Trello is not what we would classify as a traditional GTD or a task management application.
As an idea it is based on the Kanban cards system, a scheduling/inventory system used by large production facilities.
And before you ask, what does a personal task management system have to do with this, you should try this web application to find out.
Trello is a very well-designed and fast application, using the cards or post-it notes metaphor to divide data into lists. Trello cards can hold many kinds of data that any task management application would and each card can be easily moved from one list to another according to the items status. This is the basic idea of Trello: It gives users a visual board to arrange cards, so they are always visible, helping them making better decisions.
There are many ways to use Trello as a personal GTD system, or a multiple user project management system. It is really up to you how you will set it up.
How Trello works
Each user can have as many boards as he wishes to, and may divide those boards into different organizations. A different set of boards can be created for personal use, and another one for the companies you work for.
Each board can have a different set of lists (or columns) to organize your cards. You can have any number of lists and here lies the basic organization scheme for your cards. You can represent your tasks status in a project or in general (Masterlist, next actions, waiting for, done) or your contexts. The lists can be permanent or temporary and archived when they complete their mission.
The basic structure of user’s data are cards. Cards can be simple containing only the task name or can hold other kinds of data like notes, comments, checklists, attached files and due dates. This makes the whole system absolutely customizable and can fit to the current workflow of many users.
Cards can also have colored labels (a type of tagging system) which is very useful for visually represent user’s tags in a glance. The only downside of labels is that you can have only six of them, but if they were more it would be harder to visually distinguish them.
Users can also subscribe to specific boards made public by their creator and work with cards in them, a really powerful feature for teams. They can also subscribe to specific cards, notified on changes in them by other users and vote cards marking their preference on a task.
In conclusion
Trello has many features, it uses a very different approach in task management and that makes it so unique and beautiful. I believe that apart from teams project management –a field which Trello shines- it can easily be used as a personal system, containing all the basic elements of GTD but it needs a little planning before you start adding your data, remembering the fact that it is very customizable.
There are iPhone, Android and Windows 8 versions of the application available, and having tested the Android version, I was very pleased with its design but it works only with an internet connection, and here’s lies one of my disappointments in using Trello as a personal system.
Apart from that, if you are not quite satisfied of the narrow-minded way we are currently using our task management systems, you can give Trello a try. It might be the base of your next system.