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I have been running a remote team for a year now. Communication: - chat during the day (hipchat) - skype for voice calls, usually to quickly discuss somethin

by cynusx 13y ago

I have been running a remote team for a year now. Communication: - chat during the day (hipchat) - skype for voice calls, usually to quickly discuss something - Google hangout (highest bandwidth communication, I run my daily standups on google hangout and sporadically for "crisis" moments or "clarification" moments) Project management: - trello Product management: - prodpad So the trick is to have a daily scrum meetup on google hangout every morning so that you can explain tasks, check how far everybody got the previous day and update the trello board to reflect the new state. It's the only moment in the day that communication is cheap and high bandwidth. Knowledge center: Google docs and github wiki There are other auxiliaries like github, airbrake, circleCI and papertrail that report into hipchat so you can get a sense of the work being done.

blakesterz 13y ago
Interesting, why do you use hipchat AND Skype AND Hangouts? Those all seem to overlap quite a bit. Our team meets and chats in Skype, I didn't see the need for hipchat while we're all using Skype. Totally agree with the morning meetings though, plus we have one longer scheduled weekly.
- aeden 13y ago
  HipChat provides a couple things that I don't think you can get from Skype: 1. Searchable backlog for all discussions. 2. API for connecting bots (which can be used for C&C). 3. Web-based and native clients. 4. Public and private rooms chat rooms. HipChat is more like IRC than like IM, which, for distributed teams, is often very useful.
- Chive 13y ago
  We too use Hipchat, Skype and Hangouts. All for different things and since some tools offer features which others don't: - Hipchat: Internal discussions and exchange, syntax highlighting, easy room and pwemission management, updates from other services (github, new relic etc). Furthermore to push notifications to email, mobile device and/or via text. - Skype: easy 1on1 communication with externals (sometimes replaces the regular phone), internal LAN file transfer - Google Hangouts: group video conferences (our company uses Google Apps so everyone has it and can access it from anywhere through a browser) I probably missed some features and usecases, but I think I got the most important ones :)

by cynusx 13y ago

blakesterz 13y ago

Interesting, why do you use hipchat AND Skype AND Hangouts? Those all seem to overlap quite a bit. Our team meets and chats in Skype, I didn't see the need for hipchat while we're all using Skype. Totally agree with the morning meetings though, plus we have one longer scheduled weekly.

aeden 13y ago
HipChat provides a couple things that I don't think you can get from Skype: 1. Searchable backlog for all discussions. 2. API for connecting bots (which can be used for C&C). 3. Web-based and native clients. 4. Public and private rooms chat rooms. HipChat is more like IRC than like IM, which, for distributed teams, is often very useful.
Chive 13y ago
We too use Hipchat, Skype and Hangouts. All for different things and since some tools offer features which others don't: - Hipchat: Internal discussions and exchange, syntax highlighting, easy room and pwemission management, updates from other services (github, new relic etc). Furthermore to push notifications to email, mobile device and/or via text. - Skype: easy 1on1 communication with externals (sometimes replaces the regular phone), internal LAN file transfer - Google Hangouts: group video conferences (our company uses Google Apps so everyone has it and can access it from anywhere through a browser) I probably missed some features and usecases, but I think I got the most important ones :)