Comments on: Fourteen Tools for a Productive Distributed Team http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/ Kyle Cordes's Software Site Mon, 08 Sep 2008 07:01:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.11 by: Kyle Cordes http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11445 Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:00:51 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11445 Regarding remote control tools: Yes, I recommend VNC (especially UltraVNC). It is free, and works well for remote support. Further, you can easily make a customized VNC download, by following directions on the UltraVNC site, to make it extremely easy for your customer to set up a VNC connection. Regarding remote control tools: Yes, I recommend VNC (especially UltraVNC). It is free, and works well for remote support. Further, you can easily make a customized VNC download, by following directions on the UltraVNC site, to make it extremely easy for your customer to set up a VNC connection.

]]> by: stanemte http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11443 Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:06:53 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11443 Our company is going to provide remote technical support to our customers. We need to have a reliable and cost-effective remote support tool to satisfy our clients' needs and not to go bankrupt because of the high cost of the tool. We wouldn't like to have something to be installed either on our or customer's side. We've come across a web-based tool by the name of (redacted) Does anybody have anything to say about it? Can you suggest something more appropriate? Our company is going to provide remote technical support to our customers.
We need to have a reliable and cost-effective remote support tool to satisfy our clients’ needs and not to go bankrupt because of the high cost of the tool.
We wouldn’t like to have something to be installed either on our or customer’s side. We’ve come across a web-based tool by the name of (redacted) Does anybody have anything to say about it?
Can you suggest something more appropriate?

]]> by: Charles McCreary http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11377 Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:42:18 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11377 Echo Alex Miller's comment about Wiki's. You might also find that automated testing coupled with your source code control system is a good way of flagging interoperability problems early. For example, if you are using subversion coupled with TRAC, you can run a your test suite every night if there has been any changes during the previous 24hr. Couple the results with a dashboard that graphically reflects the test results and you have an "at a glance" status of the development. I use nose/python/(subversion/bazaar/git)/trac as a platform and it seems to work pretty well for distributed development. Echo Alex Miller’s comment about Wiki’s. You might also find that automated testing coupled with your source code control system is a good way of flagging interoperability problems early. For example, if you are using subversion coupled with TRAC, you can run a your test suite every night if there has been any changes during the previous 24hr. Couple the results with a dashboard that graphically reflects the test results and you have an “at a glance” status of the development.

I use nose/python/(subversion/bazaar/git)/trac as a platform and it seems to work pretty well for distributed development.

]]> by: Josh http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11193 Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:18:57 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11193 My firm gets by quite nicely with a source control tool by Accurev. It has a GUI called the StreamBrowser that provides a flexible, stream-based dynamic view of the development process that not only allows us to work in this view, but also provides developers, release engineers, managers, etc. a view into who is working on what, where, and how everyone fits into the process. The drag and drop features to move releases and people around, etc. is neat and any merge conflicts are resolved easily and efficiently. It may also allow you to not require so many collaboration tools, or at least greatly enhance them. Good luck! Josh My firm gets by quite nicely with a source control tool by Accurev. It has a GUI called the StreamBrowser that provides a flexible, stream-based dynamic view of the development process that not only allows us to work in this view, but also provides developers, release engineers, managers, etc. a view into who is working on what, where, and how everyone fits into the process. The drag and drop features to move releases and people around, etc. is neat and any merge conflicts are resolved easily and efficiently. It may also allow you to not require so many collaboration tools, or at least greatly enhance them.

Good luck!

Josh

]]> by: Eric Burke http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11147 Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:52:19 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11147 I find email to be very frustrating because people mail their little circle of "buddies" to resolve problems, but only people in the CC list are included in the conversation. You mention that email leaves a "trail", but only for the few lucky enough to be included. Other people do the opposite, spamming the whole company with every trivial issue. When new people are hired, they don't have access to this so-called "trail" you mention. I try my best to advocate discussion forum software so conversations and decisions are truly archived for all to see. +1 on screencasting. I use that quite a bit for little training videos. It really frees up my time when I can give people a simple URL to a video that shows them the answer to their question. I find email to be very frustrating because people mail their little circle of “buddies” to resolve problems, but only people in the CC list are included in the conversation. You mention that email leaves a “trail”, but only for the few lucky enough to be included. Other people do the opposite, spamming the whole company with every trivial issue. When new people are hired, they don’t have access to this so-called “trail” you mention. I try my best to advocate discussion forum software so conversations and decisions are truly archived for all to see.

+1 on screencasting. I use that quite a bit for little training videos. It really frees up my time when I can give people a simple URL to a video that shows them the answer to their question.

]]> by: Alex Miller http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11133 Sun, 19 Aug 2007 02:17:43 +0000 http://kylecordes.com/2007/08/18/distributed-team-tools/#comment-11133 I moved to a remote team about a year ago and just recently became a remote member working at home, so I have been acutely aware of learning how to work in this new way. I'm using pretty much all the techniques above and it's definitely taken a little adjustment, but I'm pretty comfortable working remotely now. I feel like I actually get more work done remotely (especially with a time zone difference) as there are longer periods that are interruption free. One I would add that we use at Terracotta is IRC. We keep an open irc room and typically someone is always logged in there, so you can usually track someone down or bounce ideas off someone there. Also, they have a bot that tracks and archives all discussion there, which in some ways makes it better than IM (but not as good as email) for recording. You also failed to mention wikis, which are great for certain kinds of information (product / project docs for example), like stuff that is not too dynamic (issue tracking) or requires discussion. I think I would also possibly mention blogs, although that has to be a central part of your culture. There is a bit of internal project blogging at Terracotta and I can imagine it being something important to a team, but I haven't witnessed that personally. I moved to a remote team about a year ago and just recently became a remote member working at home, so I have been acutely aware of learning how to work in this new way. I’m using pretty much all the techniques above and it’s definitely taken a little adjustment, but I’m pretty comfortable working remotely now. I feel like I actually get more work done remotely (especially with a time zone difference) as there are longer periods that are interruption free.

One I would add that we use at Terracotta is IRC. We keep an open irc room and typically someone is always logged in there, so you can usually track someone down or bounce ideas off someone there. Also, they have a bot that tracks and archives all discussion there, which in some ways makes it better than IM (but not as good as email) for recording.

You also failed to mention wikis, which are great for certain kinds of information (product / project docs for example), like stuff that is not too dynamic (issue tracking) or requires discussion.

I think I would also possibly mention blogs, although that has to be a central part of your culture. There is a bit of internal project blogging at Terracotta and I can imagine it being something important to a team, but I haven’t witnessed that personally.

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