Melbourne, Victoria Australia 
The Covid-19 has changed our lives. It has been two years since the pandemic has started, and everyone still works from home. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, about 67% of respondents said they are sometimes or always working from home.
And while most employees are probably used to remote working, some cannot fully maximize their potential and capability. companies need to do their very best to capacitate their people. And one way to do it is by providing essential collaboration tools for remote teams.
However, picking the best collaboration tool can be arduous. There are tons of available collaboration tools out there. This article will help you to find out the best collaboration tools for the remote development team:
Why Is Collaboration Essential in a Remote Team?
There are many benefits of collaboration in a remote team. For example, it can help to reduce stress and increase productivity. Similarly, remote team collaboration can also help cross-cultural communication and understanding different perspectives on the same problem.
Likewise, below are reasons why collaboration is vital in a remote team.
1. Collaboration Fosters Creativity and Innovation
Collaboration are essential because it helps to foster creativity and innovation. This is especially true in a remote team, where people work from different places and time zones. In addition, collaboration allows for the sharing of knowledge and expertise.
2. Collaboration Improves Effective Communication
Collaboration is vital in a remote team because it makes communication easier and helps to build trust. It also helps to keep the team inspired and focused on the goal. Collaboration is essential in a remote team because it helps to avoid miscommunication. It also makes it possible to have a more efficient process.
3. Collaboration Increases Team Productivity to Achieve Goals
Teamwork is vital in remote teams because it helps them achieve their goals. It can help remote teams to stay connected and motivated. Likewise, collaboration among remote teams is necessary to achieve company objectives. It is a great venue for support, feedback, and ideas they might not have had otherwise.
Top 10 Tools That Can Help Remote Development Team Collaborate
Collaboration in a remote development team can be improved in various ways. Managers can establish a communication norm or set up recurring meetings. Nevertheless, one crucial element is using the best collaboration tools for remote teams.
Below are our crucial collaboration tools for the remote development team:
1. Task Management – Jira Work Management
Task Management Tools basically bring everything together. It can help maximize efficiency, productivity, and collaboration. Through task managing, managers can create tasks flow that can disseminate work to each teammate. This tool can help your team organize their workload, prioritize tasks, and reach their deadline.
Jira task management is one of the recommended collaboration tools for the remote development team. This tool is built for agile project management and supports agile methodology such as scrum, kanban, etc. It is a great online collaboration tool that helps teams manage workflow, projects, and deadlines.
The built-in chat feature allows team members to communicate and share information on tasks.
2. Source Code Management – Gitlab
Creating software has always been a collaborative effort, especially in a multi-developer Team. Collaboration is integral, and one must communicate to ensure that the product code and design can be improved.
As such, Source Code Management (SCM) is one of the topmost collaboration tools for remote development teams. SCM tracks modification to a source code repository. It helps the development team track any changes made to a codebase. It helps resolve conflicts when merging updates with multiple contributors.
Our recommended SCM is Gitlab. It is a code management tool that contains many features that make it an excellent choice for remote development teams. It offers various features, perfect for both public and private projects.
3. Time Tracking – Time Doctor
A good time tracking tool provides remote developers the essence of transparency, structure, and productivity. It can also help companies coordinate tasks and ensure that developers reach the deadline.
Time tracking tools are also necessary if a remote team is working with a client. It allows the client to see the record time spent on tasks and use it during billing.
Time Doctor is one of the most delicate time-tracking collaboration tools for remote development teams. It helps remote teams track time spent on projects, tasks, and assignments. This tool helps increase productivity by monitoring how much time is spent on each task.
This time tracking tool also has a dashboard with charts and graphs that show how much time you’ve spent on different projects, tasks, and assignments over the past week or month.
Similarly, it helps with work-life balance as you can set up notifications to remind you when it’s time to take a break or if you’ve exceeded your allotted work hours for the day.
4. File Sharing Tool – Dropbox
File-sharing applications are one of the must-have collaboration tools for remote development teams. As its name suggests, it helps the remote unit actively share files from the comforts of their home. This tool is a big part of online document collaboration. It keeps the files organized and secured without the risk of data leaks.
Dropbox is a file hosting service that offers cloud storage. It operates through a personal account, free of charge, and allows users to upload up to 2 GB of data. Dropbox can also be accessed through the company’s website.
This file-sharing tool was developed into a collaboration tool for remote teams. It allows users to share large files with co-workers and work on documents together in real-time. One of the best features is that it synchronizes files across computers and mobile devices to always be up-to-date and available on any device with Internet access.
5. Communication Tools – Slack
In remote development, collaboration is vital. And as such, developers can’t collaborate if they don’t communicate. However, not all the time do teams need to be video conferencing. Some issues can be solved via messaging.
Slack has been a common choice for developers to communicate with their colleagues, superiors, and management. It is a free tool that offers instant messaging, voice and video chat, file sharing, and screen sharing. Here
6. Video Conferencing App – Zoom
Some issues faced by the development team need an in-depth discussion. Video conferencing tools help integrate those remote employees into the office environment, so both they and in-office employees feel better connected to share ideas.
Zoom is one of the most widespread videos conferencing tools for remote team collaboration. It has been around for a while, but it has recently gained popularity as the go-to tool for remote teams. Companies such as IBM, Cisco, Adobe, and NASA use this video conferencing tool to collaborate with their crews worldwide.
7. Digital whiteboard – InVision
A digital whiteboard allows remote workers to collaborate and contribute in meetings. It can help encourage developers to be creative, contributing ideas and concepts through text, audio, drawing, or graphs.
InVision is a digital whiteboard that allows designers and developers to create an app or website prototype. This tool can be used to collaborate remotely with team members. It can also save the prototype as a video, making it easy for team members to share their work.
8. Password Manager and Security – Lastpass
The remote development team needs to share credentials and passwords for tools and platforms in some circumstances. Too many times, workers store it in word files and spreadsheets to share them with everyone. It can make your credentials vulnerable to editing, deleting, and stealing.
Likewise, a password manager is one of the must-have collaboration tools for remote development teams. It allows teams to keep credentials in one secure space and access logins. Team leaders can have more control over who gets access to the credentials.
Our recommended password manager is LastPass, as it generates, stores, and remembers passwords for all your online accounts. It also offers two-factor authentication support to keep your account secure.
This tool is accessible as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. LastPass also has Android and iOS that can access passwords on the go.
9. Testing Environment – PHP Code Sniffer
The testing environment is where all the tests for your code are run and checks for errors in your code, and alerts you about them so that they can be fixed before they happen. This tool also shows you how your code will behave when it goes live so that you can make any changes before it actually goes live.
Our pick for the testing environment is PHP Code Sniffer. This open-source tool helps developers find and fix coding standards problems. It can be used on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux operating systems.
10. Pair Programming – Codingteam
Pair programming is a well-known collaboration technique in software engineering. It is a popular way for two programmers to develop code together. One person drives the keyboard, and the other offers suggestions or comments on what to do next.
The coding team is an AI-powered coding platform that enables developers to pair programs in real-time with their peers. It provides AI-powered code reviews, code analysis, and more than 20+ coding languages for developers to collaborate and share knowledge.
Conclusion
Now you discovered one of the best tools for a remote development team, appropriately disseminate it with your employees and managers. Remember, however, that making a remote setting work doesn’t wholly depend on the right tools. Company leaders must implement the best strategy using these tools requiring your developers to collaborate. And with that, you will indeed have a remote working team.
If you are looking for a dedicated team of remote developers, contact us now! We offer various IT and digital marketing services in Australia and New Zealand.