Finding ways to manage a project can be a challenge, particularly these days with hundreds of new apps coming out claiming to be the champ in task management. While I haven't used them all, I've used enough to know what works.
And my go to for 2020 is still the task management app Trello. And there's a few reasons for that.
What is Trello?
Trello is a team-based productivity task management app based around the use of Boards and Cards. Boards are used to create projects (or other forms of collections), and each board is comprised of many cards and card lists.
What are cards? Pretty much any type of content that you would find useful in task management. You can create plain-text cards, lists, checklists, images and file attachments. Each board can also be shared with other people in your organization as well.
And more importantly, it's fully customizable to your particular liking and workflow.
Features
Trello pretty much works everywhere, which is why I'm a big fan. This is where most other apps fall apart as they limit themselves to certain ecosystems making it a chore to manage your tasks. Trello works on Android, Windows, iOS, the browser, you name it. And it functions the exact same way regardless of where you are using it.
It also works offline as well, which again, is one of the top reasons why I personally use it. Once you connect to the internet again everything syncs up as needed.
Unlimited Personal Boards
Regardless of the plan you set up, paid or free, Trello offers unlimited personal boards. If you are working with a team though, there is a 10-board limit. Moving up to a paid tier gives you unlimited team boards as well.
I use Trello mainly for personal projects, and so the experience really feels as if you have an unlimited supply of resources at your disposable.
Customizable Cards
As I mentioned, each Trello board is made up of individual cards. Cards can be either texts, images, file attachments, lists of data or really anything that you find useful. You can also categorize cards with labels which are color-coded for easy lookup.
Each card can also have a cover image associated with it, as seen above. And that's really what makes Trello so useful. The level of customization is super high to the point that your Trello board can look completely unique to the way that you work and no one elses.
You can move boards around as needed as well.
And you can move cards around too from list to list. Bottom line, if you need to move something, you can.
Invite to Board
I've only used this feature one time as I am mainly a lone-wolf programmer. But it works just as you would expect. You can invite people to join your boards so that they can work on them as well.
Again, there is a 10-board limit on the free tier if you are going to be using the team-based features.
Power ups
And lastly, but not least, this is an area that I am more recently getting into. But power ups allow you to add even more functionality to your cards and boards as well. I have personally only tried a few myself, but it is cool to see how new features interact with your boards giving them more use.
A few examples of these include a calendar power up in which you can see your cards in a calendar view, which is surprisingly helpful, as well as Google Drive integration, in which you can access your Google Drive files directly in a card.
If you haven't tried it yet, I highly suggest at least giving Trello a chance. In all of the years of using multiple apps, Trello has been the one that I continue to come back to time and time again and that just feels like home in regards to my work and projects.
Walter Guevara is a Computer Scientist, software engineer, startup founder and previous mentor for a coding bootcamp. He has been creating software for the past 20 years.
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