9/12/2018 10 ways to use Trello for Product Management – Tradecraft – Medium

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Kate Bennet Follow
printCurrently
Product consultant and chaos organizer. again. at Lab Zero, formerly Product Management
at Imgur, Mindjet and Spigit.
May 27, 2017 · 7 min read

10 ways to use Trello for Product

Management
I’ve used Trello (the free list tool recently acquired by Atlassian) for
anything from roadmaps to recipes, and found it invaluable for Product
Management. The likes of Pivotal Tracker, Jira, Asana and Phabricator
have their place, but Trello is the tool that I most commonly return to
for simplicity and exibility.

I’ve outlined 10 ways that Trello can be used for Product Management
below. If you have examples add a note in the comments- I’d love to
hear about them!

1. High level roadmap

A high level Trello board can help communicate your roadmap
internally and externally. Do include high level features (likely to
translate to your Epics). Don’t include details and discussion on the
cards.

Think carefully before creating a board like this: once it’s out there
you’re committing to defending it and keeping it up to date. If your
roadmap changes (which it will) you’ll need to communicate that
through the board.

For internal communication, I’ve found that it works well to pair this
board with a fortnightly Roadmap Review for relevant stakeholders
(heads of departments, CEO, etc.). I give a little more detail to this
group, extending the roadmap to a Project Overview with “Next sprint”
and “Being worked on now” (handy example from Trello).

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Source: http://blog.trello.com/going-public-roadmapping-with-a-public-trello-board

2. Agile development
I’ve experimented with Trello for agile development, using it with
engineers, designers and QA to plan and track sprints.

I nd that Trello is ok for small teams starting out on a project

(particularly if you’re on a budget), but that it breaks down with any
sort of scale: a card-based board with no automation is di cult to
handle when you have 10's or 100's of bugs in your backlog! (That
being said- companies such as Udemy have been able to make it work
for them, so it is possible.)

For agile development, try the following setup:

• Icebox - Unprioritised backlog of ideas.

• Prioritised backlog - Feature changes and bugs that have been

validated and designed, and are ready to build.

• Next sprint (proposed)- Cards that, as a PM, you would like in

the next sprint.

• This sprint- Agreed with the Engineering team in Sprint Planning.

Each card is assigned to a person.

• In progress - Cards that are being worked on now.

• Ready for QA - Ready for QA to test.

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• Done - Completed cards. Could be broken down into “Ready for

release” and “Released.”

To avoid adding too many columns to the agile board, have separate
boards for Product Planning and Design (which feed in to the agile
board).

Your board doesn’t have to be as detailed as I’ve suggested: adapt it to

your own needs and product process. This example is a di erent setup
from Subnautica:

If you use estimation points, try the Scrum for Trello Chrome extension.
Pivotal Tracker or Jira are likely to be a better t for this though.

3. Retrospectives
A simple Stop, Start, Continue Trello board works for team
retrospectives.

Gather your whole team, spend 5 minutes in silence adding to the

board, then group similar items, discuss the themes, and agree actions.

Advantages:

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Good for remote teams

Reminder of what was agreed
Can refer back to the list each week

Disadvantages:
If a team isn’t yet comfortable giving feedback to each other you may
need a tool that allows anonymity.

(Board adapted from https://trello.com/b/hkaQsLWx/sprint-retrospective)

4. Brainstorming
Some people love mind maps. My brain works with lists, so I use Trello
for jotting down ideas. This works well by yourself or with a team-
particularly if the team is remote.

The example below is ideas for blog posts (source) but it would work
equally well for product ideas, marketing campaigns, A/B tests, metrics,
etc.

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5. Personal task tracking

I use Trello to keep on top of my personal tasks- both in and out of
work. I nd that it’s a useful memory jog, particularly when starting a
new job or project.

If you often lose track of time, using cards as Morning, Afternoon and
Evening dividers can help add more granularity. I’d also recommend
reading this article on using a calendar instead of a to-do list.

Here’s an example of taking it a step further- using Trello to plan a

wedding:

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Source: https://trello.com/b/JeOMdNMH/wedding-planning

6. Project tracking
Trello boards are useful for projects that have a xed deadline and need
to stay on track, avoiding the overhead of a Gantt chart or Jira. I
recently used Trello this way to project manage a design agency.

Each task must be assigned to a person and be given a due date. Each
person is responsible for moving their cards when they’re complete,
and for adding a comment if a card will miss its deadline.

For short term project management, I recommend:

1. Use labels to highlight overarching, weekly goals and deadlines.

2. Enter all tasks for the following week on Friday.

3. Have a Kicko meeting with the whole team on Monday. Go over

each person’s tasks for the week. Add due dates (agreed with the
individual).

4. Each person gives a brief checkin update each morning (Slack

works well for this), mentioning any tasks that will miss their date.

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Example project board. Each card is assigned to someone and has a due date.

7. Schedule visibility
Part of a PM’s job is co-ordination, and keeping on top of who’s doing
what. This is much simpler if others have visibility into the overarching
schedule and any recurring meetings. I usually print out the schedule
and put it somewhere visible in the o ce, but it can also be helpful to
have the timeline online.

This basic example is based on a weekly sprint for a mobile app:

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8. User interview notes

User interviews usually result in reams of notes which then need to be
synthesised, sorted and summarised. I’ve previously written about
doing this:

A guerilla usability test of Expensify

An exercise in simplifying business bureaucracy.

medium.com

I’ve since found that it’s much simpler to use Trello for note taking.

List the interview questions in your rst column, then use one column
per user interview and one Trello card per feedback point.

Assign a label colour to each user so that you can see the spread of
feedback when clustering pain points (see point ‘9’).

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Feedback grouped by user interview.

9. Pain point grouping

When you have all of your user feedback notes in one place (see ‘8’), it’s
easy to group the feedback in to pain point themes.

Bring your whole team together- in person or remotely- and have them
put all of the user feedback under theme headings. Anyone can create a
heading, and anyone can move any card around until each card is
assigned to a theme.

In the example below, a team of 3 sorted our user interview feedback in

to 7 themes. These themes were a starting point for a website redesign.

Advantages of using Trello for pain point grouping:

Works remotely or in-person
Easy to share with others (to help justify product changes)
Simple to archive and return to in future product iterations

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User feedback clustered in to pain points.

10. Branding mood boards

Mood boards are a collection of images that evoke a feeling from the
person viewing them. They help companies de ne their brand and are
useful when developing the rst version of a product or going through a
rebranding.

Mood boards are usually physical boards but I’ve used Trello when time
is short and in-person isn’t possible. Pinterest could also work.

How to use Trello for a branding exercise:

This example is based on a product/ design team going through a
branding exercise with a company’s co-founders:

1. Brainstorm adjectives that could apply to the brand. eg fun, calm.

2. Assign a few words to each person. Find 1 image that represents

each value and 1 image that doesn’t represent the value.

3. Upload each image as a cover picture on a Trello card. Make sure

the cards are randomly sorted.

4. Co-founders vote by assigning Trello labels to each image based on

how much it aligns with their values:

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Green = Aligns with values.

Red = Doesn’t align with values.
Add short comments where necessary. Timebox this activity- don’t
overthink the voting.

5. Synthesise the results by looking through the pattern of votes.

Brainstorm typography, colour and style based on the results.

An example mood board that my team and I created for a client.

. . .

For further reading, check out this article on Trello for Product
Managers.

Note: I don’t work for or represent Trello- I’m just a big fan of simple
products that help to remove confusion from product delivery.

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