While I'm happy to sometimes keep my trill board sync with Aha status, I sometimes don't want. We use a board to manage the content of our demos (we create one column for each new demo). It's nice to be able to export a feature from aha to Trello, but I don't need status sync in that case. Plus, when I did setup my configuration, all my columns didn't exist actually as I'm adding them along the way.
One of the key goals for the Aha!/Trello integration is to allow product teams to push features and requirements from Aha! to Trello and to get list/status changes back, so that the respective teams can stay in the tools which were made specifically for them.
While we can understand the use case, at this time, we do not have plans to make changes in this area based on community feedback and current priorities. We hope you can understand.
We just released an enhanced Aha! integration with Trello that allows you to have full control over the way information flows between Aha! and Trello — in both directions. Plus custom fields, faster imports, and automatic updates.
I'd urge you to reconsider this. Many Trello users are working on features in parallel with Dev and QA. For example the PMM may be writing release notes and marketing is working on blog posts while QA is happening. This means updating the Aha status based on changes in Trello swimlanes is disruptive to the Product/Dev flow since it changes their status. Can you just add an option next to the swim lane to "Make No Change."