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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!

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  • Hi Zenph, at first glance you are using almost all tools the right tools. You might need some help with the process around some of the tools. May I ask a favor. This PM site is in beta, and your question could be easily be split in a few questions that will give you better chances of getting the right answers. Do you mind posting individually? Regards, – Geo Feb 23 '11 at 2:20
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    This is pretty broad. Can you narrow it down by focusing the question (edit it) on a specific problem or set of problems you are having e.g. tasks falling through the cracks, missed deadlines, lots of rework, loosing money on projects, etc. – Mark Phillips Feb 23 '11 at 2:21
  • @Zenph -I would like to help but need more context as to the problem you are trying to solve. For example, if the problem is tons of rework and miscommunication, then a collaboration solution might be the answer. If the problem is a different one, than a collaboration solution may not be the answer. – Mark Phillips Feb 23 '11 at 2:32
  • Voting to close the question. There is not a specific problem to be solved here without the above requested edits. – jmort253 Feb 23 '11 at 4:34
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    +1 for closing. This Q&A site is not for discussions, but for solving project management problems. The question didn't raise any problem explicitly. – yegor256 Feb 23 '11 at 7:20
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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.

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    Hi. This is the trouble I'm having. Managing overall project tasks, but also very specific tasks like bugs to be fixed. I use git so I'm looking for something which offers both good integration of git and good project management features. – Damien Roche Feb 23 '11 at 16:44
  • I'm not sure whether you need to integrate task management and/or bug tracking with code repository. In recent project the only "integration" we had was proper label of check-ins pointing to id of task or bug and it was enough to track changes down. Another problem might be juggling new tasks along with bugs to old stuff, but I'm not sure if that is your case. – Pawel Brodzinski Feb 23 '11 at 17:13
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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.

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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.

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