Skip to main content

get it done with trello - part i

Trello is a highly visual, easy-to-use collaboration tool that lets you organize projects using Kanban boards. Trello makes it simple to break down projects into components and components into checklists. You can track progress on each component, comment, even vote on tasks or ideas. Fog Creek Software, the maker of Trello, says it will be offered for free, forever.

Here are a couple of the ways that our team uses this tool:

Project Ideas

These are ideas we pitch to our sponsors and stakeholders. 

The columns:
  1. New Ideas: This is where the idea lives until it grows some legs.
  2. Documented Ideas: We've done technical research and requirements gathering.
  3. Proposed Ideas: We've pitched the idea.
  4. Approved Ideas: Sponsors and stakeholders like the idea. It can now be moved to the Project Backlog.

Project Backlog


Our Agile team keeps a Trello board for tracking the state of each project.

The columns:
  1. Accepted: All have agreed that this is a project we will work on. 
  2. Analysis and Planning: We have begun gathering requirements.
  3. Ready: We have gathered enough requirements to begin working on the first release.
  4. In Progress: We're working on it.
  5. Completed: The work is either entirely done, or it has passed from a project-management phase into a product-management phase.
Each project card in Trello card contains links to its Features, which we keep as cases in FogBugz. The cases are unfolded into sub-cases, which are the Feature's Stories. During work iterations, we track these Stories using FogBugz's Kanban plug-in.

Okay, that's a couple of ways. In part II of this series, I will describe how we use this tool for tasks in between working iterations...

Popular posts from this blog

Plone Advocate Andreas Mantke to Lead Site-Administration Workshop at 2012 LibreOffice Conference

I just published this article at plone.org on Andreas Mantke, a deputy member of the Board of Directors of the Document Foundation for LibreOffice . Mantke led a workshop for new Plone site administrators in the LibreOffice community during its annual conference last week. See the full article at plone.org/news/andreas-mantke-to-lead-site-administration-workshop .

Announcing the 45th Eastern Primitive Rendezvous

The 45th Eastern Primitive Rendezvous takes place September 23-October 1, 2022.   For more information, visit the official EPR website and Facebook group . We will be hosting the 45th Eastern Primitive Rendezvous on our family farm, near East Smithfield, PA. The dates are September 23 - October 1, 2022.  This is a living-history event depicting 18th-century activities. Visitors can tour the camp each day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  Tuesday, September 27 is School Tours Day, during which we welcome classes from all of the area schools. Campers need to preregister ( nrlhf.org/pdf/pre-reg.pdf ), and period-correct clothing and gear are required.  For the exact location and more details, visit the  official EPR website  and Facebook group . For those of you who attended the 2017 EPR, this is the same location.