Leading up to the Project Demo Night, we are planning a weekly blog post to highlight each team’s’ weekly progress over the previous week.

This week we’ll piggyback on the workshop night and focus on Project Management.

Next week we’ll focus on Value Propositions, followed with Logo Designs the following week. We’ll finish with a penultimate post highlighting the presentations of the Project Demo Night.

This post provides a list of resources that teams may find useful. We do already have a list of Resources accessible above from a dropdown menu, highlighted by the Learning Resources and Project Ingredients.

These resources are great, something worth checking into if you haven’t yet. But, they do not point to Project Management tools.


CaaSH Teams start the brainstorming process
CaaSH Teams start the brainstorming process

Project Management can be a hard task for any group. With our Brigade members working as volunteers, fitting in their work around busy lives and work schedules, it can hard to get the project moving forward at times. Below is a list of resources that we believe will be helpful for teams to assist with project management:

Trello

Trello boards are a project management tool that work as a great way to organize tasks for a collaborative working environment. Tasks are added to the board, and then are moved along as progress is made on completing milestones.

Teammates can add comments, link files and add checklists to stay organized, but also to allow tasks to be picked up by anybody that is capable to move things along.

It also allows people to see if a tasks is being blocked by someone or something easier. Trello is a kanban board. Similar agile kanban boards are Waffle.io and Jira.

Google Drive

Does anybody even save files to their hard drives anymore? Google Drive has made it easy to share files with people. Drive can be integrated into Slack, allowing you to pin a shared file for easy access.

Additional advantages are allowing you to see version history, work on the same file as someone else at the same time-and see their edits in real time. No need for downloading programs, it allows anyone with an internet connection to use.

Apps for your phone and access on your laptop or desktop make Google Drive an essential for collaborative working group that do not share the same work space.

Google Hangouts

With so many Code for Philly projects teams working together remotely, it’s nice for everyone to get together and talk. It’s not always easy to get everyone in the same room, so Google Hangouts allow you to get everyone in front of their screens at the same time to talk.

Talking face to face brings a different dynamic that phone audio or Slack channel discussions just can’t match. It can be wonky, and doesn’t always default to video, so just be aware.

Uber Conference

If the video conference call isn’t going to work, then Uber Conference is the next best option. As its name might suggest, it’s a conference call that gets everyone on the line at the same time.

Hopefully something here will help teams be able to manage their time and increase the ease of collaboration across the array of schedules. The anterior tools should help with some of the conversations that have been taking place in the Slack channels.

Speaking of Slack, all the new users to the powerful platform should check out this list of 27 Productivity Tips and Hacks Every Slack User Should Know.


CaaSH Teams focused
CaaSH Teams focused

There are some great projects that are participating in CaaSH. See what they’re up to.

Stately

Form-driven workflow engine. Making city government better, one form at a time.

Near Green

Make healthy food accessible to the city of Philadelphia.

DeputyDashboard or D² (pronounced “dee squared”)

Dashboard for viewing and filtering Property in Philadelphia.

Imminently Dangerous

Working to identify substandard rental housing.

Hackadashery

Philly 311 Dashboard (and best project name? Yes, best project name).

Leverage

Philly Campaign Finance. This is an Evergreen project, started at DemHack2016.

VoteWise

VoteWise.net is a non-profit non-partisan website aimed at connecting voters and politicians without advertising dollars getting in the way. This is also an Evergreen project.


Photo Credit: All photos taken by Chris Kendig