Cross-office use of Stackfield in the town of Waiblingen

About the town of Waiblingen

The town of Waiblingen near Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg counts just under 56,000 inhabitants. Nick Bley – formerly in the fire and civil protection department in the citizen services devision and from October 2024 in the Digitization Department – was the driving force behind the implementation of Stackfield in the government agency.

The initial situation

Bley and his colleagues gained their first experience with project management tools four years ago when the desire for a digital solution arose in the fire and civil protection department. At first, Bley introduced Trello mainly to manage tasks, but as time went on, tasks became more demanding and the Kanban functionalities in Trello were soon no longer sufficient. Bley and his colleagues wanted to map more complex processes. Ideally, documents, discussions, meetings and tasks should be seamlessly combined in one platform.

On top of this, Trello was not GDPR compliant. Information always had to be checked and often reduced before it could be stored in Trello, and this significantly impaired workflows. Bley also wanted to make cross-departmental processes in the city administration more efficient. Processes that were previously laboriously handled by email should become more transparent and manageable. Not all offices worked with Trello, so forwarding Trello tasks by email was particularly time-consuming and cumbersome.

As the town of Waiblingen was interested in rolling out a suitable alternative across departments and Bley already had experience with collaboration tools and project management, it became Bley's responsibility to initiate and lead the project.

Why Stackfield?

As the town of Waiblingen was interested in rolling out a suitable alternative across departments, a project group was set up to make a well-founded decision. Bley, who had already gained experience with collaboration tools and in project management, was asked to contribute his expertise in particular. In the next step, an evaluation matrix including the requirements for the tools to be tested was jointly developed. Over a longer period of time, the various tools were finally tested against the requirements. In the end, Stackfield emerged as the clear favorite.

As a GDPR-compliant all-in-one tool, Stackfield not only solved previous problems, but also offered many of the features that Bley had already appreciated in Trello - including email integration. Another advantage for Bley and his team: Since the fire department and the Office of Fire and Civil Protection form a single unit which works intensively with volunteer members there, it was important to Bley that external users did not need their own licenses. Stackfield offered us the best setup in this area of collaboration with external parties, taking into account licenses and costs, sais Bley.

Learning the ropes within the various specialist departments

After the project group had decided on Stackfield, Bley first conducted training sessions in the various specialist departments. He only briefly covered Stackfield and focused primarily on the advantages and principles of agile methods. Instead of actively promoting Stackfield, Bley encouraged his colleagues to explore the platform on their own.

For particularly frequently asked questions, Bley additionally created a global Stackfield room. The room is open to everyone to read through frequently asked questions and access interesting links, for example to Stackfield's knowledge database.

To use resources efficiently, Bley now recommends that interested parties first work with the external role. This allows them to test Stackfield with a limited range of functions and check whether the rights are sufficient or whether a full license is required. This way, the respective department management can be sure that Stackfield will actually be used when the person receives a license, explains Bley.

Since July, Stackfield has been rolled out in various departments across the city administration - from the building construction department to urban drainage to event management. Stackfield is now used by over 200 employees in the town of Waiblingen.

Transparent representation of processes

With Stackfield, processes can now be displayed transparently for all team members. The tool offers different modules in the room with features for task management, team communication, collaborative work on documents, video conferencing, and more. The communication tab additionally displays all activities within the room so that users can quickly update themselves at any time.

As all work processes are visible to everyone in the room, Stackfield can now be used to seamlessly bridge gaps during absences, praises Bley. Issues such as vacation, illness or onboarding and offboarding are handled without any problems: information that used to be scattered in private email inboxes is now available centrally and clearly in Stackfield.

Thanks to Stackfield, tasks can be distributed more transparently and efficiently as well. Each user can assess their own workload and identify whether or not they can take on an additional task.

Automatically storing emails as tasks in Stackfield

The Office of Fire and Civil Protection uses an online form to report defects. As soon as a defect is reported, an email is sent to the designated mailbox. Thanks to Stackfield's email integration, this email is now automatically forwarded to Stackfield and created there as a task. This means that Bley no longer has to log into the email inbox, but receives the information directly in Stackfield. The task can then be given a due date, assigned and moved to the next column in the Kanban board, e.g. “In progress”.

Also, damage to the fire department's vehicle fleet is documented accordingly and is automatically transferred to Stackfield. Here, Bley also appreciates Stackfield as a documentation tool: with just a few clicks, he can see whether certain damage occurs more frequently and forward this information to the workshop if necessary. Thanks to Stackfield's automated processes, Bley saves a considerable amount of time and gains a clear overview of recurring problems.

Modularity, scalability, and expandability of Stackfield

A key decision factor from the outset was the platform's high scalability, according to Bley. Unlike other project management tools, which often require additional software - for example to create mind maps - Stackfield offers these features directly integrated. The platform is characterized not only by its comprehensive range of functions, but also by its flexibility: users can decide for themselves which modules to add or deactivate in the individual rooms. This allows Stackfield to be optimally adapted to the specific requirements of each project.

In addition, Stackfield offers the city administration of Waiblingen flexibility for the future: The authority can switch to an on-premise solution at any time, i.e. run Stackfield on its own servers, or switch to the Enterprise plan, which allows finer coordination with the various departments by dividing it into umbrella and sub-organizations.

Project work in Stackfield: working with external parties and video conferencing

The city administration of Waiblingen handles various projects in Stackfield, such as this year's youth festival at the Skatebowl in Waiblingen. For this event, the city collaborated with international artists. To facilitate coordination, external parties were invited to Stackfield with limited rights. Despite the time difference, communication and organization on the platform went smoothly. A colleague from cultural management said that this worked perfectly for them, says Bley.

Project-related, Bley and his colleagues enjoy using the integrated video conferences in Stackfield. Both users with a Stackfield account and external participants without an account can be included in the meetings via a link. This allows important points to be discussed efficiently without having to leave the platform. Bley also recommends his colleagues to create tasks and minutes directly in Stackfield during the meeting and to link them together to facilitate documentation and follow-up work.

Cross-departmental processes and reduced email traffic

Particularly in cross-departmental processes, work in the city administration seems to improve gradually. Bley remembers: Before, you couldn't really work together on a matter across departments. Today, a new Stackfield room is created for each new process, to which the relevant colleagues are invited. Email traffic, which used to be the central means of communication in cross-departmental projects, is reduced step by step. Bley concludes: I think Stackfield is great.