Effective communication and collaboration tools and processes are critical to the success of geographically distributed product development. Our suite of tools provides support to a distributed team and ensures all team members coordinate effectively to get the job done.

We offer general descriptions of the components of our suite of tools below.

Case tracking

This allows for tracking individual issues, or cases, and other action items. Each case has a current status and can be assigned amongst team members. A running log of all activity associated with the case is kept, and individual team members may subscribe to notifications which ensures everybody is on the same page. The client can view a case’s status at any time.

Communication tools

Simple but robust communication tools are critical when working in a distributed fashion. All team members utilize an integrated web-based chat tool for real-time communication, eliminating problems with disparate utilities and connectivity issues. Web based discussion forums are utilized and offer a centralized, archived view of ongoing general project discussion.

Collaborative authoring

Collaborative authoring offers the ability to work on project documentation together. A central area makes it easy for team members to add new or edit existing documentation. All changes are tracked in a revision history, the author’s identity is logged, and all changes can be rolled back making it easy to effectively cultivate and manage documentation.

Concurrent versioning system

A revision control system is an important software development utility for any development effort, especially for geographically distributed teams. A concurrent versioning system allows developers to work on different pieces of code while not prohibiting others to do the same. Changes can be intelligently merged and otherwise managed. All changes are tracked, the author’s identity is logged, and changes can be rolled back. The product can be tagged and versioned at certain points in its evolution, making it easy to manage product releases.

Dedicated servers

A dedicated server environment means we have the technical infrastructure necessary for the successful development and staging of a sophisticated web application. Our server environment resides in a state of the industry, secure data center that is staffed 24 hours a day.