Epics

Features

Trello is certainly a great free option for tracking your work, whether you're involved in a large-scale project with a vast team of experts or just working on your own solo venture. But do you ever feel like something is missing? Introducing Epics by Rogue Shadows Coding, a powerful and highly customizable all-in-one solution to bring your productivity to the next level and allow you to focus less on the management side and more on the actual work! This 100% free Power-Up turns your Trello board into an Agile board and brings all the features you would expect. Don't know what Agile is or maybe you don't use an Agile methodology yet? It doesn't matter: each individual feature of this board is easy to use, can be turned off entirely and this documentation, designed for both long-time Agile users as well as people with no Agile experience, explains everything in detail.

This is a quick summary of all the features of this Power-Up:

• Estimate your cards, log work done, see remaining effort and flag overestimations; Jump to this feature
• Set the type and the priority level of your cards, choosing from a wide range of options; Jump to this feature
• Create links between cards to mark related cards, blocking cards, duplicates etc.; Jump to this feature
• Turn cards into Epics, add sub-cards and easily track the progress of each milestone; Jump to this feature
• Change card status to Open, On hold, Done or Abandoned; Jump to this feature
• Create reports, like:
  • Sprint summaries - see a direct comparison of your board between 2 moments in time (a sprint), highlighting the number of total cards, how many were closed, removed or remain open and the total number of points closed as well as which cards were overestimated and by how much;
  • Sprint reports - see the contribution of each individual member, the burndown chart (shows the ideal progression of the sprint vs the number of points closed for each day) and the backlog (the items still left to do at the end of the sprint);
  • Velocity reports - a bar chart showing the estimation vs the number of closed points over time, each entry representing a sprint;
  Jump to this feature
• Customise which badges are shown, how and where for each feature or turn individual features off entirely; Only need a couple of things from this Power-Up? Then disable everything else & unclutter your interface.

If you have trouble using this powerup, head to the troubleshooting section.

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Our commitment

This Power-Up was developed by a small team and was designed to bring all of the features that belong on a classic Agile board with 2 restrictions in mind: firstly, we commit that this Power-Up will always be free of charge and second that we will not share your personal data or your organization's data with anyone. In fact, your data never leaves Trello itself and we do not have access to it or store it anywhere!

In order to achieve this, we use Trello's built-in storage options and all Power-Up data is only ever stored within Trllo itself. There is no third party server involved at all. This allows us to provide this Power-Up without running at cost.

However, this also means that we are limited in the amount of data that we can store. Trello imposes limits on the amount of data that can be stored on each individual card or on the board's scope itself. In theory, this means that you could run out of storage and no longer be able to add extra data to your individual cards. This is highly unlikely, for the following reasons:

• The amount of data that is stored on the board itself has a fixed size, as it will only consist of the powerup settings and velocity metadata (for a maximum of 12 sprints at a time).
• Each card has it's own storage, so that even if you hit the data limit on one card, your next card starts with the same amount of storage available.
• At the card level, only card dependencies (but not linked epics) may cause our data consumption to expand beyond the alloted limit.

When the storage limit is exceeded, then an explicit error will be displayed every time you try to add new data to your card. This would mean that you already have an excessive number of dependencies for this particular card. The soultion here is to review the dependencies already added and to remove some of them.

This also means that, for the purpose of Sprint summaries and Sprint reports, the historic data related to the state of the board cannot be stored within Trello itself. That is why we have a sprint snapshot tool, explained in detail here, which allows you to capture all the relevant data for a moment in time. The snapshot is then downloaded as a file, which you must keep in order to use it in a report.

These compromises (limiting the number of dependencies a card may have & requiring you to store the snapshots locally or on a shared team storage space) allow us to keep this Power-Up 100% free and your data secure. Aside from this, there are no limitations on this Power-Up. That said, you can support the Rogue Shadows team on Patreon if you're so inclined!

Card sizes

A card size is comprised of three numbers: the estimate (how much you think the task will take beforehand), spent (how much effort was already spent on the task) and remaining (how much work is still left to do). Different teams use differnet measurements for sizes but the 2 most common approaches are to use the number of hours a task may take or a unit called Story Points. You can set the estimate and the spent values manually. The remaining effort is calculated automatically. Card sizes are also used for reporting. Use to set the card sizes.

💡 Card sizes

You can remove the size by setting the estimate and spent values to 0. If the spent effort is larger than the estimation (the card was underestimated) then the badge turns red. Cards can also be sorted by estimate (ascending or descending) within a list.

To enable card sizes, find the setting called "Enable card sizes" in the "Card sizes" section (section 1). To see card sizes in the board, enable "Show card badges". To see card sizes on the card itself, enable "Show on cards".

⚠ Card sizes are not available for Epics. Instead, the sizes will be calculated based on the linked sub-cards, if those cards have sizes set. You can also choose to measure Epics in number of cards rather than card sizes. To do so, find the setting "Measure epic in" in the "Dependencies & Epics" section (section 3) and set it to "Number of cards completed".

Cart types & priorities

You can assign a card type to your cards in order to more easily distinguish between types of tasks. Use to set the card type. There is also a list action to set the types of all cards in the list at the same time.

💡 Card types

There are a number of card types available: design, story, improvement, test task, documentation, support ticket, idea, bug.

To enable card types, find the setting called "Enable card types" in the "Card types & Priorities" section (section 2).

⚠ Card types are not available for Epics. Instead, the card will be auto-set to the type Epic.

A priority assignment lets you quickly prioritize work and view potential bottlenecks. Use to set the card priority.

💡 Card priorities

You can set the priority from lowest to highest or remove it altogether. Cards can also be sorted by priority (ascending or descending) within a list.

