Does anyone have a Trello MVP board, or can suggest one as a framework?
I've used Trello in the past to great benefit, and realise that I've become a bit scattered with my ideas for potential MVPs. I think I'll use it for my next MVP, but am unsure of what stages etc to use, and what areas to put under each. Maybe a bit of the deer/headlights feeling, with so many different ways to frame it.
I've seen this Trello board example: https://trello.com/b/R6DSCtsw/building-an-mvp-barker
But is there a better one/Trello template that anyone knows of? Would you be willing to show it, or at least put the main stages here?
Alternatively, if you were to template one, what would you have on it (or what framework would you follow)?
Thanks,
Juz
Hey Justin here's something I learned from my previous startup that had about 60 people at the time (primarily used by the product team of ~45 people). We use this system today on trello with 2 people in a simplified way.
We simply have 5 columns:
You can organize each column with cards from highest priority to least. We try to keep the In Development column and Roadmap column as lean as possible. We found that this provided a lot of clarity across the org, and works really well for 2 people.
Hey Justin! I think Joe is on point with his answer. If you're a small team, building a MVP I would try to keep the flow as simple as possible.
I've been doing product management at Atlassian for 5+ years in Dev Tools and my main takeaway from it is that writing good stories/task is what makes a big difference.
1. As much as possible keep stories at a high level
The more details you write (Implement field X, add button Y) the harder it will be for you to cut scope if you realize your late on something. A former colleague of mine explained it in better words. Basically if you focus on the goal you can find multiple ways of solving it. But if you focus on an implementation then you'll be stuck having to deal with it.
This is not always possible but it's a good rule of thumb.
2. Work one week at the time
A great way to keep yourself in check is to have a column representing the work you plan to do in a given week. That way you can quickly judge your ability to execute and course correct early by removing or simplifying features.
3. Break down stories into tasks that can be executed in 1 or 2 days
You can either use different labels or tasks within cards but it helps a lot to break down big stories defined in (1) into smaller tasks that you can finish quickly. It's really hard to estimate well things that may take a person more than a couple of days. You might be done in 3 days but you might also take 2 weeks to get it done. By breaking it in smaller parts you get better visibility on the costs.
TL;DR;
A simple Kanban can go a long way and at Atlassian a lot of teams had really simple workflows. What we discussed and invested most time in was writing and reviewing stories and tasks.
PS: here's the board I used to build https://futurospective if you want to see an example.
Good advice. Thanks! I particularly like the idea of keeping your time horizon to one week at a time. I'm going to try this for my own side projects.
The trick is being realistic about what you can accomplish in a week when you have a full time job, family, and still want to work on your side projects.
Awesome, thanks guys! Really great answers here, I think I'll need to break down some of my cards more.
Here's a system I designed for our design team at work.
https://trello.com/b/QUVYzShC
Many people contribute, two people actively plan workload from it.
Basic premise:
It works really well with the Trello desktop app to hotkey ideas into the Inbox quickly, or use the board email address to load ideas into the Inbox.
Let me know what you think!
I like your structure
How do you handle the gradual clutter that builds up? E.g. big tasks that are part of a long term plan and just things that are low priority so they keep getting bumped for more important things
My backlog is longer than my arm and I don't usually look at the board without filtering.
The backlog never shrinking has been a good indicator lately that my team needs a third designer and I've been getting a good sense for the types of tasks that never make it into 'Today' having always been bumped for higher priority work.
For the most part though "Redesign Website" is a terrible card to add, but "Research & Screenshot 5 competitors" as a first task might be a good one.
I might suggest that Redesign Website be its own board with a similar structure and simply adding the card "Website Redesign" in and out of Today/Queue for however many days/wk you plan to focus but for the most part, you've identified the weaknesses pretty immediately; Long-term projects and clutter.
I almost wish there was a Trello app that took the card ageing one step further.
It would gradually and automatically remove/archive/put in a icebox list cards that have no activity for extended periods of time.
Then you'd have the ability to "bump" cards back up and out of the icebox back into your main list.
The advantage of something like that would be that you don't lose the things you said you wanted to do but it clears the clutter of things that you in reality probably won't ever get the time to get around to and the key things keep getting bumped back up to the real list
My solution so far is to create a card called "Backlog" and just list out all the cards that aren't in that medium/high level of priority but I know I want to get to someday. Far from perfect but it helps keep things a little bit more tidy...