The Challenge Medium-Sized Teams Face Today
When a team grows to around 20 employees, managers begin encountering one of the toughest operational problems: how to track tasks, ensure deadlines are met, monitor performance, and distribute responsibilities—without drowning in endless meetings, calls, and constant one-on-one follow-ups.
At this size, email stops being effective. Chat groups become flooded with messages. Tasks get lost between contradictory instructions. And the manager ends up spending more time chasing updates than focusing on real development or strategic planning.
This is where Trello appears as a practical, simple, and flexible solution for managing a medium-sized team without complexity. Employees don’t need technical expertise, and leadership doesn’t need a large system or complicated structure. You simply create clear boards, assign team members properly, and connect tasks to defined execution stages—transforming the workflow into something smoother, more orderly, and entirely transparent.
Building a Stable Administrative Structure Inside Trello
Defining the Core Boards of the Team
The first step in eliminating chaos is creating a stable structure that does not change frequently. Every team member must know exactly where tasks live, where to post updates, and where to find priorities. The best approach is to create a main board named “Team Management” that contains all ongoing projects.
This board can be divided into clear lists that represent the core stages of work:
- New Tasks
- In Progress
- Under Review
- Completed
This simple structure prevents overlap, shows each employee the stage of their work, and gives the manager a full overview of the entire team’s status within minutes.
Next, you can create a separate board for each independent project. It is important to keep a clear separation between the general team board and the specific project boards. Employees need a comprehensive board that shows everything happening across the team, but they also need focused boards dedicated to the details of each project without unnecessary noise.
Dividing the Team into Work Groups Inside the Boards
When working with 20 employees, it is unrealistic to place everyone under random tasks or lists. Grouping the team into smaller units is a highly effective method to accelerate execution. You can create “cards” for each group—such as the design unit, marketing unit, programming unit, support team, and so on.
Under each group card, you place only the tasks relevant to that group. This reduces distraction and helps employees focus on what concerns them without having to sift through dozens of unrelated cards.
Turning Trello into a Daily Command Center for the Team
Clear Rules for Updating Work
One of the biggest issues managers face is the absence of updates. Some people finish work but write nothing. Others get lost in unnecessary details. The solution is establishing a golden rule for the team:
Every task must contain at least one update per day.
Employees can write a brief comment inside the task card, such as: “50% completed – awaiting data review.” This is enough for the manager to monitor progress without stressful daily meetings or constant follow-up messages.
This rule protects the team from chaos, ensures transparency, prevents misunderstandings, and eliminates task delays caused by lack of communication.
Using Workflow Stages to Reduce Meetings
Managers of medium-sized teams often hold many meetings simply to ensure nothing is missed. Trello reduces more than 70% of these meetings once you start using task movement between lists.
When an employee moves a task from “In Progress” to “Under Review,” it replaces multiple clarifying messages. When it moves to “Completed,” the manager can close the task without asking anyone.
In this way, Trello becomes a lightweight command room that communicates progress visually—without extra talk, and without wasted time.
Enhancing Accountability and Accurate Task Assignment
Assigning a Clear Owner for Every Task
Real accountability requires clarity. Each task must have a clearly assigned owner. Without this, responsibilities get blurred and work becomes scattered. Trello makes this extremely simple by allowing you to attach a team member’s name or avatar directly to the task card.
This helps each employee recognize their daily responsibilities and gives the manager an accurate view of workload distribution—preventing some people from being overloaded while others remain underutilized.
Additionally, having a clear owner for every task eliminates argument or confusion about who delayed or who forgot something, since each step is documented inside the system.
Setting Specific Deadlines
One of the major reasons teams fail is the absence of clear timing. Every task must have a specific deadline. Trello’s “Due Date” feature displays deadlines and colors tasks yellow when the deadline approaches and red when it is overdue.
These colors alone motivate employees by highlighting urgent and late tasks. They also allow the manager to take fast decisions without extra follow-up effort.
Boosting Team Productivity Through Smart Automation
Using Butler Automation
Large teams struggle with routine actions—moving cards, sending notifications, or adding team members. Trello’s Butler tool offers powerful automation to solve these issues.
You can set a rule such as: when a card moves to “Under Review,” Trello automatically sends a notification to the team leader. Or when a deadline approaches, the system sends a reminder to the task owner 24 hours in advance.
This automation reduces managerial workload and helps the team stay on track without constant reminders or micromanagement.
Using Templates to Speed Up Work
Recurring projects—like marketing campaigns or monthly reports—require similar structures each time. You can build a fixed template inside Trello and clone it with a single click.
This ensures that each new project begins in an organized manner, reduces errors from starting from scratch, and allows the team to jump directly into the work instead of wasting time on setup.
Tracking Performance and Analyzing Workflow
Measuring Completion Rates for Each Group
After using Trello for a while, the system begins accumulating a complete history of tasks: who started them, who finished them, and how long they took. This history helps the manager analyze team performance and detect strengths and weaknesses.
If a specific group consistently falls behind, this may indicate overload or insufficient training. Meanwhile, a fast-performing group can become a model for improving other units.
