
Trello vs. Asana - what is your favorite collaboration tool? - pytrin
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/08/14/trello-versus-asana/
======
mikeknoop
One of the cool things I've seen people use Zapier for is to test out other
collab tools (<https://zapier.com/zapbook/asana/trello/>). You can test out
Trello for a week by piping in data from Asana without the fear of losing a
weeks worth of data in Asana if you don't like Trello.

~~~
wamatt
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.

~~~
true_religion
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.

~~~
1123581321
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.

~~~
wamatt
Indeed. And it's not just about spying.

The Zapier people are probably decent and honest etc, however that's not the
point. It introduces a new security threat and attack vectors _unnecessarily_

It violates the principle of needing just enough access, to perform a task.

------
staunch
I found Trello kind of awkward to work with. Lots of long dropdown menus
without any icons or well written titles. Just lots of long menus in general,
forcing me to do a full scan every time I want to do something. Just
unintuitive and hard to get fast at. I keep having to remember how to do
things.

I find Asana the exact opposite. It's extremely polished and everything
behaves and works as I would predict. Feels kind of like Microsoft vs Apple.

I'd be happy with either really though, they both work.

~~~
mattdeboard
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.

~~~
aik
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 complaint is probably how I feel
it's difficult to report off of my data (see trends, etc.).

I'd never heard of Asana but now I'm curious to try it out.

~~~
mattdeboard
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".)

------
ndemoor
At Woorank we gave both of them a spin and a must say that for our team (8
people = 4 tech/2 CS/2 Allrounders working closely together) Trello works
best, even with only 2 boards.

We've put up the Trello board on a big screen in the office and after some
tweaking (eg. cutting the tasks in smaller bits) it's amazing how productivity
rose, just because people are pushing the enveloppe for getting a ticket from
the left to the right.

Also for a workflow of a ticket having several states (planned, in progress,
done, reviewed, pushed, live), and going back and forth a lot, we just didn't
find a nice way to do this in asana, without having lots of projects with
several sub-lists, having to reconsider the workflow again and again, etc.

Asana looks more promising to me, when used in bigger companies (20+), having
several departements, using there own projects or workspaces, with their own
flows and way of working.

------
mattdeboard
We use Trello at work. We use it as a ticketing system/issue tracker, to-do
list, and workflow system. I think it is great as far as it goes. It's got a
great visual design, it's very simple and free-form.

Frankly however it forces too many decisions on me. I don't want to have to
think about all the things that you're required to think about. It's a bit
_too_ free-form. Tickets and issues and all that isn't something I want to
dedicate a bunch of time to; I just want something on rails that has already
made smart default decisions about workflow out of the box, then allow me to
tweak it from there.

Again, maybe it's a function of how we use Trello. But even the fact that it's
basically unstructured is a negative to me. Give me something with smart
defaults out of the box so that there is a workflow clearly delineated, and we
don't have to invent our own on the fly.

~~~
alexboots
I work on projects on a pretty small scale (5 website, 1 or 2 of them need
changes at a time -- some of them have 30 tickets, some have 3 or 4) and
trello is perfect for me. If I fullscreen it I can get a good 'at a glance'
look at everything i'm working on, and I have a colour code I use on labels to
set the importance on projects.

I feel like trello has a certain tipping point for tickets :: at a certain
point, its causes inefficiency. That being said, I felt pivotal tracker to be
a bit lumbersome for my needs. I had to think too much / navigate the
ticketing system.

I'd like to ask people who have used pivotal what thought think of it?

I haven't used Asana, but will check it out.

~~~
davewasthere
Been using Pivotal for a few years and really love it. For Agile/Scrum
software development it's close to perfect. But I'm not sure how it'd play
with other scenarios.

My major plus points for it is how it automagically calculates velocity and
adjusts the following user story schedule accordingly. I'm not a big fan of
the right-to-left panel layout, but it's not a deal breaker. It makes my life
easier, which is what I want in a software package.

I love the design of Trello and could possibly move to that, but I'd miss the
scheduling/velocity/estimating features. Also, some projects have a ton of
stories and feel that Trello would be unwieldy. I have used Trello for
personal to-do list type stuff though.

------
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?

~~~
vineet
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).

------
mikeleeorg
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 either one?

~~~
alooPotato
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.

~~~
heretohelp
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.

------
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.

------
amirmansour
From my point of view, I see Trello better suited for managing a team project,
while I see Asana better suited for handling personal tasks and projects.
Trello allows you to assign multiple members to one card (task, depends on how
you used it), while in Asana you can assign only one person to a task and
followers get an update. Trello does a great job of providing the big picture
of a project and its progress through its unique UI. Though the UI is not all
rainbows and cookies. The larger your monitor the better because you have to
keep scrolling to see cards.

