Comments on: Tools for Distributed Teams

By: Ken Lin

Ken Lin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:34:13 +0000

Using second life for virtual meetings, man who would’ve thought. I utilize pivotal tracker for my virtual meetings and project management. It’s a lot less intensive on the computer than second life, and starts up a lot quicker, haha.

By: aparadekto

aparadekto — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 04:31:59 +0000

Hey, I can’t view your site properly within Opera, I actually hope you look into fixing this.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:03:49 +0000

Cisco Unified Meeting Place is a good tool.

A good Agile project Management tool for distributed team is WRAP (WoodRanch Agile Projects). It provides integrated planning and management of requirements, iterations, releases, projects, tasks and defects. It is FREE for open source and non-profit companies. Take a look at http://www.agilewrap.com

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:47:50 +0000

It looks like LinkedIn is rapidly maturing and now offer several applications within LinkedIn to allow you to work collaboratively with your network. Here are some of the highlights:

Box on LinkedIn: Share files and collaborate with your network.
Huddle on LinkedIn: Private workspaces to collaborate with your network on projects.

Amazon on LinkedIn: Discover what your network is reading.
TripIt on LinkedIn: See where your network is traveling.
SixApart on LinkedIn: Stay up to date with your network’s latest blog posts.

Google Docs on LinkedIn: Embed a presentation on your profile.
SlideShare on LinkedIn: Share, view and comment on presentations from your network.
WordPress on LinkedIn: Promote your blog and latest posts.

Company Buzz by LinkedIn: See what people are saying about your company.

By: Ben Carey

Ben Carey — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:27:04 +0000

Looks like Co-op (http://coopapp.com/anatomy/) might be a good tool for distributed teams as well.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:41:29 +0000

I’m so glad so many people are finding this post useful. And thanks for all of the other great suggestions for distributed tools that you all have added.

By: James Herrmann

James Herrmann — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:32:23 +0000

Thanks for this. I am on a solutions group investigating this issue. Another product that we are using with success is Cisco’s Unified Meeting Place: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/ps5664/ps5669/ . Feature rich.

By: Patrick Merg

Patrick Merg — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:42:44 +0000

Hi Chris

Thanks this is a good list. I have a 50 person globally distributed team working on multiple interdependent Agile projects. The combination of web based Agile PM tools and web conferencing are great ways to keep communication flowing between face-to-face visits.

While dependency on these tools these tools can’t replace collocation these tools help ensure some level of interactivity and communication between team members.

Daily stand-ups are a huge challenge when the teams are spread across three continents and speak multiple languages.

Pat

By: Sandy Gordon

Sandy Gordon — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:56:21 +0000

The list you’ve provided is a really good one, Thank You, Chris!
I really appreaciate the effort, It has been really helpful, I found some Cool Collaboration tools in there which I wouldn’t have found otherwise.
I’ve found another one, which could be added to your list. TAROBY (http://www.taroby.org) is a Team Inbox or Collaboration tool for Enterprises, with capability of sharing the same Inbox with your team. Taroby has got Taskmanagement capabilities also, It puts an end to forwarding of mails to your team mates, as everyone in the team shares the same inbox, with the appropriate access rights. Some really Cool Features in there. Do Check it out!!

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:01:48 +0000

And another freebie I forgot, free conference calling: http://thebasementventures.com/

By: Alan Blan

Alan Blan — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:51:43 +0000

A couple of twitter clones that may be appropriate for enterprises are Yammer and laconi.ca. Twitter may be a bit too public for company business. Yammer is SaaS with messages restricted to users in your company’s domain, so it may be ok as long as you trust Yammer’s security and privacy policies. laconi.ca is open source which you run on your own server, but you’ll need somebody to install and maintain it.

By: Andrew Donnelly

Andrew Donnelly — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:56:24 +0000

Hi Chris,
Perhaps you would be interested in taking a look at Mikogo http://www.mikogo.com This is a freeware screen sharing tool where you can invite up to 10 people to view your screen actions live over the Web. Great collaboration tool and very easy to get started and use.
Take a look at our homepage and feel free to contact me if you would like further info.

Regards,
Andrew
The Mikogo Team

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:48:27 +0000

One that I completely forgot about is Planning Poker. It's an online collaborative tool for facilitating distributed and remote agile estimating of user stories.

By: Ben Carey

Ben Carey — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:43:10 +0000

One other that I've used for pairing and demos is Microsoft SharedView. It's free and has some good features. I like the ability to be able to see the mouse pointers from everyone connected to the session. It allows for easy "virtual pointing" and eases the burden a bit for remote collaboration.