Hi everyone, I've found Trello to be excellent for managing smaller projects, but not so much for those that need to scale and require several teams for completion. For example... * Multiple cards have sub-tasks * Those sub-tasks have dependencies * Those dependencies have their own sub-tasks It becomes overwhelming very quickly. Can Trello really be used for large-scale project management? If so, how? Are there power-ups/workflows you recommend to manage dependencies, and help keep multiple teams in sync?

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Can Trello Really Be Used For Large-Scale Projects?

David_zp8xnj

Hi everyone,

I've found Trello to be excellent for managing smaller projects, but not so much for those that need to scale and require several teams for completion.

For example...

Multiple cards have sub-tasks
Those sub-tasks have dependencies
Those dependencies have their own sub-tasks

It becomes overwhelming very quickly. Can Trello really be used for large-scale project management? If so, how?

Are there power-ups/workflows you recommend to manage dependencies, and help keep multiple teams in sync?

Accepted answers

Andy - PTC Redundant

@David : Quite simply... YES.

I currently don't have approval to talk about it overtly publicly but 5 different companies worked on 3 different Trello boards to deliver the incredible IKEA Place App. Over two years of UX / UI, Continuous Development, Testing, and Release, all managed through Trello.
We're working on PR right now for Trello related topics and hopefully in october we will release a big article with a Q&A via Community!

Have noted to share it with you.

Aaron Jensen_l4pd2x

Hi David,

We've felt this exact pain, which is why we built Hello Epics to address it. You can build out a project/card hierarchy that is as sophisticated as you need to track as many projects and tasks with their subtasks across as many teams as you like.

Here's an example from a board I created for you. This is a project card that has subtasks across multiple teams with their own boards. Those tasks have subtasks themselves (and in some cases, when you drill into those subtasks, you'll see additional subtasks). Hello Epics lets you create a child cards, grandchildren, great grandchildren, whatever you need.

You can even drag and drop cards between lists or boards on the back of a parent card like this.

CleanShot 2019-09-20 at 08.11.09@2x.png

Here's the board, note that you'll need to connect your Trello account to see children across boards:

https://trello.com/b/yBuzVIQc/projects-hello-epics-example-for-david

If you send me your Trello username, I can invite you to it so you can play around with it.

If you want to try it out on your own board, here's the Power-Up page: https://trello.com/power-ups/58c85f41d7f012a1879c7b2e/card-relationships-hello-epics

All comments

Sloan N_ B_

Hi David

For me it becomes difficult to keep the overview when having multiple Trello Boards or a lot of lanes in one board too.

Maybe check out the Power Up BigPicture: https://trello.com/power-ups/5b30f2417825075d3e126cbb/bigpicture

I haven't tried it yet, but a version for Jira exists I am very fond of for project management.

Cheers
Nick

Andy - PTC Redundant

@David : Quite simply... YES.

Sloan N_ B_

Looking forward to the article!

Aaron Jensen_l4pd2x

Hi David,

You can even drag and drop cards between lists or boards on the back of a parent card like this.

CleanShot 2019-09-20 at 08.11.09@2x.png

Here's the board, note that you'll need to connect your Trello account to see children across boards:

https://trello.com/b/yBuzVIQc/projects-hello-epics-example-for-david

If you send me your Trello username, I can invite you to it so you can play around with it.

If you want to try it out on your own board, here's the Power-Up page: https://trello.com/power-ups/58c85f41d7f012a1879c7b2e/card-relationships-hello-epics

Andy - PTC Redundant

Borderline against the community rules & regulations for self-promotion @Aaron Jensen buuuuuuuut...... that is a damn awesome Power Up 😎🤘 that I was not aware of, so I'm gonna let it slide 👏🧐
I always love to see Vendors making Apps from problems they've solved themselves. Really nice.

Sami Linnanvuo _Screenful_

We see quite a lot of teams using Trello so it seems to be gaining traction within software development space. Not just within startups but we see bigger companies having teams using Trello to manage their R&D projects.

It makes a total sense, you should start with the simplest tools that does the job. However, with Trello, you probably run into some serious visibility issues once your operation scales beyond just few boards.

It also lacks features that are commonly available in some other task management tools, such as epics and the ability to set dependencies between the cards.

If you miss those features when using Trello, you can get them for free by activating the free Scaled for Trello Power-Up. It adds to your board:

Epics support
Dependencies between the cards (blocked, related etc.)
Card Sizes (estimate, spent, remaining)
Priorities (highest, critical etc.)

It's free and It works across multiple boards so you can easily track progress of all of your teams and projects. You can learn more from this blog post.