Trello

Pros

The "card" system is innovative and highly efficient. The ability to see all your tasks allows you to prioritize and organize what to accomplish. Overall runs smoothly with a very clean user interface. It is easy to use and requires little to no training. Tasks can be assigned to multiple people, and can be checked off as "completed" by whomever - making tracking and rewards a breeze. The calendar plugin is very helpful. The use of plugins is incredibly useful as well.

Cons

There are several lacking features. There is no ability to set a time-stamp on a project, (how long it will take) outside of using the calendar feature. You cannot assign an approximate time to complete a project. Also there is no messaging function, only "comments". This is very limiting. Also, there is no way to divide cards and tasks under a single person. A single person will only have all their tasks in a big pool, color labels help but do not break it up making it easy to read. When a card is archived, who knows where it goes, it vanishes really. no ability to delete cards.

Pros

Trello supports our e-Learning design process by providing a central place to store and discuss the design for a particular learning engagement. It is user-friendly even for folks who are not particularly tech-savvy. It runs quickly and doesn't require any software installation. It can also be used for a variety of projects, from tracking a product roadmap or personal to-do list to creating new content for our learning platform.

Cons

A lot of the useful features require a paid account or a certain amount of Trello Gold to use. So all of the features are not available right out of the box. It also forces a design layout that is vertical, as opposed to our learning platform content which is arranged horizontally. So it is not as flexible as we would like.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

It really helps me organize information, tasks and really all aspects of a project. I've used it for years and it just gets better with the add-ons. I use it for professional project management and with my special projects with NASA's L'SPACE program. I use Trello with a premium add-on called PlanWay that adds additional project management tools like Ganntt charting and it makes task assignments and ownership easier for team based projects.

Cons

When I first began to use it years ago I jumped in and didn't really both to learn how to use it. If you don't have a method to organize the lists and cards it can get messy and overwhelming. What I learned to do was take a little time to read tutorials and watch some Trello YouTube videos and it helped me organize my information better. That's my advice to new users. Otherwise I have no complaints I love it.

Pros

- Ease of use
- They have a mobile app and browser software
- Super easy to understand for new users
- Sharing it and inviting new users is as simple as sending them an invite link
- The setup literally takes just minutes
- You have the ability to add custom fields to cards
- They work with Zapier so you can trigger certain things based on cards moving to columns you've identified
- It's freemium is extensive

Cons

- There were times when I sent an invite link, the user joined, but then when sending a specific card URL, the same the user could not access