Trello.com – Chrome Extensions

I use Trello to plan and manage software projects as well as a weekly planner to keep track of my work related tasks.

This is a list of my favourite Google Chrome extensions for Trello which make it easier to use:

Scrum for Trello

Adds functionality to estimate and track story points or hours. I wrote a detailed post on this at Trello.com – Estimating & Tracking Hours.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrum-for-trello/jdbcdblgjdpmfninkoogcfpnkjmndgje

CardCounter for Trello

Shows the number of cards in each list at the top right of the list.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cardcounter-for-trello/miejdnaildjcmahbhmfngfdoficmkdhi

trelloaddin01

Trello.com – Estimating & Tracking Hours

This is a follow-up to a previous post I wrote on Trello.com. Trello currently does not support adding estimates or tracking hours against cards. This post shows you how to do that using a Google Chrome extension called Scrum for Trello.

First of all use Google Chrome for working with Trello as I have found that Internet Explorer can be temperamental when working with boards. Also you need Chrome to use the extension.

After you install the extension, open a card and edit the title. You will see numbered buttons below the title field

trelloest01

These buttons are story points. I don’t care much for story points because at some point unless you have all the time in the world you have to explain how a story point translates into hours to somebody who doesn’t really care what the story point is. I have read all the goodness about why story points are better than hours but I still like hours, it works for me. Both story points and hours work with the extension. If you like story points go have fun.

So you can press one of these buttons and it essentially puts the number in round brackets before the card title. Since all the extension is doing is hacking the card title to track information, you can either manually choose to add the number in brackets before the title or you can edit the number after you press one of the buttons. And no there appears to be no way to change the list of story point numbers in the buttons that appear below the title. I have changed the title below to show 32 hours.

trelloest02

After saving it will look like this

trelloest03

When you close the card and view the board the extension will read the numbers and show them at the bottom of the card, total up all the cards in a column and show the total at the top of the column and show the total of all the columns at the top right of the board.

trelloest10

Now if you want to also keep track of how many hours are completed on each task you can edit the title and add the number of hours completed in square brackets at the end of the title. I am changing the title below to show 8 hours have been completed.

trelloest05

This is what the card will look like after the change

trelloest06

Sometimes after you edit the title and close the card, the board does not reflect the changes to show your edits. For example below you still see the bracketed numbers in the title.

trelloest07

Simply refresh the web page and the extension will do its magic and refresh the numbers. You will see that the completed hours are shown to the right of the estimated hours on the card and also the total completed hours for the column are shown to the left of the total hours at the top of the column. I would have preferred if the column total was shown on the right as well.

trelloest08

Remember these are the completed hours, so do not read this as the hours remaining for the cards. You have to do the mental math to figure that out yourself.

The extension is basically hacking the card titles to manage this information. When you change the hours on the card these changes are not reflected in the activity feed for the card. Then again neither are any other changes to the title of a card.

If you want to use these numbers to feed into a burn down chart you can follow the instructions at http://lsjuanny.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/step-by-step-create-trello-burndown/ to get a serviceable burn down chart for free.

I find using this Chrome extension when planning out a project’s tasks quickly gives me an idea of the number of hours required.

Trello.com – Free Online Scrum Task Board (aka Whiteboard with Post-its)

Managing any kind of software project requires planning out tasks, assigning them to people,  tracking the status of each task and so on. Many teams use a whiteboard with sticky Post-it notes arranged in columns, with column names such as “Stories”, “To Do”, “In Progress”, “Testing” and “Done”. If you are Agile of mind you might call this a Scrum Task Board for the not so agile it might be a Project Planning Board. Regardless of your agility and what label you give it, it kind of looks like the one below.

trello01

Whiteboards are simple technology, mostly hard to break and great at communicating project information to the team as long as the entire team has physical access to the whiteboard.

Nowadays teams tend to be geographically dispersed and virtual and can benefit from my favorite online whiteboard Trello.

trello02

My wallet and I like things which are simple and cheap. Trello is almost as simple as the whiteboard and according to their site “Trello is free, now and forever”. Hmmm…sounds too good to be true. Well it is at least free for now so let’s get planning.

Every user that interacts with Trello must have a Trello account. Signing up is easy, you can use your Google account or if you are a rebel and don’t have a Google account you can use your email address and a password to sign up. Remember to write the password on a Post-it so you don’t forget it 😉

trello03

Take a tour of all the Trello features at https://trello.com/tour or if reading is not your thing watch the movie.

Here is some Trello terminology to keep you on the right track:

  • Organization ≈ an organization (don’t worry it gets more complicated below)
  • Board ≈ whiteboard
  • List ≈ whiteboard column
  • Card ≈ Post-it note

Here are some of the things I like about Trello in no particular order:

  1. It is browser based and Chrome keeps track of my password so I don’t need one of them Post-it thingies stuck to my monitor.
  2. The interface is about as clean and simple as…well…a whiteboard.
  3. You can drag and drop cards without getting them stuck to your fingertips.
  4. Cards change size so you don’t have to use multiple chained Post-its to get your point across.
  5. You can attach files, videos, pictures, hyperlinks and comments to a card. Try that with a Post-it.
  6. Cards can have due dates and get highlighted (subtly) if the due date has passed you by.
    trello05
  7. You can assign cards to multiple members.
  8. You get an email when a card is assigned to you.
  9. You can subscribe to a card, so if somebody changes it or moves it to another list you get notified by email. Great for keeping on top of things.
  10. Cards can have a checklist of sub-tasks associated with that card and you can see at a glance how many of the sub-tasks have been completed.
    trello04
  11. You can set up multiple organizations in one account. Nice feature if you work with multiple organizations like I do and/or get invited to Trello boards from other organizations.
  12. You can create as many boards with as many lists and cards as you want.
  13. You can invite other users to be members of an organization or board.
  14. Cards can be color coded (kind of) and categorized.
  15. Lots of keyboard shortcuts as you would expect of any good application.
  16. Activity feed for each card and board shows who changed what.
  17. You can filter the board by category or user to show only those cards for the selected category or user.
  18. Works almost identically in the browser, on the iPad, iPhone, Android and Windows 8 (truthfully I have only tested it on the Apple devices, so I am guessing about the others).
  19. The learning curve is most definitely lacking in curves. It is so simple to use that if one of your team members doesn’t get it, then you need to get a replacement team member 😉

Wow that was a lot of things to like about Trello. To bring some balance to the universe here is what I don’t like about it:

  1. You can’t filter cards in the mobile apps.
  2. You can’t have different colored cards. You can categorize cards which gives them a different colored teeny tiny bar at the top of the card, but I want my boards to be colorful like real life whiteboards with all the neon colored Post-its.
  3. Every member assigned to a board has the same rights. That is they can change anything on the board and obliterate it or parts of it if they so desire. Now this is a good thing from an Agile mindset because everybody should be equal and have an equal say blah blah blah, but people are well human and make mistakes. The good news is that you can see who to blame 😉 from the board activity feed, because every mistake is recorded for all to enjoy. If you scrounge together the $25/month to upgrade to Business Class you get a bit more control over this, but members with edit rights can still cause havoc. Mind you the same problem exists with real world whiteboards unless you laminate the Post-its and superglue them to the board.

I love a company that eats it’s own dog food. Trello uses Trello to manage development of their own product. Check out the Trello Development board which is a good example of how to structure a project with multiple releases.

They also use a Trello board to share Trello Resources such as tips, usage examples, browser extensions etc.

Trello is a fantastic tool that I find I am using on more and more projects and I hope it does stay free forever. Go forth and plan.

I have written a follow on post about estimating and tracking hours with Trello.