Right now I use Asana to manage everything personally, but I use Trello to
manage our company. If it was up to me I would like to do everything in Asana.
I would like to see Asana give mobile a good shot. Right now they have a
2-star iPhone app and no Android app. Trello on the other hand as both iPhone
and Android apps, and they are work pretty well.

One feature I really like about Asana is that it can sync your tasks to your
favorite calendar app without any fuss. This feature makes Asana perfect for
managing personal tasks with ease. Both services are mature but still have
some way to go.

~~~
ndemoor
True, mobile is another thing I didn't cover in my comment. The trello app on
iphone works like a thrill, given the fact it's a daunting task to get all the
information on a small screen.

Asana had constant issues with syncing the data.

------
cglee
Todos: wunderlist. Simple lists, syncs everywhere. Only bad thing is no nested
items. Free.

Tickets: anything. Prefer redmine. Ok with Pivotal Tracker. Can use Jira, etc.

Collaboration: hipchat, skype, email, text, tickets, commit messages, and
phone calls. Oh, and going out to lunch together.

Tried and liked Trello (simple). Tried and disliked Asana (complicated).

------
kine
Why are there so many of these tools but none of them truly nail it? Asana,
Sprintly, Pivotal, Trello, Basecamp, the list goes on. Plus there's Google
Docs.

I wonder why there isn't a general consensus about one must-have tool.

Are they all watered down and so general that no one can really fall in love
with any of the products?

~~~
troels
My take is that underneath the polish and functionality, what all these tools
really do, is to impose a very specific workflow on its users. Peoples
workflows differ a lot, so some tools will match some people better than
others. In the end, most people will realise that either A) nothing quite
works for them or B) will change their workflow to that which their chosen
tool imposes.

------
paulbunn
I'm giving Asana a long term evaluation - at least 3 months. So far I really
like the following:

Its very keyboard friendly (I havent played with Trello long enough to assess
how keyboard friendly it is)

I can create tasks in a project by emailing them in (lets you forward emails
to Asana and turn them into tasks)

------
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.

------
prashantv
We're trying to solve this problem with more of a focus on priorities - mainly
to try and prioritise what one person should be working on at a time:
<https://mijura.com/>

------
shuzchen
For my freelance work, I use apollo (apollohq.com), currently pay for the
basic plan (and I have a healthy permanent discount for having jumped on
during their beta) and keep both internal projects as well as interface with
external clients. So far it's been working well. It pretty much has all the
features I need as a freelancer except for invoices (which I take care of with
freshbooks).

------
j45
I lean more towards Trello than Asana, but neither has got me.

Recently learnt about workflowy.com, thinking of trying it out.

------
davidw
We've had good luck with these products:

<http://73primenumbers.com/>

------
reinhardt
Although probably an overkill if all you want is a glorified todo list shared
between a handful of people, I haven't seen a collaboration tool as flexible,
powerful and well designed as Podio. Most underhyped web app in recent memory.

------
saliahmed
Trello has become our default work tool of choice. Have used Asana, but the
drag and drop ease of Trello is what appeals to me. Also for kanban style
workflows also check out blossom.io, great tool.

------
Karunamon
Huge fan of Jira for tickets, it's flexible enough to be a to-do list or
really whatever you want, especially since if you need 10 or fewer people,
you're only out $10 for a perpetual license.

~~~
gizzlon
Seriously? I was very disappointed when I got to try Jira. It's slow, clunky
and ugly. Bugzilla is a bliss compared to Jira..

~~~
Karunamon
When was the last time you tried it? I just did a deployment at work
(hopefully replacing BMC SDE) and it's rather snappy. Not as fast as plain
HTML of course, being Tomcat on the back end, but I couldn't possibly describe
it as slow, or clunky, or ugly.

------
grn
It seems that Asana doesn't support Opera which is quite surprising. A screen
that I got tells that Chrome (>= 11), Safari and Firefox (>= 6) are supported.

------
trekkin
AES.io: is not as smooth as Trello or Asana, or some other collaboration
tools, but with client-side encryption it is much more secure (plug).

------
factorialboy
(Shameless self plug) Review19 does the job quite well for me -
<http://review19.com>

------
PakG1
It figures that this is exactly the analysis I was trying to find as to what
tool works best. Love it.

------
moondowner
Kanbanflow for personal projects, and JIRA+Greenhopper in the company I work
in.

------
taligent
Depends on who you are collaborating with.

Asana internally, Basecamp when dealing with external clients and Phabricator
is cool within dev teams.

Trello needs a UI designer and Atlassian is pretty horrendous for anything
other than the largest enterprises.

~~~
moondowner
True regarding Atlassian, though Greenhopper is awesome.
<https://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview>

~~~
mattdeboard
I love Jira 5.

~~~
robinduckett
I don't, they updated the task/chart/planning boards without warning.

------
heretohelp
Neither: after using Pivotal, our company has switched to Phabricator.

