Trello – Combining Trello boards

I agree with your friend about not dividing up into separate boards by type of job.

With your examples such as 'Design ideas' etc, I think they really do fit naturally within different lists on the same Board. It's exactly the sort of usage that Joel demoed in multiple videos about Trello.

The only thing I can think of, to help manage very long lists, is to use Trello's Labels system to put categories on cards, and then use filtering. You should definitely give meaningful names to the default labels.

I wrote up some tips on how to use labels recently.

Having said that, fairly early on the Trello on Trello board got huge, and eventually they reduced the scope of it. So it's does seem to be a well-known problem.

The way I found to do this, is by changing the Board permissions so that only members can make changes to the Board. People in the Organization can view the board, but they can't become members unless invited to the board.

This way I can invite people to the Organization, let them view the board, and still, they will not be authorized to change anything on the board, and can't join the board without my specific action.