Hello, Trello

Trello was launched a couple of weeks ago and I've been using it every day for a number of projects. To do list or task management applications are ten a penny and I must have tried them all. I typically use them for a week or so and then revert to my go to application, TaskPaper. However to pigeon hole Trello as another to do list manager would be a grave injustice. For a start its biggest differentiating feature is how teams can use Trello to collaborate.

Trello's approach is simple but it's aim is audacious. A project is represented by a board (analogous to a white board) divided into lists and onto each list cards can be added. That's Trello at the most basic level, a digital version of a white board and sticky notes. The idea is expanded in a few ways: people can be invited to view a board and modify it and each can can have "stuff" put on it. Stuff being comments, check lists, labels, attachments and a few other things. All this is wrapped up in a simple, to look at and use, interface.

There are lots of nice touches to Trello - those little things that would be easy to overlook when developing the application but blend in so seamlessly that it shows how much care has been taken over the features and interface. To start with a non-interface thing, everything you do with Trello is over https. This removes the question about what should and shouldn't be on a secure connection. When you register with Trello and when you create a new board you get an example board which gets you going much faster than if you were presented with a blank screen. The avatars come through from Gravatar. On the one hand this is great because if you already have a Gravatar image linked to the email address you signed up with Trello with, your photo is pulled into Trello - zero friction. If you don't have a Gravatar account then it could feel like something of a faff to have to go create an account on another service. If you don't have a Gravatar account or linking photo then your initials appear instead of an image which is a simple yet very effective way of identifying board members.

Trello is audacious because it doesn't target a particular niche and aims to appeal and be useful to a broad audience. This is audacious and risky because by appealing to lots of people it is in danger of not having the depth of features of other task management applications. Collaboration is certainly the killer feature and will make it popular. On the surface Trello is a very general application however its origins in a software company and ability to mimic a typical white board software process are obvious. Maybe only to anyone who has stood in front of a white board and moved sticky notes around!

Despite being a serviceable to do list application for a single person, Trello really shines when used by a team. The high level, dashboard, approach to the interface makes seeing the status of a project - should the lists be set up appropriately - easy. The information brought through from the "back" of a card - number of tasks complete / remaining, votes, attachments, comments - is also very nice. One thing I'm still unsure of is how useful Trello will be when a board has hundreds of cards. Prioritisation and familiarity may help but it would still be a lot of information to take in. No worse than the aforementioned white board and sticky notes though. Features such as filtering could help with this.

The service so far has been highly dependable. There is the occasional interface niggle, for example no visual indication when a user is made an admin of a board, but overall the experience has been positive. I've also found that people added to Trello cold, i.e. without any particular foreknowledge of the application or time taken learning what it can do, have taken to it easily. It will be interesting to see how long the novelty of Trello will remain fresh and whether it will go the way of most task manager applications. Certainly a continuous supply of updates and new features, being careful not to add bloat, will help but one would assume that there has to be a point at which Trello reaches maturity and has enough users to be sustainable.

Perhaps the greatest part of Trello is how it came to being and what it says of Fogcreek as a company. Trello was born from a desire to give the Fogcreek developers a new challenge and, I expect, have a chance to use some recent technologies that might not have existed or being particularly mature a few years ago. Despite being a huge motivator not many development companies can simply let a number of their developers spend nine month (Trello's development time) doing something new with the latest technologies. This speaks of a company that exists almost solely for the purpose of giving developers something great to work on. Profit will still be a priority, as an enabler, but it's like profit isn't sole the purpose for Fogcreek's existence. With this vision for creating a great company and great products it will be interesting to see where Fogcreek take Trello and what they come up with in the future.