Trello Techniques

Best practices after several months of Trello use

Common board structure

Common boards I recommend, left to right.

1. To Do list contains cards waiting in the work-pipeline.
   Sometimes I use a variant with multiple To-Do lists by separating it by purpose, like: To Do / Content, To Do / Site, To Do / Server etc.

2. Doing is a list for current tasks.

3. Done for finished tasks. Archive them after couple of months or couple of hundreds.

4. Notes / Info contains permanents notes, manuals or informations that are useful to keep forever.

You can create optional Ideas / Prepare / Postponed list that is usually placed fully-left, before To-Do list, and that contains ideas, usually a pile of garbage, that is postponed, delayed, just an idea and etc.

Good Practices for Writing Trello Cards

• Writing should be done in English as it is the only language that all team members are required to know. Use meaningful sentences and utilize markdown for formatting.

• Card titles should fit in one line. For a more detailed task description, use the description field.

• About card members: you’re probably using it wrong. When assigning card members, ensure that there is at least one member responsible for the card. If you only need to be informed about the card and not doing any related work, do not become a member and instead subscribe to the card to receive notifications when something changes.

• When marking a card as done, include a comment with the word “Done” and a concise explanation of the work completed. This will allow everyone to know who did what and when. The card should then be moved to the “Done” list.

• Only a member can archive a card.

• Never delete a card that has had some activity in the comments. If there were no comments, maybe the card shouldn’t have been created at first place.

Bookmark your searches

Option Saved Searches is only for paying customers. But you can achieve similar results by using browser bookmarks.

The base URL is https://trello.com/search?q= on which we append search queries to.

• I’m working on what, across all projects?
  @me list:Doing / URL

• What Maria (example) is working on?
  @Maria list:Doing / URL

• What are my unfinished tasks?
  @me -list:Done -list:Info -list:Idea / URL

• My active tasks only in project XYZ?
  @me board:XYZ -list:Done -list:Info -list:Idea / URL

In search results, Trello will return both normal and archived cards. Also, if you need a to search for an exact phrase, use double-quotes "some phrase", just like in Google.

Extra Tip: When you are inside Trello, you can now get to the search box just by hitting slash /.

So, go ahead and create your own Trello bookmarks.