Trello for PM of Drupal Development

Trello is good, especially for those use cases you named. Kanban-style boards such as that have their places. I find it difficult to use them for case management or bigger projects.

Of course, our main tool is Open Atrium and it doesn't handle a lot of that well either. I've used a few systems but none fit my particular style. I don't think I'm alone, which is why there are so many. Lots of people trying to solve their own problems.

Like trello for kanban -- not good for multiple-complex-project management... if you have a lot going on, this can be nightmareish!

We've recently tested out Trello, Greenhopper, Assembla, Unfuddle, Basecamp, and Pivotal Tracker. There are probably a few others that we've given a test run on. In my organization (still shifting out of freelance) I have the privilege of being both PM and developer so I tend to evaluate from lots of angles.

Trello

Initially we loved Trello. The card method of seeing what tasks were active, in process, for review, and closed was a really great paradigm shift. We liked being able to discuss needs on the back of the cards, attach images, make sub-task lists, and re-assign quickly.

As individuals we found it difficult to see what was on our plate at a global level. I think this issue has been addressed by Trello since we stopped using it. There is now an "all cards" view for each user.

As a PM looking to get a bird's eye view of things I was not getting what I needed out of this system.

Greenhopper & Assembla

I'll lump these 2 together because they really were very similar. Since we're BitBucket users, Greenhopper seemed promising (and still may) but Assembla's interface was working better for us.

Both provide the same kind of Kanban style card sorting that we like in Trello, but ultimately handling multiple clients in parallel in a system like this got frustrating. If my memory serves me, neither had the depth of features that Trello has on the back of the cards.

Basecamp

What works as a really simple communication hub and project communication archive really isn't robust enough for our technical project needs.

Pivotal Tracker

This was tested too long ago for me to remember, but we're looking at giving it a spin again.

Unfuddle

Ultimately we found that Unfuddle offered us the kind of features we wanted in ticketing project tasks, being able to break them into milestone based groups, ticket phases, etc… There is still no great way to view all project assignments but I can look at all milestones on a calendar, view upcoming tickets and see a global summary of recently worked on tasks.

There's a lot left to be desired in the interface and it moves a bit sluggishly compared to the responsiveness of Trello, but in the end was simple and unobtrusive for developers and since I was using it as a dev, getting my PM needs out of it worked well enough.

And furthermore…

Like most others here we can find strengths and weaknesses in all of these. Having been subjected to an all in one project planner, task manager, timesheet and invoicing tool in the past I tend to shy away from them even if that's what I really want in the end—just one place to do everything.

I'm looking at testing out OmniPlan as a way to plot project tasks against a timeline, schedule milestones and share resources between projects so that I can see when I can schedule the next upcoming project without overloading my team. When I have time!