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Remote working has now become the new normal. Effectively managing the remote teams is the need of the hour. No or less human interaction and anxiety caused by the news brings in more distraction while working from home.
By the end of a thought, locking yourself at home is the mighty decision you have made to protect you and your family from this silent killer. As we go through the days of the lockdown during the Coronavirus outbreak, it becomes complicated to strike a balance between work and life.
A few days back, I’ve shared the Best Tools for Remote Teams to stay connected and productive (Click to explore). This blog, which you are currently reading, is the extended version of it. Having used and tested by our Agira teams (Development, Production, Human Resource, Sales, Marketing & Accounts) 💻, they suffice in maintaining communication, effectively managing projects/daily tasks and their KPI related activities, and sharing the work to receive feedback quickly while working from home.
If you have already read my blog on Apsense, you must be known about my scoop of remote work tools that have been exclusively discussed. If you haven’t, kindly take a look!
Have a shortage of time? No problem, find the list of best remote management tools from the earlier post.
Businesses and people around the world are adapting to tools to keep up with the changes and getting the work done with higher productivity. The fundamental purpose of these tools is to help remote teams to overcome the challenges we are facing today. If you are a manager of the remote team, it is your responsibility to set up a path to measure the success of your organization.
We at Agira Technologies, are also working remotely this period. We understand the importance of the tools in managing your work and team effectively. This blog has the essential remote work tools we are currently using to produce projects timely during the COVID-19 crisis.
1. Basecamp
Basecamp is a real-time collaboration tool. It offers various features for sharing ideas, organize conversations, and team collaborations. This tool can help to keep track of priorities, manage message boards, to-do lists, documents, file storage, etc.
Basecamp has a slick design with themes, simple functionalities, and refined usability. Which makes it suitable for project management, team collaboration, and communication with clients.
2. Asana
Asana is a project management tool. The users can view the projects in multiple ways. It offers features such as boards, to-do lists, project timeline, calendars, and project templates that make them Asana more appealing. Asana is adaptive to the standard workflow of teams such as IT, design, marketing, HR, and other departments. One good alternative is Trello, they both share some similarities.
3. Jira
Jira is an ideal tool for managing software development projects. It is quite helpful in handling issue tracking for technical and development teams. Also, bug tracking and other project management functions to speed up the development process.
Jira helps in tracking the progress of the tasks and current status of the work of the team members. Tickets are used to make the flow of communication more accessible and more efficient. It also has boards and many actionable insights on the performance of the team sprint over sprint. You can add your version control, build, deploy, or feature flagging tool into Jira and get quick visibility into your development pipeline.
4. DropBox
Dropbox is a file hosting service used for sharing large files for a smart workspace. It is an immensely popular tool used by millions across the world for file sharing and storage.
You need to upload the file on your Dropbox account and share the access with your colleagues. If you need any extra storage space or additional functionalities, the Dropbox business can be used to stay organized.
5. GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is a video conferencing and desktop sharing tool. It is a web-hosted service for online meetings. One can easily coordinate meetings with the clients and interact with the remote workers. You can host a meeting with a maximum of 100 participants.
By sharing the URL, you can host quick link meetings and webinars for your teams. The tool also provides features to record the session, playback recordings, save meetings for later review, and so on.
6. Timely
Timely is an automatic time tracking app which can help you identify opportunities to improve productivity. It has some of the exciting features, remote workers would love. It has well-designed features for project team planning, creates timelines, schedules with a smart balance on resources across projects, and reporting that makes the efforts visible to the team members.
7. GitHub
Github is a Git repository platform used by developers across the world. Git is an open-source version control system, that can keep the revisions straight and store the modifications made by the programmer in a central repository. It is a web-based graphical interface to host, build, and manage development projects. GitHub allows developers to easily collaborate, download a new version of the software, review codes, upload the code revisions, and make contributions for open source projects.
It provides features such as Repository, where you can access the files with a unique URL, Forking a repo to release a revised project. Pull requests to ensure the original creator is aware of your revised version, Changelogs can help to track the revisions made by the collaborators on a project. By networking with the experts who have in-depth knowledge can help you advance your project forward.
Stay Home! Stay Healthy!
To measure the productivity of our remote teams, our managers rely on these tools. As I lead my teams remotely, I highly recommend any of the above tools for your use. It helps us in attaining the work-life balance during Coronavirus Pandemic.
The remote work tools are now powerful and serve different purposes. It is beneficial in both ways to the employees and the employer to manage projects. But choosing the right one is crucial for an established collaborative workflow. Try any of these tools, share it with your team, and let us know how it all worked for you.
Right Tools = More Productivity! 🙂
Have some other most excellent remote work tools in mind? Score it down the comment section. I would love to hear from you.
If you like this, try exploring 10 Sane Tips for Working From Home during COVID- 19. Practical Tips that can help you focus better and gain productivity.
Feeling lonely? Don’t let too much of those thoughts dwell in. You are not alone at this. Everyone is virtually connected online; you can just talk it out! Connect with your friends and colleagues. Eat healthily, stay inside, and protect yourself.
