A Catalogue of Patterns for Board-based Tools
Board-based software tools for managing collaborative work (e.g. Trello or Microsoft Planner) are highly configurable information systems. Their structure is based on boards that contain cards organized in lists. This structure allows users to organize a wide variety of formal or informal information and work processes in a very flexible way. However, this flexibility means that in every situation the user is required to make decisions to design a new board from scratch, which is not a straightforward task, specially if performed by non-technical users.
We have carried out a study following an inductive approach consisting of analyzing 91 Trello board designs from board templates proposed by Trello users, which cover a wide variety of domains and use cases. From this analysis we characterize the following 8 patterns that are commonly used in board designs and are applicable to all collaborative board-based tools:
- Information or resources lifecycle
- Ordered Information
- Kanban
- Process Tasks
- Assigned Information
- Categorized Information
- Assigned Tasks
- Categorized Tasks
About the analysis performed
Summary
see: https://github.com/isa-group/board-design-patterns
