Trello and Agile Methodologies
Trello is a widely used tool across the board. We can use Trello for pretty much every imaginable that requires some kind of coherent flow and sense-making.
Even for Scrum!
Trello boards work perfectly for Scrum. Its flexibility allows us to easily configure Lists and enables you to adapt them to the methodology workflow.
On this Sprint Trello Board, you can find an example of how Scrum works in Trello. I will now highlight the most important components of this work style.
Follow up of Pending Tasks
Trello allows us to view the status of a task as required by Scrum. We can clearly see each card as a Story within our workflow.
For example, we can define the initial state of a task in the list Sprint Backlog. It will remain in this List, until later when it is integrated into a Sprint or is terminated.
With Trello, we can easily track its status, comments, and progress.
Flexible Organization
Things related to software development are not set in stone. They keep changing. And we can reflect that change by reorganizing the stories in a Trello List as needed.
This is similar to editing workflows in JIRA.
Imagine that we are a small software development team of just developers and we have been working under the same simple workflow scheme,
- Backlog
- In progress
- Done
- etc.
When a Manual Tester joins the team, we’d have to add a new stage to our workflow. We must modify it to supports the new steps the task must go through before it reaches done.
Trello makes this rearrangement super easy to do.
Integration with External Tools
There are many tools that integrate with Trello, from power-ups to third party integrations that boost working with Boards and Lists.
Speaking specifically of Trello and Scrum, it is possible to find tools that provide some support during the different parts of the process. For example, PlanningWith.Cards (PwC) allows us to import tasks from any Trello Board or List and save the resulting estimates back in Trello. This works perfectly for distributed teams.
In this case, it is possible to take advantage of the flexibility of Trello and PwC to support Agile development.
Collaboration in Real Time
Real time updates on Trello are great! They are a powerful feature for distributed teams that many other project management tools would envy.
For distributed teams, these features help us to maintain communication in real time. They are highly appreciated.
Finally …
In conclusion, Trello is a good option for Agile software development teams. It has great integrations and makes working with remote teams a cinch.
Have you worked with Trello and Agile methodologies?
Have you tried tools like PlanningWith.Cards?
Please, let us know. Contact me at fhernandez@nearsoft.com or write your comments.
