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We use Trello and it works great. Its closest skeuomorphic equivalent is... a whiteboard with Post-it notes stuck to it.

by dyim 9y ago

bshimmin 9y ago
I actually find that the ease with which non-technical and - let's phrase this delicately - busy people can add new cards and even new lists (columns) to Trello is a significant detractor from its successful use in software project management. JIRA is significantly harder to use - I challenge any non-technical novice JIRA user to figure out how to add extra columns - but, for that reason, vastly easier to keep under control. If you have stringent rules in place like "only the project manager can add cards, they can only add them in the sprint planning session on Monday morning, and we are keeping strictly to Kanban", then Trello will work fine - but any competent project manager should also be able to use JIRA, and will surely benefit from its extra functionality (and any non-technical stakeholder should at least be able to log into JIRA and click the requisite few buttons to see the current sprint and the backlog, if they care enough). But hey, each to their own.
- logicallee 9y ago
  sorry, what is your "busy people" a euphemism for?
  - bshimmin 9y ago
    I mean, for example, a sales director with a stake in the business getting in after a challenging client meeting and creating extremely hyperbolic cards like "Search is incredibly slow!!!" or "Client profile picture is blurry" with absolutely no further details. I've seen this happen with Trello, and it doesn't help anyone. You don't get it with JIRA, because the sales guy really won't be able to use JIRA well enough to do it (in all likelihood), so he'll just send an irate email which may get translated into meaningful tickets (or, you know, it might just be he was on slow wifi in his meeting).
    - logicallee 9y ago
      sorry if this is a bit long - I'd usually edit it down but am in a hurry. So I actually am having trouble following your example. 1 - Do you mean that the landed contract is actually really big and important (basically it's now paying for all of the development) or just another signup? 2 - you called them hyperbolic but picked two examples that can keep clients from taking the software seriously: both examples seem to be something that might be much more important than whatever the team was working on. What I mean is that if the client is trialing the software, and has a certain process in place but trying yours, then if their search is too slow they might go back to whatever process they had before; you can lose the client. Likewise blurry profile pictures might cause them to decide that it is not polished software they can use. You did not use examples like "unclear icon on search label!!!" or "client logo NOT on their dashboard" or something stupid. I also thought that anyone could talk to the stakeholder who added to your board and figure out why it is so important (if it is) or immediately move it if it's not (Assuming it's a big, important client.) Or edit it as appropriate. Obviously this might mean totally rewriting the feature: perhaps slow search can just be rewritten as showing a recent list of the last ten (whatever) and allow them to be pinned, as the client doesn't really care about search but just wanted to bring up (whatever). I say this because for really old searches from archives people wouldn't care about waiting a few seconds, whereas for workflow type things done lots of times all the time it really matters. Obviously a PM is supposed to stand between such a client/internal sales director and the developers but I am having trouble understanding why the PM can't move and translate from the board - assuming these issues and the client is big/important enough. Emails often get lost or not handled with appropriate urgency for the case at hand (and can even be marked wontfix or feature request simply due to lack of communication) so if you wrote a bit more about your example I might understand better.
      - bshimmin 9y ago
        Ignoring the specifics of my examples, which really aren't important, the problem is the frequency with which these process failures happen. If the board is in a near-constant state of mayhem and flux because the sales director makes a list of "super urgent" bugs that have come out of a client meeting (because, of course, categorisation of bug urgency is not something mere mortals can really handle - everything is always urgent) and the art director has suddenly decided to make another list of visual flaws he's spotted, and so on, then no one can really get anything done because it all surprisingly quickly turns into a mess. I find Trello enables this sort of behaviour because the barrier to entry is so low, and I say this because I've seen it happen several times. As I said upthread, Trello is adequate if you've got a project manager vigilantly pruning the board - but if you have the resources for a project manager able to do that, then why not just get them to use something that's really much better suited to the purpose? Anyway, this is just my opinion based on my experience. Trello is a good tool for certain things. I don't think it's a great tool for managing a software project with a team of more than about three people, and even if you can make it work, I think most teams would really just benefit from using either JIRA or equivalent, or maybe GitHub Projects (which I haven't tried, but it looks quite good). Thanks for your reply.

