Scrum Tools: Trello

Trello

Trello is an organizational tool that provides a way to create a "board" containing different lists or categories of items.  Each item is a "card", and the card can be really simple -- just an idea, statement,  or todo list item, or it can be very detailed and have its own task list, owner, label, and more.  Trello isn't specifically marketed to Scrum or Agile but its board structure adapts itself easily to the notion of a Scrum board. The Trello site states "Trello is the fastest, easiest way to organize anything, from your day-to-day work, to a favorite side project, to your greatest life plans."  The structure and design of Trello makes me think of a text-based Pinterest.

There is a Trello Scrum extension for Google Chrome that provides estimating and hours tracking, but it is up to you to set up and configure your boards to match the difference stages of the Scrum process.   The interface is clean, modern, and fairly intuitive, and mobile and tablet integration is very good.  Where I think Trello breaks down is for managing large projects with many backlog items.  Search is built in and that can help you find particular backlog items, but there seems to be a real danger that a large product backlog could quickly get out of hand. I also don't see support for Epics or Themes, other than having to create your own system for naming or color coding cards.  Making dependencies or links between cards also doesn't currently seem possible.  Finally, release management isn't natively supported and there is no native support for burndown charts, although  another third-party tool, Burndown for Trello, works with the Chrome extension to provide it.

To be fair, this blog post Five Tips for Using Trello for Scrum does provide some helpful ways to manage larger projects or releases, such as using separate boards to manage product backlogs and sprints.  However, I am still not convinced that Trello would scale well although I would definitely use it to help organize small personal projects.

To sum up, it is a really well-designed product, and would be very useful for small startups or other small teams that want a free tool for an initial foray into Scrum.  However, without a lot of discipline around its use it may not meet the needs of a development team as it grows.

What is your experience with Trello?