What is the future of Trello?

Plus, options to experience Atlassian's annual user conference next week vicariously through me.

It’s a big week this week! Team’25 (Atlassian’s annual user conference) is coming up next week and I’m heading there this Saturday!

I know many of you aren’t able to make it to Team, but if you want to experience it vicariously through me, you’re in the right place.

Here’s your guide to experiencing Team 25, without ever leaving your inbox.

1. Reply back to this email and star it in your inbox. (This makes sure your email provider knows to make sure you see these emails. I’m going to be sending some special recap emails throughout the event, so you won’t want to miss them! You can literally just reply “hi” haha.)

2. Got a burning question, product feedback, or a feature request you want to ask the Trello team? Submit it here, and I’ll ask for you and include all the Q&As in another post! Think of this like higher level Dear Taco, but instead of “how to do things with trello”, it’s your chance to ask questions about Trello’s future and product things that I have zero control over 😂

3. Want swag? I have a special offer for my premium subscribers living in the United States. I’ll collect stickers for you from the conference and send you a small package with some fun Atlassian and Trello-themed stickers! This is only available to premium subscribers. Check out this post for more details about how to get in on this. (Upgrade to become a premium subscriber and you can view additional Trello content AND get stickers. Win win win!)

📺 Latest Video All About the New Trello!

Watch to learn how to use Trello’s new calendar and planner features to not just capture all those tasks, but actually make sure they happen.

🌮 Dear Taco

This is a section where readers can submit their Trello questions, and each week I’ll pick one and answer it! It’s like “Dear Abby” but make it trello. Have a question you want to submit? Share it here.

Dear Taco,

Jira gaining more and more "Trello-like" functionality and UI, Jira advert pop-ups all over Trello, Trello fully dropped from the latest "Jira | Confluence | Rovo | Loom" Marketing, no Taco stickers on the new Williams FW47 🏎️ 💨 💩.

Is this the beginning of the end for Trello!? 💔

Warm regards,

Fun Man

I get asked this question a lot

Fun Man Andy 🤩

so I’m actually excited to tackle this one here.

Disclaimer: these are my opinions, my thoughts. No one is paying me to have them, no one is forcing me to say anything I don’t want to say here. I also don’t have a crystal ball, and though it’s only ever happened maybe once, I have been wrong before 😂

Atlassian doesn’t love Trello like it loves its other children.

Before I give you my actual answer, let me provide some information that might help give context to why so many people are asking this question.

Trello was acquired by Atlassian in 2017, and I remember seeing messages in our little Slack community, and all I could think was, “What is Atlassian?” That was when I learned about Jira and Confluence. I didn’t really care who bought what; I was just happy Trello existed still, and it seemed like most of the employees I’d met were going to get to keep their jobs.

Fast forward many years later now that I know more about Atlassian and their suite of tools… why they bought Trello is still a mystery to me. I’m not sure if they thought it was a competitor to their tools and wanted to own that space, or if they genuinely felt it was a companion product that fit their portfolio. They definitely haven’t given me any indication of the latter until recently, as they’ve started switching the messaging to Trello as a personal productivity tool to be used alongside Jira. (More on that in a second.)

Trello doesn’t get nearly as much love and attention as it feels like Jira and Confluence get. But, Trello also doesn’t drive nearly as much revenue for Atlassian as those other tools, so I understand why. But you can argue it’s a little chicken and egg there—would it drive more revenue if it got more attention?

That seems to be a current hypothesis they’re testing right now. There have been several product improvements in Trello over the last several months. I’ve been very actively chatting with Trello Product Managers and Product Marketers, and it’s clear that there is some revival of attention to the product. So while it doesn’t get the same amount of love as its siblings, maybe this could be the boomerang where it starts to.

Trello isn’t going anywhere.

Now to actually answer your question. I think it depends what you mean by the end of Trello. Because I don’t think Trello will die. I can’t really imagine Atlassian ever pulling the plug completely and saying “now all your Trello boards are Jira projects, good luck”.

I think they really are trying to figure out how to incorporate it in their tool stack, and despite the in-product “ads” for Jira, I don’t even think they want all the Trello users to start using Jira. They’ve added features for bringing Jira issues into Trello boards with Jira lists. I don’t think they would have bothered investing in this if they had plans to just force everyone to use Jira to start with.