We use Trello and it works great. Its closest skeuomorphic equivalent is... a whiteboard with Post-it notes stuck to it.

by dyim 9y ago

We use Trello and it works great. Its closest skeuomorphic equivalent is... a whiteboard with Post-it notes stuck to it.

bshimmin 9y ago

I actually find that the ease with which non-technical and - let's phrase this delicately - busy people can add new cards and even new lists (columns) to Trello is a significant detractor from its successful use in software project management. JIRA is significantly harder to use - I challenge any non-technical novice JIRA user to figure out how to add extra columns - but, for that reason, vastly easier to keep under control. If you have stringent rules in place like "only the project manager can add cards, they can only add them in the sprint planning session on Monday morning, and we are keeping strictly to Kanban", then Trello will work fine - but any competent project manager should also be able to use JIRA, and will surely benefit from its extra functionality (and any non-technical stakeholder should at least be able to log into JIRA and click the requisite few buttons to see the current sprint and the backlog, if they care enough). But hey, each to their own.

logicallee 9y ago
sorry, what is your "busy people" a euphemism for?
- bshimmin 9y ago
  I mean, for example, a sales director with a stake in the business getting in after a challenging client meeting and creating extremely hyperbolic cards like "Search is incredibly slow!!!" or "Client profile picture is blurry" with absolutely no further details. I've seen this happen with Trello, and it doesn't help anyone. You don't get it with JIRA, because the sales guy really won't be able to use JIRA well enough to do it (in all likelihood), so he'll just send an irate email which may get translated into meaningful tickets (or, you know, it might just be he was on slow wifi in his meeting).
  - logicallee 9y ago
    sorry if this is a bit long - I'd usually edit it down but am in a hurry. So I actually am having trouble following your example. 1 - Do you mean that the landed contract is actually really big and important (basically it's now paying for all of the development) or just another signup? 2 - you called them hyperbolic but picked two examples that can keep clients from taking the software seriously: both examples seem to be something that might be much more important than whatever the team was working on. What I mean is that if the client is trialing the software, and has a certain process in place but trying yours, then if their search is too slow they might go back to whatever process they had before; you can lose the client. Likewise blurry profile pictures might cause them to decide that it is not polished software they can use. You did not use examples like "unclear icon on search label!!!" or "client logo NOT on their dashboard" or something stupid. I also thought that anyone could talk to the stakeholder who added to your board and figure out why it is so important (if it is) or immediately move it if it's not (Assuming it's a big, important client.) Or edit it as appropriate. Obviously this might mean totally rewriting the feature: perhaps slow search can just be rewritten as showing a recent list of the last ten (whatever) and allow them to be pinned, as the client doesn't really care about search but just wanted to bring up (whatever). I say this because for really old searches from archives people wouldn't care about waiting a few seconds, whereas for workflow type things done lots of times all the time it really matters. Obviously a PM is supposed to stand between such a client/internal sales director and the developers but I am having trouble understanding why the PM can't move and translate from the board - assuming these issues and the client is big/important enough. Emails often get lost or not handled with appropriate urgency for the case at hand (and can even be marked wontfix or feature request simply due to lack of communication) so if you wrote a bit more about your example I might understand better.
    - bshimmin 9y ago
      Ignoring the specifics of my examples, which really aren't important, the problem is the frequency with which these process failures happen. If the board is in a near-constant state of mayhem and flux because the sales director makes a list of "super urgent" bugs that have come out of a client meeting (because, of course, categorisation of bug urgency is not something mere mortals can really handle - everything is always urgent) and the art director has suddenly decided to make another list of visual flaws he's spotted, and so on, then no one can really get anything done because it all surprisingly quickly turns into a mess. I find Trello enables this sort of behaviour because the barrier to entry is so low, and I say this because I've seen it happen several times. As I said upthread, Trello is adequate if you've got a project manager vigilantly pruning the board - but if you have the resources for a project manager able to do that, then why not just get them to use something that's really much better suited to the purpose? Anyway, this is just my opinion based on my experience. Trello is a good tool for certain things. I don't think it's a great tool for managing a software project with a team of more than about three people, and even if you can make it work, I think most teams would really just benefit from using either JIRA or equivalent, or maybe GitHub Projects (which I haven't tried, but it looks quite good). Thanks for your reply.