Item: Trello
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The entire team is using it. We use it for project management, operational tasks, and bug tracking. It is a very basic setup, where boards are projects, production issues, or mobile releases. Tasks are added, and columns are treated like swim lanes, from in-review to deployed. Each user is in charge of moving their cards/tasks across as the state of their project changes.

Pros and Cons

Swim Lanes.
Assigning people to cards/tasks.
Keeping a personal log of work being done.
Giving an overall view of what you are working on.

Hide conversations and activity from the team.
Notifications are a mess.
It does not handle complex project very well.
Linking/epics/user stories are supported, but hard to implement.

Return on Investment

Trello has simplified project management for the team, and made it quick to give the team leaders an overall view of progress.
It is great for personal use to track what you are working on, what needs to be done, and what you have done.
The free tier is all that is needed, and investing anything more is not worth it.

Usability

While the search and individual boards are great, the notifications and overall usage is a mess. Often you feel lost and wonder where everything is. From an individual contributor viewpoint, it is great, but from a team leader viewpoint, it does not cover what you need.

Support Rating

I have never had to deal with Trello support, so I cannot accurately answer this question. I treat it as a very basic tool, so any complexity that might arise I just skip the headache and move to a different tool. For me, this should be a get in get out tool.

Alternatives Considered

JIRA Software and Slack

Trello fills a specific function for simple project tracking. It is better to use this tool as a complement to your workflow instead of a replacement. Anything more complicated should be moved to more adept tools, and communication should be moved to a more focused platform. Trello supports task tracking at its best; don't try to shoehorn other scenarios into it.

Other Software Used

Slack, JIRA Software

Likelihood to Recommend

Trello is best for simple task management. Create a card as a task, assign a person to it, and then assign that card to a list that describes the state of the task. In a software world, this task can move from in review, to TODO, to DOING, to TESTING, to DEPLOYING, to DONE. In regards to overall project managing with Epic/User Stories, etc... this team supports it, but implements support poorly.

Trello: Great at Basic Workflow Tracking; Nothing else

Overall Satisfaction with Trello