If you ask a high-performing Agile team about their secret to success, you’ll probably hear a lot about ‘the board.’
A Kanban board is a workflow management tool that enhances visibility, identifies bottlenecks, and effectively balances the workload.
As projects get more complex, staying organized becomes essential. That’s why so many teams turn to Kanban boards to streamline their workflow.
Part of the Atlassian suite, Trello is a visual project management tool that’s well-suited for both in-office and remote teams. Trello board templates offer an easy way to plan complex business processes and workflows, acting as a blueprint for your projects.
In this article, we’ll discuss the best Trello board examples and explore how they can boost productivity in different scenarios.
We’ll also compare ClickUp and Trello to determine which is best for your needs.
15 Trello Board Examples to Boost Productivity
Marketing
If you’re aiming to get your business online, the Website Task Planner Template by Trello is exactly what you need to reach your target audience. It guides you through every step, from planning and designing to launching and backing up your professional-looking blog or site, for all 10 straightforward steps.
Each step includes a comprehensive checklist for marketing teams, making it easy to keep track of progress until the site is up and running. If you already have a website, this board can also help you revamp its design and enhance the user experience.
💡 Pro tip: For those working on website projects in Trello, the Import Power-Up is a game changer. It allows users to import a list of pages from an existing site or outline pages for a new one. Additionally, it can bring in custom field data, like information from Google Analytics, directly into Trello when setting up the cards.
Sales
The CRM & Sales Pipeline Template by Crmble transforms your sales workflow into a visually appealing and organized pipeline, making it easy to track each lead from start to finish.
Customizable cards let you add lead details, notes, and deadlines, fitting perfectly with your unique needs. The template’s CRM features help manage client interactions directly within Trello, keeping all your information in one handy spot. Plus, progress tracking and visual overviews provide granular visibility into all the tasks.
A newly added feature includes a WhatsApp button next to the contact phone number, allowing you to jump directly into a WhatsApp conversation from your Trello boards.
Human Resources (HR)
The Recruiting Pipeline Template by Trello is your ultimate ally in streamlining the hiring process. It turns recruitment chaos into a well-organized, visual pipeline, guiding you from candidate sourcing to final hiring decisions.
By attaching job descriptions to each position’s card, you can effortlessly track and update each applicant’s journey. Use Trello cards to store candidate details, interview notes, and next steps—all in one place. This means no more scrambling for information or losing track of promising candidates.
Additionally, the template’s visual layout offers a quick snapshot of your recruitment process, helping you spot bottlenecks and track deadlines.
Product Management
The Product Roadmap Template for Trello is your key to mastering product management with flair. It turns your product vision into a dynamic, actionable roadmap, making complex planning effortless.
Use it to prioritize feature requests for upcoming sprints, creating a transparent development process for your Agile team. Organize user stories and customer feedback directly on each feature card, making it easy to reference critical details.
The simple project board ensures consistency by applying the same framework to every feature idea, while checklists outline development and design requirements for smooth implementation. Plus, adding story points to cards can enhance sprint planning and better manage your team’s workload.
Customer Support
The Trello Customer Support Template can be tailored as needed to enhance customer experience.
When a support request form is submitted, or an email reaches your support address, a card is automatically created in the ‘Incoming Support Request’ list, capturing all the details. From there, you can add relevant team members and move the card to the Assigned list.
As your team works on the request, they update the card’s status by moving it to the ‘In Progress’ list. If a review is needed, simply use the ‘Awaiting Approval’ label. Once the issue is resolved, the card is moved to the ‘Resolved list’, completing the process.
This template streamlines your support team’s workflow, keeping everything organized and accessible within Trello.
IT
The Trello Engineering team created the Kanban Template to streamline workflow management. With six lists: Backlog, Design, To-do, Doing, Code Review, Testing, and Done, it’s an ideal choice for engineering teams looking to map out their development process clearly.
