The tools you need
It might almost be disconcerting that we haven’t discussed tools till this point. As a tool-junkie myself, I’m aware that working remotely, in an asynchronous fashion needs us to use tools effectively. The good news for all of us is that most of our employers have some version of these tools already in place. Even the companies that were originally slow to adopt collaborative tools, had to make these investments during the pandemic.
So let’s look at the categories of collaborative tools most software development teams will need. Many of these will seem familiar to you already, and that’s a good thing. You just need to use the tools effectively. Not all companies can have all the tools you see here. So I’ve broken down the list into three categories.
Must haves - the essential set.
Good to haves - these are productivity boosters.
Optional extras - unique, useful, but they could be more useful to some teams than others.
The must haves
| Tool category | Examples | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Outlook, Hey!, Gmail | ||
| Video conferencing | Zoom, Fuze, Blue Jeans, Microsoft Teams | Even mostly asynchronous teams will need to meet every now and then. 😀 |
| Instant messaging | Slack, Google Spaces, Microsoft Teams, Twist | |
| Collaborative documents | Google Workspace, Office 365, iWork, Almanac, Dropbox Paper | These are the most common tools to build up ideas in depth individually, or collaboratively. They lend themselves to inline commenting, suggestions, version control - features that help you track how you build a concept. |
| Knowledge base | Confluence, Notion, Sharepoint | Every team should have a place to host their onboarding information, project documentation, team social contract, ways of working and other artefacts. These tools make it easy to construct that knowledge base. |
| Code repository | GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket | |
| Task boards, project backlogs | Jira, Pivotal tracker, Trello, Kanbanize | All agile teams need a shared view of progress and what their backlog looks like. Ideally this is also where you have in-context discussions about individual pieces of work. |
| Collaborative whiteboard | Mural, Miro, Jamboard | These tools allow you to work synchronously and asynchronously, just the way you’d use a whiteboard in a physical space; except with loads of powerful features. In a primarily asynchronous setup, the meetings you have should be very active, and having a shared whiteboard can help facilitate those interactions. |
| Diagramming | Google Drawings, Excalidraw, Draw.io | These are specialised tools that you can use to create architectural and other diagrams. |
| Password manager | 1Password Teams, Zoho Vault, Lastpass | One way or another you need a secure way to share secrets — common credentials, code signing certificates, ssh keys, etc |
The good to haves
| Tool category | Examples | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Asynchronous video | Loom, ThreadIt | These tools give you the ability to record short videos to do a demo, describe an issue, convey an update etc. You can even use video conferencing tools to do recordings, but specialised tools make the whole process of sharing, collaborating and commenting much easier. |
| Asynchronous audio | Yac, ThreadIt | Audio’s faster than video and arguably easier to consume. I understand it’s less popular, but with tools that transcribe speech well, like the ones I’ve mentioned here, audio can be a powerful communication tool. |
| Collaborative design | Figma, Invision, Axure RP | These tools help simplify conversations and collaboration on design especially if your product has a user interface. |
Optional extras
| Tool category | Examples | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pair programming tools | Tuple, Pop, Live Share | Pair programming by definition is a synchronous activity, but I also consider it as “deep work”. So if your team “pairs”, you should continue to do so, but find a way to bring in specialised tools to do this well. |
| Task automation | Zapier, IFTTT, Trello Butler | If you have access to any of these tools, you can automate several mundane tasks - e.g. check-ins, standups, status updates, reports and the like. That can free up a lot of time to work asynchronously |
| Team hubs | Confluence, Basecamp, ClickUp, Asana | These modern tools combine functionality from multiple different tools that you see in the must-have toolset, into a rule-them-all package. The challenge for companies in adopting such tools, is that they already have several other tools that offer the same functionality; albeit in a piecemeal manner. |
| Automated documentation tools | CodeSee, Scribe, tl;dv, Otter assistant | The explicit act of creating documentation is no fun. On the other hand if the act of documenting is frictionless and can become part of our day to day digital exhaust, it doesn’t feel daunting any more. |
| Meeting facilitation | Hugo, Fellow | These modern tools make it easy to create collaborative meeting agendas, document meetings and then share and access these notes at a later time. |
There you go! That’s the tools question done and dusted. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can discuss how we use these tools. Before I let you go, I want you to let me know if I’ve missed any tool categories that I should have included. Is there a tool category I’ve included that you don’t recognise? What’s your favourite collaboration tool and how do you use it? Let me know in the comments below.