Using Trello to manage workload across multiple projects

Question

I love using Trello and I've found it an invaluable tool in the past on a range of projects, but I keep coming up against the same problem.

I have X projects on at a time with 3 people working on them. I can create a board for each project and create detailed cards for everyone to work through, but we keep running into scheduling problems or end up giving to much attention to one project whilst neglecting others.

Is there a better system than trello or kanban to prevent the above happening? I guess I could group everything into one massive trello board - but A) I would hit the 1000 card limit pretty quick and B) the columns / lists off to the right would get neglected.

Answer 1

We use Trello in a very similar setting and have indeed encountered the same issue. Our current approach to resolve it is to divide the planning into two phases:

• First, we distribute our velocity over the projects, to plan how much attention we give to each project in the next sprint. Everyone does this for himself, since different people participate in different projects.
• When this high-level phase is over we proceed with the planning of each project, one after another. In this low-level plannings we use the previously assigned velocity-part as our project velocity and plan accordingly.

Afterwards, we actually put the tasks for the next iteration on post-its and fix them to our office wall, because we found it way more convenient and explicit than multiple Trello boards. This also works around "Out of sight out of mind". The copying is suboptimal, though. If you've got a better solution for this last part, let me know!