We use a few different project management tools to keep us on track and in sync. We’re always trying out new ones too — DM Catherine if you’ve got a favorite you think would make a great addition to the team!
Basecamp
Keeping in sync with one another on big, long term projects can be challenging — and this is where Basecamp comes into play. While Slack is amazing for immediate conversation, Basecamp is useful for longer-form, more “announcement-like” communication.
- Teams: You’ll be added to all company teams, so you have access to all announcements or meeting agendas (you’re free to join any meeting you’d like during the week, but are required to attend your team’s meeting).
- Message Board: Meeting notes, team newsletters, and other general announcements will be found here.
- To Do’s: We primarily use To Dos for our meeting agendas. You can tag and assign to-do’s to individuals or groups — check them off when complete. Everyone on the team can see the to-do list, even if they’re not assigned to one directly.
- Docs & Files: We’ve typically housed team-specific documents in Basecamp.
- Projects: Team members can also be added to shared projects. Same layout as teams, just project-specific. We rarely use Basecamp projects; they’re primarily helpful when working with an outside contractor, as you can invite them to single products.
- Campfire: this serves as our back-up team chat should Slack ever go down. Max will send out a team message reminding everyone to log into SkyVerge HQ and continue chatting via Campfire.
Weekly Update
Additionally, every team member will be added to SkyVerge HQ. At the beginning of each week, Max posts updates on company-wide announcements, team goal updates, important policy changes, general goings-on, and individual shout-outs to team members for their great work. Any time he posts an announcement, everyone will get an email as well. Nifty! Our hope with the Weekly Update is to increase transparency and communication across the different teams here at SkyVerge. You can see past Weekly Updates here. (Must be logged into Basecamp to access.)
GitHub
GitHub houses our code in various repositories, including all of our WooCommerce plugins, the Plugin Framework, internal tools such as sake, and the Jilt rails app. All development takes place in branches/pull requests, all code reviews and many engineering discussions take place in pull request conversations, and the repository wiki’s are used to house technical documentation.
Clubhouse
We use Clubhouse to track all ongoing “work”, especially product and engineering work. Clubhouse is excellent for tracking multi-part projects, and involving team members from other areas, such as marketing. It helps us (a) keep the entire team apprised of project progress, making it easily discoverable, and (b) makes it obvious which projects require more than code (e.g., marketing announcements or a launch plan).
You can read more here about why we started using Clubhouse, and how it differs from GitHub or Basecamp. (Must be logged into Basecamp to access.)