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Support Parent / Child relationships

Fred Bowker

Can Trello please support parent / child relationships. This is a much needed feature that would allow me to create hierarchies, parent stories, epics etc. It really does feel like something that should be included. There is Hello Epics but that is $50 a year per user for something that seems like it should be core functionality.

Apart from that thanks to the Trello Team for a really great product

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milynnus

@Fred Bowker

You can create your own board with parent child relationships with automation. Trello plus point compared to other apps link Clickup, asana, Jira, etc is that it allows you to build custom boards with relationships that best fit your organisation requirements for your business processes. The relationships are maintained regardless of where you move the card.

Fred Bowker

Hi, sorry I'm not sure what you mean, can you build parent / child relationships between cards currently in Trello? Jira allows you this functionality, and it is hugely helpful. Currently the only way I know of doing this in Trello is by using a powerup ssuch as Hello Epics. It seems like a fundamental thing to have in something like Trello as it allows a lot more flexibility in how you arrange your tasks.

milynnus

@Fred Bowker

You can use cardlinks to add to a newly create card to point back to the trigger card and you can like wise add the new card link to a checklist “Related Cards”. You can do a lot more with cardlinks.

Fred Bowker

This doesn't look like it will handle the simple case of having parent child relationships, I'm not looking for something that I can do a lot more with. I'm looking for really simple functionality to allow me to have parent / child relationships between cards. This functionality is implemented in Jira and Hello Epics has a nice implementation. Checklists could be used to show subtasks, but this isn't as good an approach as allowing for individual cards to have parent child relationships.

I suppose my question is, is this something that Trello supports without using powers, and is it a feature that they would consider adding as it really does seem like a feature that would improve the Trello workflow for users

Mike - Dreamsuite Consulting

Hi @Fred Bowker

I did an article on parent/child linking with Trello

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-articles/Mikes-Trello-Tips-Parent-Child-Card-Linking/ba-p/2418149

Hope this helps

Mike

Fred Bowker

Hey Mike, thanks for your reply, I read over the article, but having seperate boards and the other options all seem like work arounds. Basically you have to create different workflows and structures for something that could be handled quite simply. Parent Child relationships is really useful as then you can use this for epics or parent stories or however you want to setup your hierarchy. Jira has this feature and it's widely used. Also Hello Epics implements this in a nice simple way. The only issue is then you need to pay 50$ per user for a feature that really does feel like it should be core functionality of a Trello Kanban board

Mike - Dreamsuite Consulting

Trello's was never conceived to be hierarchical and I love that it sticks to its core philosophy. Trello was built as an Agile tool and true agile has no hierarchy.

If none of the proposed Trello solutions work for you and you don't want to pay for a power-up to do it, then I suggest finding a tool that does do, of which there are plenty...

Why don't you use Jira, just out of interest?

I personally wouldn't want Trello to add this feature because I want it to stay true to its origins and by doing so, continue being a truly unique tool in the market

Fred Bowker

Why does allowing for cards to be linked parent and child affect it being an Agile tool, surely being Agile is about letting the user use the tool in a way that best reflects their workflow. Basically Trello is a board with tasks, that you can move through a workflow, allowing another way to associate these tasks, is a feature that is ofter requested. I don't see how it has anything to do with whether it is an Agile tool or not.

Both Jira and Trello offer a board, I use Trello as I don't need all of the added feature of Jira. However Trello I think would be improved by allowing you to have Parent / Child relationships. They already have checklists so this is a form of hierarchy, it is just an improvement to allow this to be reflected as a hierarchical relationship that is then visible on the board.

If there was a feature to allow you to associate tasks, it doesn't mean you need to use it, simply that for people who do then this option is available. Its origins are a Kanban board, having parent / child relationships would not affect this.

Bryan Darr_lky0b5

Trello has recently rebranded as a personal productivity app. I personally follow GTD (perhaps the ultimate personal productivity philosophy?). But the biggest problem I have is the parent-child relationship. GTD asks me to be able to see all of my "next actions", which are effectively children of a "Project", with context labels. But the manual process of linking cards is cumbersome.

I also need to see the "parent project" on the child card so that I have greater context. "Follow-up call" is much more helpful when I see a parent label (something like a Jira Epic lozenge), "Negotiate client X contract".

None of the power ups/workarounds seem work on Mobile, either.

I would happily pay Trello for this feature. I can (and did) rebuild the whole thing in Jira (free tier), but then I miss out on the flexible list convenience and excellent new quick capture Inbox functions of Trello.

If Trello truly wants to be for "personal productivity", I think this is a clear in-the-box feature that many, many people (who are personally productive) want. In keeping with Atlassian's general ethos of "not custom for any one type of business, but flexible for all", I think this would be a clear and easy win.

milynnus

@Bryan Darr

It is a fact that relationships between cards needed to be expressed through the use of card links. Use of card links features heavily in my work with clients. As the links are created via automation it is as “native” as you get for parent child relationships. I find that keeping the relationship to just epic-stage-sprint allows for better management of most work.
Use of mirror cards is also starting to be feature in more recent work.