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Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

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Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#41

Post by dclaysmith »

Hey Guys. Shameless plug for my startup http://www.thetaboard.com

My goals with ThetaBoard.com were to be completely "methology agnostic" so it's nothing like Asana.

It is very similar to (yet admittedly less mature than) Trello but may appeal to some of you. I think it is simpler UI and has less in the way of clunky drop down menus and modal popups, etc. It was designed to be "view/edit in place" for everything.

I am going to charge for greater usage/premium features--the reality of being a solo founder/bootstrapped startup vs. Fog Creek that can afford to hire several fulltime developers for a "side project".

Anyway, have a look. Keyboard shortcuts/API/Dropbox+Google App integration/Mobile version on the near-term product roadmap. Would love feedback.

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#42

Post by 1123581321 »

true_religion wrote: post #33
wamatt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's super handy. Zapier is shaping up to be my favorite out of IFTTT and Wappwolf. However, would decent if they allowed selective Dropbox permissions (eg limited to a single folder). It's disturbing when startups (even a single individual/founder) has access to all my private data. It's not necessary most of the time either. "Please trust us" seems suboptimal.

You trust Dropbox. You could presumably trust Zapier. That you don't isn't really an argument for them changing their practices. For example Mint.com keeps your banking passwords in order to do offline-logins, but people still trust Mint not to steal their money. If many people don't trust a startup, I think they likely need to change their presentation style and not their practices.

The difference is Dropbox specializes in files. They have years of practice designing their technology and organization to not spy on their users.

Zapler does not have as much practice so screw-ups are more likely.

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#43

Post by rogerbinns »

macca321 wrote: post #35
true_religion wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You trust Dropbox. You could presumably trust Zapier. That you don't isn't really an argument for them changing their practices. For example Mint.com keeps your banking passwords in order to do offline-logins, but people still trust Mint not to steal their money. If many people don't trust a startup, I think they likely need to change their presentation style and not their practices.

IIRC Mint uses a read-only API run by Yodlee

To expand on that Mint never stores your account passwords. Yodlee does and provides the data back to Mint. Here are their security claims: http://www.yodlee.com/security.html

As one data point, my credit union specifically recognizes accesses to my account from Yodlee, due to my Mint usage.

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#44

Post by rogerbinns »

aik wrote: post #37
mattdeboard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with your first paragraph, it's kind of what I Was getting at with my response on this topic. Trello is a decision factory. The 100th time I create a ticket I shouldn't still feel like I have to figure out where to put it, how it gets categorized, etc. But I do.

Odd. Trello is the first task list tool I've actually enjoyed because of its simplicity. To add a task I just need to click, type, and press enter. Done. To reassign a task I click and drag. Done + the satisfaction of seeing my todo list shorter and completed list longer. Love it. I don't even make use of 90% of the features but they're basically invisible to me. This is a "nice to have" feature, but my main complain…

We started out with Asana and moved to Trello. The problem with Asana was that it was a very good write only interface, but ultimately it didn't work well for the team, because reading is just as important as writing. It took a little bit of effort to get going for Trello (eg which boards to have) but ultimately it has worked out extremely well for the whole team. The ordering of the cards providing prioritization is great and being able to assign more than one person to a card helps in some situations.

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#45

Post by mattdeboard »

aik wrote: post #37
mattdeboard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with your first paragraph, it's kind of what I Was getting at with my response on this topic. Trello is a decision factory. The 100th time I create a ticket I shouldn't still feel like I have to figure out where to put it, how it gets categorized, etc. But I do.

Odd. Trello is the first task list tool I've actually enjoyed because of its simplicity. To add a task I just need to click, type, and press enter. Done. To reassign a task I click and drag. Done + the satisfaction of seeing my todo list shorter and completed list longer. Love it. I don't even make use of 90% of the features but they're basically invisible to me. This is a "nice to have" feature, but my main complain…

Well, it sounds like we have two different use cases. We're using Trello as a ticketing system for a six-person team and haven't figured out a good flow yet. We're using it for much more than just to-do's. In fact, "To Do" is basically a separate board.

