Remote work is booming due to the influence of Covid19. However, even before this devastating worldwide event, there has been a growing trend towards remote work. Software development is one industry that can lend itself towards remote work - so long as you have the right tools in place to do development as professionally and as close to in-person abilities as possible.
Today we take a look at the big essential software apps that you’ll need to have an effective and productive remote development team.
Project Management: Jira
Jira is the world’s favoured Agile project management tool from SaaS heavyweights Atlassian. Originally designed as a bug tracking tool, it now can be used for a wide range of other software development activities, from feature planning and tracking, release tracking and reporting, and more. Jira can replace a variety of other tools as an all in one software development planning, tracking, and reporting environment.
Codebase: GitHub
Developers need access to the code repository at all times. With remote teams, you might have devs working around the clock in various different timezones. GitHub provides a development platform that’s fully git-integrated and available with a huge range of hosting options. You can host your own git repository on servers (or cloud hosting) anywhere in the world, GitHub just makes it easy - and any developer you bring on board should already be familiar with it.
Documentation: Confluence
Another Atlassian product, Confluence is a documentation software app that is designed specifically for software teams and projects. While you can do this type of thing with something like GoogleDocs, Confluence offers better project integrations, navigation, and code-friendly layout and design.
Project Communication: Slack
If your remote team isn’t using Slack, are you really running a software development project? Slack is how remote dev teams communicate. This product has grown to become the number one communications platform for remote teams. It offers channels (i.e. rooms), direct messaging, file sharing, search, inbuilt security, and - more importantly - deep integrations with other products. This includes Google Calendar, GitHub, Zapier, Mirofeed, Zendesk, Todoist, and more. The WorkFlow Builder allows you to build automated workflows that help teams work faster, like sending information to a Google Sheet. You can also build your own bots and apps to work with Slack.
Videochat: Zoom
Zoom’s rapid rise to the top of the videochat tools due to Covid has been interesting to watch. When Skype and other videochat apps faltered, Zoom rose. However, those in the industry were already using this clean, stable videochat app for remote meetings for some time. For all face to face meetings, Zoom is the best option in this category.
Diagrams: Lucidchart
For all developers’ diagramming needs, Lucidchart is the tool of choice. Lucidchart comes with a set of prepared templates including systems diagrams, ER diagrams, Flowcharts, Use Case diagrams, UML classes and more. It also offers features such as real-time collaboration (handy with a remote development team), integration with other diagram apps like Visio, auto-diagram feature with import from CSV, databases, etc., and security features. These are all available with an enterprise account.
Online Whiteboard: Miro
One of the missing pieces of the in-person work puzzle that requires solving online is whiteboarding. Development teams are used to using whiteboards for brainstorming sessions, helping solve difficult problems in architecture, and planning work. That’s where Miro comes in. Miro is perfect for remote teams to collaboratively whiteboard in real-time. It can be used for whiteboarding, design, workflow diagrams - pretty much anything you would usually use a whiteboard for. It offers integrations with a range of other software you may use, including Slack, Jira, Google Drive, Azure, Asana, GitHub, and more. An enterprise account gives added security benefits.
Boosted security stack
While we aren’t recommending any security stack in particular for remote teams, it’s important to realise that with a remote workforce comes a mandate to increase security both on your side, as well as the developer side as well. This includes extra protocols, identity management, and multi-factor authentication for access to your company data. Having a security expert put into place a boosted security stack is an essential activity - as is monitoring and updating as necessary.
Let’s collaborate!
Ready for remote work? Whether you want to pull together a remote team, or simply augment your existing workforce with remote developers, CodeFirst can help. We specialise in placing experienced developers in remote work projects that suit their skillset and expertise. If you have a project you’d like for us to help out on, then make