Thursday, January 30, 2014

Keeping Track: Trello for Game Development

If you haven't heard of Trello, it's a free service which provides what boils down to a fancy to-do list.
In Trello, you have different categories. By default, these are To Do, Doing, and Done. You can also add your own categories.
To each category, you can add Cards. These are individual items, like say "Fix the sink" or "Buy milk". You can also move cards between categories (you might move a card from To Do to Doing, and then later from there to Done).
Trello also has a handy collaboration feature - multiple people can work on the same to-do list (or "Board" as Trello calls it).
As it turns out, despite being designed as a generic to-do list, Trello doubles as a fantastic project management tool.
You can create an "organization" in Trello, to which you invite other people, and then create a board private to that organization. You add as many categories as you need, and then use cards to keep track of tasks that need to be done on the project.
For instance, in my current project I have 5 categories: To Do, Bugs, Fixing, Doing, and Done. To-Do is for new features that need to be implemented, Bugs is for problems that need to be resolved, Fixing is for bugs which have been resolved, Doing is for features which need to be implemented, and Done is for any tasks which have been completed.
Even though I'm working alone (for now), I've found it immensely useful for staying focused and on track. Many times in the past have I tried working purely from memory, and I can say it almost never works. Keeping a list of things to do means I'm never sitting there trying to figure out what to work on next (and meanwhile losing the drive to work on the project). I add stuff to the To-Do list any time I think of something, move the next task to Doing, knock it out, move it to Done and immediately pick my next task.

Could I have done this with sticky-notes or a notepad? Sure, definitely. But Trello is arguably more convenient and paper-friendly ;)

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