Like I said in my first post, I am prepared to accept that my issues with Trello are a product of how we're using it. That being said, I don't want to use a tool where "how you decide to use it" can have a negative impact on productivity. (Within reason, for those of you from the "Literal Internet".)

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#46

Post by larrywright »

With my team I use two products: Pivotal Tracker and Trello.

Pivotal is great for development projects. It talks to Github and Campfire, allows us to visually plan things, and has a great worfklow built in for moving stories through the development process. That said, it's not really well suited for either a) non-development projects such as system upgrades, server builds, research projects, etc or b) a steady stream of one-off fixes and tasks that don't tie back to a larger development effort. Small enhancements, bug fixes, infrastructure work, and the like. I originally tried to squeeze all this into Pivotal but it's sort of a square peg/round hole scenario.

Trello, on the other hand, is great for all the other "stuff" my team has to do. I can have one board that shows me at a glance what everyone is working on (we put placeholder cards in Trello for projects that are being managed in Pivota - there's usually only one or two at any given time). It's very flexible and adapts well for various types of work. In a pinch, I could replace Pivotal with Trello, but I would lose out on all of the integrations with Github and Campfire, as well as the more structured story card format and the agile workflow. Combining the two gives us the best of both worlds.

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#47

Post by cjdentra »

I've looked at many of them including BaseCamp, Mavenlink, Pivotal, and we're using Asana. We also use Streak and Boomerang. I have not worked with Trello but will definitely be checking it out. These tools are all great but believe it or not, when I need to do something really quickly a Google doc spreadsheet does the job. We're a small team and need to be focused on getting great product out. Tools that require a lot of work are time sinks and without proper care and feeding they start to bloat with items that are dragged along week-to-week. Anyone get "reminder" emails with tasks that are open but are no longer relevant or just not closed out?

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#48

Post by alooPotato »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #7

I've been evaluating both tools as well, and have Basecamp in the mix because my designer likes it. So far, my team and I haven't formed a consensus. Personally, I always have my inbox open and have a management system of tags, stars, and other things to make my Gmail & Google Calendar a useful to-do list. But now that Mark mentions it, I ought to try out Streak and Baydin too. Anyone here have any experience with ei…

Co-founder of Streak here. We (obviously) love using Streak for bug tracking / product planning use cases and use it internally for that + hiring, fundraising, press, etc.

If you want email to be your core workflow, you should def take it for a spin. If you have any questions aleem at streak dotcom.

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#49

Post by vineet »

cjdentra wrote: post #47

I've looked at many of them including BaseCamp, Mavenlink, Pivotal, and we're using Asana. We also use Streak and Boomerang. I have not worked with Trello but will definitely be checking it out. These tools are all great but believe it or not, when I need to do something really quickly a Google doc spreadsheet does the job. We're a small team and need to be focused on getting great product out. Tools that require a l…

Yeah, but while Google docs does have collaboration features - assigning parts to different people is really hard.

I am not a fan of using another tool, but in my opinion Asana and Trello are light years ahead of BaseCamp (atleast the old version).

Re: Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool?

#50

Post by heretohelp »

alooPotato wrote: post #48
mikeleeorg wrote: post #7

I've been evaluating both tools as well, and have Basecamp in the mix because my designer likes it. So far, my team and I haven't formed a consensus. Personally, I always have my inbox open and have a management system of tags, stars, and other things to make my Gmail & Google Calendar a useful to-do list. But now that Mark mentions it, I ought to try out Streak and Baydin too. Anyone here have any experience with ei…

Co-founder of Streak here. We (obviously) love using Streak for bug tracking / product planning use cases and use it internally for that + hiring, fundraising, press, etc. If you want email to be your core workflow, you should def take it for a spin. If you have any questions aleem at streak dotcom.

I'm a white dude obsessed with Indian food and your name made me giggle.

That's...that's all I got for this comment. Sorry.

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