Trello

Trello is great, it's simple to use, and has loads of clever UX devices that make tracking and updating tasks a joy. We use it quite often within our organisation whenever something needs "organising fast" - we're not expecting to track the progress of the entire project through Trello, but the occasional breakout.

We've most often used Trello to round up our "ideas" phase, and then moved onto a more complex project management tool after that.

The interface is simple, the free level is "about right" and there are just enough features for you to get going quickly.

Trello is great for quick organisational tasks, that need to be presented in a visual way, or they are good for information sharing (literally a pin-board of ideas works well) - and has reduced the need for post-it-notes everywhere in the office.

There comes a point in every Trello boards life when the user will go "ok, now it's time to move this all away from Trello"

Task management is .. laborious at best, with no real way of tracking time, burndowns, productivity, velocity, or any other metric that tells a project manager if the job is "getting done", it's simply not built for that and trying to implement methods that will make it work, just result in frustration.

It's also a bit lightweight on the features for the free trial version, quite a few things are locked off behind the paywall (which is fine) - but also, we feel that there isn't *enough* features behind the paywall which would incentivise us to purchase a license.

So the bottom line with Trello is it's great for short term, simple tasks and idea sharing, but anything more heavy duty that needs to be updated regularly and it will struggle.

The system of labels on the boards, easy collaboration in accessing co-workers and having deadlines helps to streamline the daily work.

Workspaces are limited for free users and many features are paid. However, it meets the minimum expectations in its free version to work normally in collaborative projects.