5 best apps for engineering collaboration solutions

Find out how to open the line for team members to communicate, share knowledge, give updates and more using the following tools.

Find effective collaboration solutions with these engineering tools

According to a recent Slack study on workplace collaboration, it’s important that everyone on the team can communicate openly and honestly, know their responsibilities and enjoy mutual trust of one another. What’s more, having processes for healthy collaboration in place make workers happier. These tools can help you achieve that goal.

1. GitHub

GitHub is an essential development platform for project collaboration and team management. For instance, GitHub makes it easy to get up-to-date information on various projects by subscribing to certain activity hubs. Various security and access controls also allow for reliability and protection throughout projects.

安装

Install GitHub on Slack

• Get updates about what’s happening on GitHub—without leaving Slack
• Give your team more information in Slack when you share links to GitHub activities and properties
• Use Slack slash commands for common GitHub actions like closing or reopening an issue or pull request

注意：有些集成仅提供英文版本

2. Jira Cloud

Jira is a valuable tool for managing projects and tracking issues and bugs. It’s not only a great collaboration solution for engineering teams, but also for cross-functional projects and requests.

With Jira Cloud, you can get regular notifications on tasks, stories and requests, including the status, issue type, priority and assignee. You can also filter which updates get shared to which roadmap by project, issue type and more, giving you the power to customize your collaboration to improve efficiency.

安装

Install Jira Cloud on Slack

• Receive customizable notifications from Jira Cloud to you and your Slack channels
• Connect a project to a Slack channel and automatically preview Jira issues when they're mentioned
• Attach messages to Jira Cloud issues for easy collaboration

注意：有些集成仅提供英文版本

3. Stack Overflow for Teams

Knowledge sharing is critical to a collaborative and productive team, and can often lead to the best collaboration solutions. After all, every team member has unique experiences, knowledge and opinions they can share. The Stack Overflow community of developers, engineers and technology specialists can help your team members get the answers they need in a pinch through a searchable knowledge repository.

安装

Install Stack Overflow on Slack

• Stay up to date with customized Stack Overflow notifications pushed directly to your Slack channel
• Search for answers to your team’s questions right in Slack
• Team members can start new questions directly from Slack

注意：有些集成仅提供英文版本

4. Backlog

If your team prefers Backlog over Jira, the Backlog application allows you to get notifications in real time when team members update issues. For example, when a team member creates a new issue, the app will provide key details, including the issue type, priority, assignee, category and due date.

Backlog provides a way for the whole team to be on the same page about project management, bug tracking, version control and more.

安装

Install Backlog on Slack

• Backlog is an online project management tool that helps teams collaborate on high-quality software and web projects directly in Slack
• Backlog provides everything you need for an effective development workflow, including bug tracking, task management, and version control

注意：有些集成仅提供英文版本

5. Stand-Bot

Daily stand-up meetings are important for collaboration, accountability and support. But if everyone’s working on different projects and issues, or part of your team is remote, it’s not always easy to get everyone together in the same room or even on a video call.

With Stand-Bot, you can run a stand-up meeting asynchronously. The bot will direct message everyone at the same time, every day to have them report their status on assigned Jira issues. Team members can also share a daily report of what they’re planning to work on and whether they have any blockers keeping them from completing their tasks.

Stand-Bot will then report back to the team, sharing specific blockers and providing a link so that team members can review the full report from each person. If you’re looking for a way to make your daily huddles more efficient, Stand-Bot can help you do it.

安装

Install Stand-Bot on Slack

• Run daily asynchronous standup meetings directly in Slack
• Improve your team's performance by having every member send updates on what they have been doing and report blockers
• Review past standup reports in Slack so you can check your team’s progress

注意：有些集成仅提供英文版本

Don’t rely solely on apps for collaboration solutions

Working together as a team is not only important to making better decisions but also to keeping projects running smoothly and preventing issues from falling through the cracks. While these tools can help your team create a culture of collaboration, it’s important to have processes in place to encourage knowledge sharing, constructive feedback and open communication.

For example, have regular team off-sites or activities that allow team members to get to know one another personally and establish deeper trust. Also, consider using feedback applications and tools to learn more about the individual needs of your people and how you can best support them, as well as how they can support each other.

Finally, make sure to include your remote employees in important conversations and updates. It can be easy to have quick, important discussions at the office and forget to notify team members who aren’t there. Implementing collaboration solutions and establishing good processes will take time, but it can make a big difference in improving productivity and team cohesion.