Additionally, you can enhance your Trello board by enabling power-ups for design tools like Invision or Figma, integrating these resources directly into your workflow.
Finance
Tracking expenses can often feel overwhelming, especially when dealing with complex spreadsheets. Creating and maintaining an Excel budget can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Fortunately, the Budget Template by Cedrik Bell offers a straightforward solution.
Its user-friendly and flexible design allows you to record each expense as it occurs. Simply input your spending and any overdue drafts into their specific sections, and your totals will be calculated at the bottom.
It’s a no-fuss approach to budget management. For added convenience, integrate Google Drive as a power-up to streamline data management and save time.
Design
The Design Sprint Template takes you and your team through a structured, time-boxed approach to problem-solving and innovation.
You’ll start by diving into the ‘Understand’ phase, where you clarify the problem and set your goals. From there, it’s time to get creative in the ‘Diverge’ stage, brainstorming all possible solutions. Once you’ve got your ideas, move on to ‘Converge’, where you narrow them down and turn them into actionable items.
Next is ‘Prototyping’, where you convert your best ideas into tangible designs and share them with the project manager and peers to gather valuable feedback. This Trello template makes your design sprints more efficient and keeps your team on track so you can focus on creating amazing solutions together.
Operations
The Inventory Management Template, powered by Smart Fields, simplifies tracking and managing stock by allowing you to organize your inventory items, monitor stock levels, and manage orders all in one place.
The template features intuitive lists for categories such as ‘Stock On Hand’, ‘Low Inventory’, and ‘Orders’, making it easy to keep track of your inventory status at a glance. You can customize and automate key details like quantities, reorder levels, and supplier information so you stay updated without manual input.
Whether tracking supplies, managing stock levels, or preparing for reorders, this Trello board example provides a clear view of your inventory. It streamlines your operations and helps prevent stockouts or overstocking, keeping supply chains running efficiently.
Legal
The Government Project Management Template on Trello is ideal for tearing down silos and getting your team to collaborate smoothly, whether you’re dealing with legal research, client cases, or internal projects.
Here’s how you can get started:
- Start with the ‘Resources’ list to keep all key documents, meeting schedules, and FAQs handy
- Keep track of your project’s purpose and goals with the ‘Project Objective’ and ‘Requirements’ list
- Manage daily tasks with the ‘To Do’ list and track what’s in limbo with ‘Pending’
- Flag issues in ‘Roadblocks’, celebrate wins in ‘Done’, and track costs in ‘Project Budget and Costs’
Executive
If you’re gearing up to craft a solid business plan, the Business Plan Template simplifies outlining and organizing your strategy. It breaks everything down into easy-to-manage lists so you can focus on what matters most.
The template contains the below lists:
- Documents
- Use Cases
- Executive Summary
- Company Overview
- Product/Service Description
- Marketplace Analysis
Research and Development (R&D)
The Research Project Template is designed to streamline every step of your research process, helping you stay organized and focused. Start by checking out the “What this board is for” section—it’s your roadmap to understanding how to use the board and kick off your research project.
You can set up a Calendly link to handle scheduling automatically. Once you’ve done that, you can configure the board to push new scheduled interviews directly onto it, keeping everything in one place without the hassle of manual updates.
💡 Pro Tip: Understand the differences between a Gantt chart and a Kanban board to determine what best suits your needs. While Gantt charts are perfect for projects with well-defined timelines and dependencies, Kanban boards offer much-needed flexibility to projects that don’t follow a linear timeline.
Customer Success
The Customer Success Management Trello Template is an essential tool for streamlining customer relationships and software deployments. The board becomes a shared space where customer success managers (CSMs) and customers can collaborate effectively.
At the top, the ‘Highlights’ list offers continuous visibility into key documentation and notes, ensuring everyone is aligned on how to use the board. The ‘Agenda Items’ list is perfect for building and refining meeting agendas, tracking notes, and following up on action items.
