Kanban with Trello

This is, in principle, the last article in the series on agile methodology, Kanban and Trello.

This closes the cycle I started with the Trello tutorial where I explained how to get started with the tool and the system I use to apply agile methodology in marketing.

Although in that previous article I already gave a broad overview of the system, this time I’m going to explain in detail how I do it.

The aim is to give you an idea of whether it works for your project and how you can apply it.

In any case, there are many systems and variants. Endless ones.

That’s what happens when you adapt the methodology to the business and not the other way around.

I’m going to tell you about mine, focused on marketing and digital products. I hope it gives you a base and that you make the relevant changes to apply it to your own situation.

Advantages of combining Kanban and Trello

There are quite a few, actually.

If you’ve used agile methodology, and Kanban in particular, I don’t think I need to tell you much about its advantages. You already know them.

If, on the other hand, you have no experience, in the agile marketing article I linked in the first paragraph I explain its advantages in more detail.

In any case, it’s enough to say that it is a simple but very powerful management system. And it doesn’t create a heavy extra workload or bureaucracy; quite the opposite.

And how does this combine with Trello?

Well, at least for me, it is the best free tool for implementing agile practices.

And the thing is, the power of its free plan (it has paid plans too) is more than enough for medium-sized and even large projects.

On top of that, it is very easy to use, has almost no learning curve and you can adapt it to what you actually need:

• Are you an agency with several clients? It works for you.
• Do you run the marketing department of an SME with a team of 5 people? It works for you.
• Are four of you launching a project, each responsible for one area? It works for you too.
• Don’t want to use Kanban and prefer Scrum? It works for you.
• Do you want to use it personally to manage your tasks, whether for work or everyday life? Again, it works for you (although that may be a bit much and you may be better off with Notion).).

In short, keep in mind that it is so flexible that it is sure to work for your project.

How to use Trello to apply Kanban. The system

As I was saying, I’m going to explain the system I use at Yo pongo el hielo to manage marketing and digital products (the group’s various websites).

But we’re going to start almost from scratch.

Not completely from scratch, because I’m assuming you have created your free Trello account and know what boards, lists and cards are.

If you have doubts about these basic concepts, I suggest you review the getting-started tutorial for the tool.

In any case, here is a quick summary:

Kanban methodology is based on having a board with different lists.

These lists generally define the status of a task (in progress, validated, completed…).

Each task is represented by a card, with at least a title, although it can also contain extras (description, designs, documentation, labels, dates…).

So, getting into the system itself, I should point out that the Kanban board is permanent.

In other words, it isn’t deleted and replaced with a new one for each project or sprint (as happens in Scrum); instead, all tasks from all projects are added to the same board.

Tasks will be completed and archived (and can even be deleted), but the board remains.

As for the lists, the normal approach is to define several and keep them fixed along with the board, although if we need to add or modify one because we think part of the process could be improved, we can do so without any problem.

The board

Right, with the basic concepts broadly explained, we have two options for getting started with the system:

• Create a board from scratch.
• Download and use a template like this one.

For this article, I’m going to choose the second option.

All you have to do is click the "Use template" button to import it as a new board of your own:

As you can see, the template already comes with several lists configured, many of them very common: it is hard to imagine any board without "To do", "Doing" and "Done". The same goes for "Backlog" and "Testing".

But it may not fit exactly what we want: "Code review" or "Design" won’t exist in every type of project.

So now it’s time to look more closely at the lists.

The lists

So this is when we need to think about the statuses a task needs to go through to create the appropriate lists.

Think about how this flow is managed in your project:

• When is the task added to the board? You may have a "Backlog" column with every task that comes up, or the task may be added directly to the "To do" list while you keep the backlog in another tool (email, Word, notepad, Notion…)
• Who creates the task? Is it you? Then simply adding it to "Backlog" may be enough, because you’ll create the card properly. But if someone else creates them, you may need a "Pending definition" or "Defined" list to group tasks that only have a title and require a prior meeting with the requester to describe them before the team can tackle them.
• How is the task validated? Do you have to give it the go-ahead? If it is a development task, is there a QA person who checks that it meets the acceptance criteria? Is it work that needs client approval before it can be published? Depending on these variables, you may have lists such as "Pending validation", "Testing" or "Validating", or nothing similar if validation isn’t required.
• Can it become blocked at any point for reasons outside the team? For example:
• By the legal department: because it has to approve the rules of a competition or changes to a website’s legal texts.
• By finance: because it has to approve starting work with a supplier.
• By product: because they need to add the costs or promotional prices for a campaign
• In medium-sized and large projects, it is common to have a "Blocked" column that groups together tasks that cannot move forward until someone does something to unblock them.

These are some examples of columns that can be added according to our own workflow.

In my experience, the most common setup is to have between three and five:

• Backlog (optional): with all incoming tasks, so none are forgotten.
• To do / Ready (mandatory): with tasks already properly defined and ready to be started.
• Doing (mandatory): tasks in progress.
• Done (mandatory): completed tasks.
• Testing / Validated (optional): it can go before or after Done, depending on who validates and who moves the card.

As you can see, they are all included in the downloaded template.

Think about whether these are enough for you or whether you need to add another status. In any case, as I mentioned before, you can start like this and later add or remove a list to tailor the board more closely to your workflow.

Right, once you have your board defined, it is time to start adding cards.

The cards

In this case, Trello cards correspond to the concept of a "task" in Kanban.

So what I want you to understand is that a task, once properly defined as we’ll see next, enters the board and moves through the different lists according to its status.

Let’s use an example on our board:

#1. Create the task

We need to create a product page for a new product for the ecommerce site.

