Over the last few days as I get my head around writing a book, I needed to decide what was the researching, planning and developing the book.

My ideas for where to manage this were:

• OneNote from Microsoft – Have not used this much recently.
• EverNote – My go to tool for most things planning.
• iMindMap – a great mind mapping tool for mapping out ideas.

I then got researching and had head a bit about Trello. Trello is a web based application developed initially for project management. It has been used for lesson planning, bulletin boards, team management and personal effectiveness amongst others. Trello is like a wall of post it notes but portable and can be used by multiple users. Becomeablogger.com have done a nice overview:

Trello basics

Agile scout.com provide a good overview also:

Write now I am using it just to gather all of the core systems thinking concepts in one place.

It looks like it may a good tool for scheduling, planning and organising the rest of the book production.

I really enjoyed reading through a piece by Elizabeth M Covart on using Trello for scheduling and managing due dates. Beyond book development I see it could also be good for supporting learning, training and coaching. I like this board by Martin Alaimo that has collected coaching questions:

Overall it is a simple and easy tool to use. It works via browser, so is multiplatform, but I have found my attempts on mobile a bit clunky.

Have you tried it? Do you use it? What tips of have you gotabout its use (either for book development or other areas?

(This is part of my Working Out Loud #WOL series on developing a book on systems thinking)