To enable card priorities, find the setting called "Enable priorities" in the "Card types & Priorities" section (section 2). You can set the display level of priorities on the board using the "Show card badges" setting (available options: "High or above", "Medium or above", "All", "Never"). To see card priorities on the card itself, enable "Show on cards".

Dependencies & epics

Cards can be linked to one another using a variety of relationships. When you link a card to another card, the operation is also mirrored on the paired card. For example, setting a relationship of "Is child of" on one card will also mark the pair as "Is parent of". This allows you to quickly see & open related cards. Use to create card dependencies. In the search box, you can either start typing the name of the card (minimum of 4 characters to begin searching) or paste the URL of the related card directly, then select the card from the results list to complete the dependency. Afterwards, they will be visible on the "Epics & Card dependencies" section of the card. To remove dependencies, you can either scroll down and hit the "Unlink" button next to each dependency or use the "clear all linked cards" at the top of the list to remove all dependencies.

💡 Dependencies

Duplicate cards and blocked cards will also show a "Duplicate" or "Blocked" card status on the board. "Duplicate" statuses persist, irrespective of the actual status of the card but closed blocked cards will not show the "Blocked" status on the board.

To enable dependencies, find the setting called "Enable dependencies" in the "Dependencies & Epics" section (section 3).

⚠ Card dependencies can cause data to bloat beyond the limit imposed per card by Trello. This may cause an error when trying to add/modify other data for the card. Read more here.

You can turn a regular card into an Epic. An Epic is a card which represents a larger feature/milestone in your board that can't be tackled as just one card. The epic generally has a short description of the overall feature and a number of linked sub-cards in which the functionality is broken down into smaller steps. Use to open the Epics menu. You can either search for an Epic by name/URL in order to link this card as a sub-card to that Epic or you can use the "Turn card into epic" button to turn the card into an Epic. To turn an Epic back into a regular card, use the same menu and click on the button "Turn epic into regular card". Please note that switching from card to Epic or vice versa will remove all Epic/subcard links for this card.

💡 Epics

Epics can also be unliked from sub-cards just like dependencies. This can be done from both the Epic itself or from the sub-card you wish to unlink.

To enable Epics, find the setting called "Enable epics" in the "Dependencies & Epics" section (section 3). The setting "Measure epic in" can be used to change how the Epic size is calculated, either as a sum of all subcard estimations (for sub-cards that have an estimation) or by number of cards. Closed sub-cards (i.e., in "Done" or "Abandoned" status) also count for the overall Epic completion. A widget shows overall completion in the board.

Card statueses & reporting

All cards will have a status. There are 4 available statuses to choose from: None (for in progress cards, which don't have an icon), Oh hold (for cards in the backlog, not actively being worked on), Done (for cards which were finished) and Abandoned (for cards which have been abandoned but should not be erased entirely). Done and Abandoned cards are considered to be closed. On hold cards are ignored when compiling most reports but will show up in backlog sections. Use to change the card status.

💡 Card statuses

Card statuses are always enabled. They can be hidden, shown only on the board or shown on the board and the card, based on the selected option for the "Show status badge" setting in the "Card statuses & Reporting" section (section 4). In this section you can also find settings that allow you to set a list for each of the 4 statuses. A card in this list will always be auto-set to that status. These settings are fully optional. You can also use list actions to change the status of all cards in a list.

Reports allow you to see different statistics about your board over time. There are 3 types of reports available:

• Sprint summaries () - see a direct comparison of your board between 2 moments in time (a sprint), highlighting the number of total cards, how many were closed, removed or remain open and the total number of points closed as well as which cards were overestimated and by how much;
• Sprint reports () - see the contribution of each individual member, the burndown chart (shows the ideal progression of the sprint vs the number of points closed for each day) and the backlog (the items still left to do at the end of the sprint);
• Velocity reports () - a bar chart showing the estimation vs the number of closed points over time, each entry representing a sprint;

All reports utilise something called a sprint snapshot - all the necessary data from your board, captured in a single moment in time. Snapshots are XML files required to generate all reports. They are not stored within Trello because of Trello's storage limitations, so you must store them yourself, either in your local files or on a shared team storage space, like Google Drive or Sharepoint. Generate a new snapshot using this board button: .

Cards have a creation date which can be hidden or shown on the board or the card itself. If the creation date is unset, it will be auto-set using Trello's data for date of last activity. For newly created cards after Power-Up activation this will be pretty accurate but it may not reflect reality for older cards. You may also set the creation date of cards manually by using .

💡 Reporting

A sprint summary will only have a start and an end snapshot. A sprint report can have anywhere between 2 and 32 snapshots. For a true sprint report, you may want to take a snapshot at the start of the sprint, the end of the sprint and at the end of every other working day and import all of them to generate the report.

You can save velocity metadata for at most 12 sprints at a time. You can save it from either the srpint summary or the sprint report section, using the first & last snapshots (snapshots are automatically chronologically ordered) as the sprint start & end times, respectively. When saving a new velocity metadata entry, older data is pushed back to older slots and if all the slots were already full then the oldest metadata will be automatically deleted. You can also delete velocity metadata manually from a given slot from the velocity report.

To enable reports, find the setting called "Enable reports" in the "Card statuses & Reporting" section (section 4). You can also choose who has access to snapshot & reports (either allow all board members or just board admins to export snapshots/reports)

Troubleshooting

As a board Admin, if you cannot see a specific feature in your board, please check the Power-Up settings to ensure that the feature is enabled and that the display options are configured according to your project's requirements. If you are not a board Administrator, please contact one.

Keep in mind that in order to use reports you must first enable the following features: Card sizes, Card statuses, Reports. If reporting is enabled but you can't see the board buttons for Snapshots, Summaries & Reports, check whether Power-Up board buttons are disabled from Trello's Power-Up menu.

Here is a list of all possible errors origintaing from this Power-Up: