Trello in agile teams: best practices (PixelsCamp 2016)

My talk at Pixels.Camp on October 6th, 2016. Not affiliated with Trello. Companion blog post at: https://productcoalition.com/trello-in-agile-teams-3d0536fb518c

Transcript

1. Trello in agile teams: best practices João Craveiro Pixels.Camp 2016
2. Meet João est. 1984 | ISTJ Lisbon, Portugal J Product Manager at Premium Minds Assistant Professor at U. Lusófona Software Engineer at Premium Minds Researcher at LaSIGE Teaching Assistant at FCUL Freelance web developer ...
3. NOT affiliated with Trello I don’t even have a Trello t-shirt (yet…)
5. This talk Why (not) use Trello Trello vs X ... X
6. Trello is Okay™ For non-development collaborative processes For small projects As an auxiliary coordination tool (e.g. between client and provider) If it simply works for you
7. Trello is Okay™ Say what you want, Trello is easy to use (but…)
8. It is easy to do it WRONG
9. I see this ALL the time...
10. Labels SUCK at conveying state
11. Notifications • Labels don’t trigger ◦ Notifications for people subscribed to the card ◦ Board activity indicator
12. • No accessible record of ◦ When labels have changed ◦ The path through these changes • If you are trying to get any metrics from a board (burndown, lead time, etc.)… History ...you don’t.
13. Accountability • You don’t know who changed a label • Sounds like witch-hunting, but it isn’t (necessarily…)
14. For card state, use LISTS
15. Starts with the basics and grow from there To Do / Doing / Done To Do / Doing 1 / Doing 2 / Doing 3 / … / Done-done You can also break down your To Do (e.g. Backlog vs Sprint Backlog)
16. Sometimes, use CHECKLISTS
17. Finer-grained state “Grocery list”-like progress
18. So what are labels good for?
19. Use labels for stuff that doesn’t change (much)
20. Type of card Bug Feature Chore Epic Design Copy ...
21. Theme, epic, product area... Particularly interesting for roadmap boards https://trello.com/b/lgXkJqsF/ roadmap-example-folding-burritos
22. Criticality Some may call it priority... Justin Cone proposes a 4-label system: Blocker, Annoying, Cosmetic, Reference
23. Mix & match Type + (some) criticality Red label deliberately NOT named Urgent Bug label deliberately NOT red
24. Mix & match Type + theme From “this is an epic” to “this belongs to that epic”
25. What’s in it for me? Notifications History Accountability Inspect to adapt!
26. Backlog overview https://getcorrello.com/
27. Cumulative flow diagram https://getcorrello.com/
28. Cycle time chart https://getcorrello.com/
29. Cycle time https://getcorrello.com/
30. Sum-up
31. Resist the urge to use labels just because they are cute and colored The main stages in your workflow are better represented as lists More fine-grained or sporadic states are nicely handled with checklists. Use labels for stuff that doesn’t change (much) • Card type (feature, bug, etc.) • Theme/epic • Criticality • A mix among these
32. Nice to read • Trello in agile teams: best practices, companion post to this talk https://medium.com/@d_little_b/ trello-in-agile-teams-3d0536fb518c • Scrum with Trello, by Robin Warren https://www.infoq.com/articles/scrum-trello • How To Manage Scrum And Kanban Teams In Trello With The Corrello Power-Up, by Robin Warren https://blog.trello.com/manage-scrum-and- kanban-teams-with-trello-corrello-power-up / • 4 tips for working with Trello, by Justin Cone http://justincone.com/4-tips-for-working-wit h-trello/ • Organizing a large product backlog, by Daniel Zacarias http://foldingburritos.com/articles/2015/07/ 06/organizing-a-large-product-backlog/ • A Trello template for your Product Backlog, by Daniel Zacarias http://foldingburritos.com/articles/2015/10/2 0/a-trello-template-for-your-product-backlo g/ ◦ With awesome inspiration boards
33. João jpgcc | jpgcc_ So long! And thanks for all the Pixels.