The ‘Projects/Initiatives’ and ‘Third Party/Integrations’ lists help monitor ongoing projects and integrations, providing clarity on various initiatives and how the CSM can assist. The ‘Feature Requests’ and ‘Bugs’ lists are crucial for managing and prioritizing customer feedback and issues.
Finally, the ‘Completed’ list serves as an archive for finished projects, bugs, and feature requests, keeping your board focused on critical tasks while showcasing past achievements.
Content
Planning content can be a real challenge—it’s time-consuming and requires a lot of thought.
The Blog Content Schedule Template simplifies the content management process by laying out a clear schedule for all your upcoming blog posts, ensuring you’re always on track to deliver content at the right time.
You can use it to assign tasks to the right authors, ensuring each piece gets the attention it deserves. Each piece of content gets its own card, which authors can use to attach links to their finished work.
Administrative
The Daily Task Management Template helps you visualize your daily to-dos easily so you can stay organized and never miss professional and personal tasks.
To use it, add tasks to the ‘Backlog’, whether they’re for today, tomorrow, or later. Each day, drag tasks you plan to complete into the ‘To Do Today’ list. After finishing, move them to ‘Done Today’.
This setup streamlines task management and keeps your work organized.
Trello Board Limitations
Trello templates have several advantages, especially for small businesses and startups, but they come with some limitations.
Trello’s free version limits workspaces to 10 collaborators, which can be restrictive for larger teams, and although Kanban boards are available on all plans, features like Dashboard, Gantt Charts, Timeline, and Calendar views are only accessible with paid plans.
Many advanced functions, such as reporting, time tracking, and expense tracking, require third-party integrations via Power-ups, which also come at an extra cost.
Lastly, team communication is confined to comments on Trello cards, which might not be sufficient for better interactions.
Let’s look at some Trello alternatives that offer real-time collaboration and advanced task management features in addition to ready-to-use, fully customizable Kanban board templates.
Trello Board Alternatives
ClickUp is an all-in-one project management and Kanban software designed to streamline your workflow and enhance productivity.
What sets ClickUp apart is its adaptability—whether you’re new to project management apps or a total power user, ClickUp Kanban Board View can stretch and scale to any team size to help you manage tasks in a flexible Kanban system.
You can customize the Kanban View to arrange your boards by status, assignee, priorities, and more. The ‘Everything View’ allows you to handle multiple workloads simultaneously. Customize statuses directly within your board and easily move tasks through workflows with drag-and-drop capabilities.
Additionally, the ‘Bulk Action Toolbar’ enables you to update multiple tasks at once, making it an efficient project management software.
ClickUp’s library of Kanban Board templates offers pre-designed boards to fit various needs and boost productivity right from the start.
The Kanban Template by ClickUp provides the perfect balance of flexibility and structure, allowing you to visualize progress and highlight any bottlenecks in your workflow easily.
ClickUp’s Kanban Template will help you:
- Increase visibility on tasks for each team member
- Break down larger projects into smaller, manageable chunks
- Improve communication between teams to keep tasks moving forward
No matter what type of project you’re tackling, this Kanban template provides everything you need to stay organized and productive.
💡 Pro Tip: If you want to generate Kanban boards quickly, ClickUp Brain, the AI Assistant, can accelerate the process by automatically creating and organizing tasks based on your project data. It uses AI to predict potential issues and offer smart recommendations, making project management more efficient and intuitive.
Improve Workflows and Productivity With ClickUp
Trello is a popular project management tool, and its templates can provide a helpful starting point for project planning and management. However, they might not be the most comprehensive solution available.
ClickUp is a robust project management and productivity platform that provides a wide range of templates covering all aspects of project management, along with Custom Fields and Statuses, to keep track of categories and progress effectively.
With various views to visualize your project plan, ClickUp offers flexibility and personalization that sets it apart. Sign up on ClickUp today for free.
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