The first thing is to create the task / card. To do that, we go to our backlog and click the "Add a card" link, then type the task title:

As you can see, it is a short but sufficiently descriptive title so we know what we are referring to.

#2. Define the task

Now it is time to get into the details of the task itself.

To do this, we click the title we just wrote and a popup opens with all the task details:

And we start editing it.

• Title: we can change it if we want, but if it is already short and descriptive, there is no need.
• Description: here we detail everything the person carrying out the task needs to know. We can use lists, links, images, bold text… Together with the title, it is the only mandatory element of a task.
• Attachments: the task may require certain files, such as images in this case. In another case they might be Excel, Word or PowerPoint files, to name the most typical.
• Members: we can assign the person (or people, there may be several) who will carry it out and add ourselves as task "watchers" to follow its progress.
• Labels: useful when we want to categorize tasks. Typical use cases include working for different clients or brands and labelling each task with their name, as we do in this example. Another common case is grouping tasks by type, for example: "analytics", "copywriting", "design", "development", "planning"…
• Checklist: a list of task elements. These can be the steps required to complete it (as in the example) or the validation criteria required to consider it finished.
• Dates: ideally, you should add the start and end dates. Especially the latter, as it lets us view tasks in calendar mode. Later we’ll talk about an add-on (Power-Up) that lets us track time spent on the task and thus measure, for example, how much time we devote to each client or each type of task.
• Cover: an image that will be displayed on the board next to the card title.
• Custom fields: very useful when we base all our planning in Trello, because they make the tool even more flexible and powerful, but as of today, you need a paid plan to use them.

#3. Move the task

After fully defining the task, it is time to move it to the appropriate list.

If you look at the previous images, in our example we created the task in the "backlog" list. Now that we have defined it and it is ready to be carried out, we move it to the "To do" list so the person assigned to it can pick it up.

Simply drag it from one list to another or click the "Move" button inside the card and it will be in the new status:

#4. Carry out the task

Once it is in the appropriate list, the person assigned to the task can start working on it.

First of all, the first thing is to move it to its new status: "Doing".

Once here, they will open the card to see what they need to do and for something else: to tell the clock that they have started working on it. But for that we need a Power-Up.

As I mentioned in the previous tutorial, Trello has many Power-Ups, which are extensions for the tool.

For what we want — measuring how long it takes to complete a task — there are several Power-Ups and even integrations with other tools, but I’m going to use Activity..

Why?

It does everything I need and works well, so I see no reason to change.

To use it, we download Activity from here by clicking the corresponding button:

We select the relevant board:

Once it has been imported correctly, we can return to the board.

When we open the card we were working on, we see that a new element has loaded: a timer that the person carrying out the task must click when they start:

This way, the timer will start tracking the time the person spends on it.

Once they finish, they just have to pause the timer and that’s it.

Besides tracking time, Activity can do more:

• Manually edit the time spent. In case we forgot to start or stop the timer.
• Add up the time if several people take part in the same task.
• Export the time spent on each task to a CSV file. This is done from the top menu link: Power-Ups > Activity > Export to CSV.

In other words, basic things, but handled well.

#5. Finish the task

When the person finishes the task, they only have to do three things:

• Stop the timer tracking the time spent.
• Mark the task as completed. See the image below to see how it is done.
• Move the task to the appropriate list: "Done", "Testing", "Pending validation" or whichever applies in each case.

#6. Archive the task

To avoid overloading the completed-tasks list, I review everything the team has done each week (late Friday or first thing Monday) and archive all completed tasks.

If I have any doubts about a particular task, I leave it unarchived until I have spoken with the person who carried it out and, once it is clarified, I archive it.

To review an already archived task, simply click here:

Click the option More > Archived items:

When we do this, all archived cards will appear.

We can open each one or send it back to the board.

Extra

Here are a couple of ideas in case they are useful.

Repository

The first is to create a list called "Resources" or something similar. In that list we create different cards where we add useful files such as:

• The corporate identity manual or style guide.
• The fonts used.
• Templates (.psd, vector files, Excel, PowerPoint…).
• Access details and passwords for certain accounts (for example, if you pay for Canva premium or an SEO tool).
• Documentation and protocols.

By doing it this way, when a new person joins the team, they have access to all the material they will need without having to keep asking for it.

Board design

On the other hand, if we want to style the board, we can always:

• Use cards as headers for each list (as in the template).
• Change the background.

These are small details that can make the tool more pleasant to look at.

Power-Ups and browser extensions

I’ve already talked about Activity, but there are a couple of add-ons for the tool that I find useful.

Calendar Power-Up

It gives you a calendar view of the board like this:

If we have added the task due date to the card, we can view them in this format.

Super useful for seeing what we need to do each day or week.

You can download the Power-Up here.

Card counter

It may not be so necessary when you start, but once tasks pile up, it is useful to have an indicator showing the number of cards in each list.

And that is exactly what this browser extension does.

You can download it here.

Board backup

Following a question sent to me by a newsletter subscriber (by the way, if you still haven’t subscribed, you’re already late), I looked for a Power-Up that lets you undo changes such as deleting cards.

And I found this one:

I should say that I haven’t used it personally (I’ve never needed to), so I can’t give you an opinion as a user, although its more than 10k installations make me think it is a good Power-Up.

That said, you get a 7-day trial and then you have to pay for it.

That is the price of security.

You can download it here.

Conclusions

This is how I apply the Kanban methodology with Trello to manage marketing and digital product development at Yo pongo el hielo.

It is quite simple, doesn’t take me much time, and I have everything well organized and managed.

I don’t know whether it is the best system — I suppose it depends on each project — but I do know that it works quite well for us.

If you have doubts about your current management approach, I recommend giving it a try.

And, of course, if you think I can help you manage your project, tell me and we’ll arrange a date.