Organizing Your Next Web Project
Posted: April 15, 2011
The design and development of an online functional application — website, microsite, ad campaign, or social media initiative — comes with its share of headaches. To minimize those troubles, here’s a short list of free tools that will help you avoid some of the heartache of managing your next web project.
The design and development of an online functional application — website, microsite, ad campaign, or social media initiative — comes with its share of headaches. Coming out the other side of a big project can leave you disoriented, disappointed, and despairing. So much can go sideways and keeping everyone informed and up-to-date with who’s doing what when is a huge task (big love to all my project managers out there, you rock!). Collaboration is your friend and the free tools available can help you enable everyone to play nicely.
For those who might be new to this — and from discussions I’ve had recently there are quite a few of you — let me quickly explain what I mean by tools that aid collaboration.
File sharing, while helpful in making assets available 24/7, is not collaborating. Neither is uploading assets to an FTP server, online file storage provider or CCing everyone on the team when you send attachments via email. Collaboration involves the meaningful communication of ideas, reviews, requests, critiques, questions, and instructions. It requires that each team member be able to engage with others at any point within the process, have access to project overviews and updates, timelines and milestones, assets and, perhaps most importantly, centralized discussions.
Here’s a short list of free tools that will help you avoid some of the heartache of managing your next web project. If you have other tools that you use and recommend, please share them here. Enjoy!
Basecamp
Basecamp tackles project management with a focus on communication and collaboration.
http://basecamphq.com/
Bounce
Grab a screenshot. Add your name. Make some notes. Save and share. Watch them bounce.
http://www.bounceapp.com
Diigo
Taking social bookmarking and sharing to the next level with a web highlighter and sticky notes, online bookmarking and annotation.
http://www.diigo.com/
GoogleDocs
Create and share work (documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms) online with access via desktop or smartphone.
https://docs.google.com/
Protonotes
Protonotes are notes that you add to your prototype that allow project team members to annotate directly on the prototype, a discussion board/wiki in direct context of your prototype.
http://www.protonotes.com/
SharedCopy
Click on the SharedCopy bookmark, save and create a “separate copy” of the webpage containing your annotations. Works with Twitter, Basecamp, with APIs that enable integration with your own online services.
http://sharedcopy.com/
Twiddla
Browse websites in a shared, real-time whiteboard, while marking them up, sharing files, and chatting along — called co-browsing.
http://www.twiddla.com/
Writeboard
Sharable, web-based text documents that let you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes.
http://writeboard.com/
Biz Tip Source: TalentZoo
About the Author: ML Haynes, hybrid creative and interactive director, pixel pusher and wordsmith, strategist and activist, thinks out loud here. Follow her on Twitter.