have deliverables section here, and I am listing what I am planning to deliver. For example, we will have two beta releases and one production release for this application and so on. Maybe in your case, that could be some website backend, some system, something else. Time frame, milestones, that is obliviously for milestones, when and what will be delivered. Usually it's kind of mirrored this deliverables, what is planned to deliver and I'm listing here when it will be delivered. And resources, that could be some link on external resources for example if I have job description on some online job portal it can be linker here. Just add whatever you have, external resources, documentation and so on. Project assets. Here you have description, colors, design assets, fonts, brand guides, whatever. How to use this board section. Usually I'm not using this section in my projects. I am showing this board to the customer. If customer don't have any task management system I'm asking is his family registrar. If yes perfect if not I am jumping into the board together with customer and showing how to use this board showing where all the tasks already is and so on so but for this particular board I will put link to this video to this board and basically it will be description for this template how to use it use it or not it's up to you you can describe briefly columns what you have and how to use those columns but do not over expect that customers will go and really read that. Icebox and next version, ideas and tasks, let's talk about it later and you can delete basically that from template and add it later if it will be needed. So and to do backlog basically I am I am listing all the tasks here and that really depends how deep in details you would like to go. You can just write iOS app development, but you understand that could be way too big task. I prefer to split, so I will not recommend such big task, but maybe if you have iOS app development, Android app development, website and so on, maybe that will work for you, but not for me. I would like settings, screen and so on. I'm writing down tasks. That's how I like to split applications. This is usually easy for customer later to verify he's opening login screen and if everything is fine he can just approve the screen. Just to show how I use it there is checklist I am adding basically checklist and I am adding for example UV development for example I am creating just screen. I'm adding subtasks and I am very actively using labels. For all of the development tasks I'm adding a new feature improvement and so on. Green task. So it's development task settings screen also will be development task. I start working on any of the tasks I'm moving it to the into the progress column. Also I have blocked label here. I'm using blocked label here if I am blocked by someone else on the project And that could be customer who is blocking me, for example, he didn't answer some questions about this specific task. Or maybe if you are working with someone else on the project, for example, designer, I will add the information that I am blocked by designer, I am waiting for some design assets, and if you are working with someone else, I highly recommend to get this person on this board as well. When I'm done with these tasks, I move it to the done part and start to work on next task. And when I am delivering this task for review, for example, I am releasing beta application and customer is able to test, it is in delivered status. And then if we have those weekly meetings, we can talk about those tasks that are in review. Maybe a few of the customers will like to move this task to approved column here. But if not, you have to have your meetings with the customer. At least you will have one meeting at the end of the project, but I highly recommend to have more often those meetings, let's say weekly meetings, and move your done tasks to approved stage, if customer approved this task. In some cases, customers will say that something is wrong. You write down all the information that you will receive from the customer in any way. Maybe this will be discussed in the meeting, maybe customer will send SMS to you, maybe email, maybe some screenshot will be sent to you. You just put everything in here. For example, icon is not displayed and then you can label this task with bug as well. For example, I'm doing that in this way and then I'm moving that back in to do or into the progress. depends on status, then again it will be in downstage and so on, you get it there. So let's say it is also ok and delivered, but maybe in some of the meetings customer will say, well I started to use this application and I find that yes we have this, for example in settings screens could be nice to add option to enable and disable notifications, for example we don't have notifications at all. Basically, that is a new development for notifications. You are writing the task down and you have to discuss with the customer that this is actually new functionality. This is not a bug or something else. This is new functionality requirement. And there is interesting part starts here. So if you have this in your documents, in your initial requirements, that app should support notifications, of course, you have to develop those notifications. But what to do if it is out of development scope? If it is fixed price project, of course, price will be changed, you have to discuss that with customer, you will spend more time on the project, and so on. If customer paying hourly fee for you, of course, you can develop whatever customer will ask to you, but you always have to communicate and inform customers that project will be delivered later because this new development and you have to be 100% clear that customer understand that communication is most important part in freelancing. You have to be on one page with the customer and customer have to understand status of the project and that's why we are using this board. And so if customer agreed that, yeah, that's fine, we'll spend a few more weeks on the project, it will cost some money more. If you have free time for that, nice, go ahead, do that, deliver everything fine. But if you don't have time, or customer don't have time to do work on that, or customers don't have budget for that, you will agree to not do that, but do not hurry with deleting on this task, just move it to this icebox. Maybe you will have quite big list with ideas for next version by the end of the project. When everything will be delivered, so customer is happy if it is fixed price on milestone pricing project, you have to be paid for all the milestones. And this is time for discussion on this next tasks in Icebox. If you have free time, you can suggest customer to start work on those tasks. You can get next project for already existing customer. If not, if you don't have time or customer don't have time to do that or money to work on that right now, just keep this board and do not delete that. Few months later, half of the year later, you always can connect with your customer to ask how this project is going. I am quite often asked how to get freelance projects and my answer here, your best customers is your previous customers, because you already know those customers and most likely you was happy to work together, if not, ok just delete that customer from your contacts. But if yes, if everything was fine, you were happy with each other and so why not to connect with this customer, ask how the project is going and maybe customer is ready to jump on the next project just to remind about you, about your existence. And this Icebox is a very nice starter for conversation. As soon as you discuss how project is going, you can jump back to the previous idea Icebox and discuss what to do with Zetto. So basically that is my approach to work on projects and work specifically with Trello. And my reasons why I like to work with Trello. I have a very nice quote about this project management systems and so on. Walking on water and developing software from specifications are easy if both are frozen. Software requirements almost always are not frozen. they are usually changing during the project. And that is our work as freelancers, as service providers to make this process less cumbersome, more clear and easy for the customers. And if you will be able to do that easy for customers, you will be very successful as freelancer. Software development skills are necessary and important, but project management is, I will say even more important than that. So that was it. I hope this was helpful for you. Share this information with anyone you believe it will be helpful. And yeah, if you like this video, there is like buttons. Unfortunately, just one. And subscribe button as well, for sure, if you like to see more videos like this. And let me know what do you think about this video. And if you have your suggestions how to manage projects, especially freelance projects, I will be really happy to hear back from you because I'm always looking forward for improvements on my processes and my services and the quality of my work. Thank you for watching and see you on the next one.