Please Advise On Project Management software [closed]

Question

Assume I work as a part of a small team (2-3) people who are all remote from each other. We build web applications.

* I use a project management web application to manage bugs/resources/specs etc.
* Passwords are managed using keepassx and dropbox
* We use git for version control and codebase/github
* We use screencast and jing for screenshots and screencasts to share

My questions:

1. Can I improve the above?
2. Should I add a new layer - central dev server for testing application (using capistrano)?
3. Real time collaboration solutions that don't cost $100,000/hour?
4. Anything else you want to add?

I've been taking on some increasingly large projects recently which demand some effective project management and workflow tools. Any advice or criticism is welcome!

Answer 1

I see two gaps in your toolbox.

1. Task management. It is possible you use your project management tool to organize tasks although you don't mention it. Basically every project management app has some task management so it shouldn't be a problem to use your current tool (whatever it is) to deal with that. Alternatively if you think about improvements you may rethink the way you manage tasks. You don't mention how it currently look like so it's hard to discuss it here (however I think that's a great subject for another question).

2. Instant messaging. In remote teams instant messengers proved to be very powerful tool. They're more instant than emails and distracts less than calls. My messenger of choice is GTalk since it's totally lightweight but you can choose to use pretty much any of them, Skype being one of the most obvious options.

Answer 2

One gap in your development is documentation. You should have a wiki or some sort of collaborative environment where the team (PM, developers, everyone) keep updated on how things are working.

With distributed teams, communication is essential; if you aren't already, you should have a quick (10 minute) daily synch-up where everyone mentions what they're working on (Scrum style).

Chatting and wiki will go a long way, too.

Answer 3

Based on your comment to Pawel, sounds like you could benefit from better task management.

You can use a tool that integrates tasks with project plans/resources, etc.

There are also tools that integrate tasks with bug fixes and source control.

Answer 4

Since all three of your team members are working from remote locations, real time tracking ofproject tasks becomes essential. We had a asimilar problem, since we're working in web development, it became important to track progress and hence the IT team implemented Microsoft's project scheduling software, which made it easier to create, track and report multiple projects over a connected platform.