Conversations Which are the different productivity tools have you used in your venture ? According to you which is the best one ? Do share your experiences and insights.
My team works in same place, so communication is not issue. Though, #Slack# turned out very productive. We use it for sharing things like (links, code-snippet, api keys etc.). More over it has concept of channel where all member can subscribe to it. We created one, so team member can share anything like interesting articles on internet or new idea about product which don't required immediate attention, but something worth to discuss. Best part of the slack is integration with other Web services (We integrated it with our git repos., so all can have sense of progress and commits) Notify integration allows to have stream based on keyword to keep track with our industry. Public channels allows to connect, collaborate and share ideas. User experience and ease of use of Slack, is just unparalleled.
We want to stay away from typical boring soft engg. process. But we also want to make sure team stay focused on their goal as it is possible that too many ideas leads to divergence and end up achieving nothing . #Trello# doing good job for us. Since it has very flexible format, We identify that it is important that one use it right way. We try to keep 4 boards relates to all major function of business. Engineering one (User Stories board) is like kanban board. Additional column to capture new idea or smaller tasks.
Apart, #Google Apps# for shared drive, email, hangout call if necessary.
We organize our #Git branches like mini-feature branch, development branch and master branch for production-deployment; it turns out very productive in engineering. As it allows product developer to work parallel. Also, allow to build fast, test and refactor later kind cycle.
1. Basecamp for projects collaboration
2. Time Doctor for Time Sheet/Time Tracking
3. Open Fire for internal instant communication
4. Google Apps for email, file sharing
5. Skype/Hangout for client voice/video conferencing
1. Trello for Business Requirements and User Stories
2. Google Apps
3. Slack for team communication and collaboration
4. Github for Code Repositories and Maintenance
5. Jira for Issue Management
6. One Note or Evernote for MoM
7. InteliJ IDE for programming
While I use Trello, Google Apps and a few more which are mentioned above, one good thing I came across is ip messenger. Simple, quick, light, and works even if internet isn't working. The team just has to stay connected via LAN or wifi and you can share messages, broadcast, send entire files and folders even while there's no internet access. Would highly recommend trying it once (only for windows)
Hardik Manwani
we have been using trello and slack, both of them are great productivity tools and helps us to work more efficiently