Getting started with Assembla for non-IT projects

I’m a great fan of Assembla having used it to manage distributed teams on multiple projects for the last year.  Assembla.com is a project management tool intended for managing Agile IT projects but it works just as well for non-IT projects.  Here is a quick start guide on how to setup a trial account to see if will suit your needs.

1. Select “Choose a Plan and Signup” from the assembla home page: https://www.assembla.com/

2. Select a Plan – Choose group if you have multiple projects and/or want to record peoples time.  Single has the ability to store files and have a chat area.  Otherwise choose Start.

3. Create a userid on the form provided, then on the next screen, select Manual Payment as the Billing Method half way down the screen, that way you don’t have to enter payment information.

4. The next page is for setting up how assembla works for you.  For non-IT projects, select the link “Choose a Workspace Configuration” under step 1.

5. Nearly there!  Select the second option “Issue and Bug Tracking for Agile Teams”.

6. Enter a name for your space and click “Create Space” at the bottom of the page.  From experience, I suggest for your first space use a dummy name as you will probably want to delete it before you create your first real one.

Now you have a space to play with.

Assembla assumes you are going to do your project in chunks, two week chunks is a popular chunk length.  So setup a couple of Milestones first.

Now create tickets for each task in that milestone.  There is lots of help available on Assembla, including a video link, so I won’t go into any details.

Create a few tickets for this milestone, then select Cardwall (under Milestones)

Now select your Milestone from the drop down list and you should see all your tickets in the left most column.

You can update your ticket by dragging it into the next column.  The workflow stages, New, Accepted, Test can be changed under the Settings menu option.

Click on the little blue triangle on the far left to filter or sort your tickets.  Click on the little blue triangle on the right to see the closed ticket statuses.

I like the cardwall.  I can see at a glance how each milestone is progressing and what people are working.

That’s just a taster, now explore!

Phoebe Bright is available to help you improve the project management skills and work with you to develop an appropriate set or methods and tools for your organisation.