They’re also working on a new messaging push towards personal productivity. I have mixed feelings about this because I’ve spent years leaning into the “Trello is not a toy” messaging, and it feels like saying its just for personal productivity is like saying your Ferrari is just for keeping your garage floor from rising. Yeah, duh, it does that, but it can sure do a heck of a lot more, and that’s probably not why you got it in the first place.

But if it helps Atlassian continue to get to invest in the product (which it seems to be) and maybe even brings some Jira users into our fold (we will welcome them with open arms!), then what’s the harm? All of these new features are beneficial for teams as well, and not hurting anything with the collaboration and project management use cases in Trello.

As far as the future, maybe this experiment doesn’t work out too well and they don’t get more Trello users with the productivity push. I still don’t think it really dies. I think if anything, it just means that it’s going to get even less attention from Atlassian than it has. Which is sad, but my hope is that the last thing they do is try to make it even easier for people to develop on Trello, opening up the world of developers to build the features people want to see in Trello via Power-Ups. Devs can do this now, but my hope is that it gets even easier. Or tools like PixieBrix, Make, and Zapier fill the gaps that let you customize Trello to be what you need it to be, rather than relying on Atlassian’s product roadmap to hope your feature requests makes its way into the backlog.

This Dear Taco was a little more “tell” and less “show”. Do we like these op ed pieces?

Want to submit your question? Maybe it’ll be featured next week!

🗞 Coming up

Last call for TrelloCon! Just in case you’ve been under an inbox rock and haven’t seen me mention TrelloCon in previous weeks, here’s your final reminder to sign up if you haven’t already! It’s a free hybrid event, about all things Trello! We’ll have some giveaways, demos, Q&A with Trello product team, and more!

🛎️ Newbie tips

New to Trello? This section will help you get up to speed and become a pro before you know it!

Term of the week

• Board menu: the magical three dots at the top right of any Trello board! They let you control things like a board’s background, visibility, custom fields, labels, and more.

Tip of the week

• Need your boards in a spreadsheet format? You can click “Share” to export your boards as a CSV.

• BONUS: You can also use a QR code to share your Trello board, from the same Share menu. This could be handy to include anywhere you reference your Trello board and want folks to join or view the content.

  

Special shoutout to my premium sponsors!

Thanks to:

• Mike Day - Dreamsuite Mike

  🎉 New Website 🎉

  Trello Consulting done differently

• Notes and Docs
  Advanced notes and documents like in Notion, OneNote, or Confluence, but designed to be part of your Trello experience. Keep everything together without the need to jump back and forth between apps.

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• Hipporello

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• Placker

  The best all in one power-up for planning, tracking and managing work across boards. Use extended board, reports, master boards, Gantt views and card mirroring across boards.

• Unito
  With Unito you can easily connect Trello to your other business critical apps with live bi-directional sync. In just a few minutes you can create your first flow, no coding or technical resources needed. Try it free today.

• Approvals for Trello

  Make the review and approval process an absolute breeze with Approvals for Trello, and say goodbye to never-ending email chains and having to chase your teammates for feedback.

• Sendboard - Email for Trello
  Organize & automate your Email in Trello. Connect any Trello board with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo & more.

• Handy Power-Ups Pack

  Do more and enhance your Trello experience with the Handy Power-Ups Pack! Discover a variety of Power-Ups designed to boost your and your team's productivity. Try them out with a free trial and experience the difference today!

• 2-Way Card Mirror & Sync by FullZinc

  Sync cards across boards and workspaces! Any edits to one card will be automatically mirrored to any other cards.

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

🤓 Need 1:1 help with Trello? I offer consulting on a limited basis, but I have a network of colleagues who can also support you! Fill out this form if you’d like to book a time for help with Trello.

📚 Looking for a 1-stop Trello resource? Check out my book, Supercharging Productivity with Trello. You’ll find everything you need, whether you’re getting started or taking Trello to the next level. Bonus - reply back to this email with your receipt, and I’ll send you some bonus video content going through each part of the book.

Thanks for reading!! I’ll see ya next week 👋