This article is an adaptation of the work of Ophir Chacon “8 top must-use tools to boost your web development workflow” . It is primarily intended for those who are planning to create a tech startup and are thinking about what tools for collaboration and process improvement are best to use, taking into account the modest financial capabilities of most “startups.”
Before implementing software products or even choosing a cloud service provider, we as developers need to understand which tools are best to use in our daily workflow. These applications can either dramatically increase productivity, make a web development project extremely difficult to maintain, or require more team members. The process of growth of developers from Junior to Senior is also influenced by the ease of adaptation of a specialist to new tools. In this article, I will talk about a set of tools that most Junior developers use every day to manage, analyze and support their products. You may already be familiar with some of them, but my goal is not only to introduce them to you, but also to tell you how best to use them and combine them with each other for a more productive result. Before I start listing the tools and talking about them in more detail, the most important software is the operating system you use.
Slack
What is it used for?
Slack is a platform for communication within a team. Despite the initial goal of completely replacing email, which in my opinion was not achieved, Slack has many other features. Even if you're currently working on your own, consider this: Slack can be a great tool for solo work, too. Slack is a convenient way of communication within a team that has spread throughout the IT environment, allowing you to stay informed about events, achieve goals and solve problems, schedule meetings and even order food. Instead of having one general chat for the whole team, Slack gives us channels. These are separate chat rooms where you can discuss various aspects of your company: ventures and projects, development, sales, PPC campaigns, UI\UX and much more. Slack provides opportunities for full communication with your team members: emoticons, inserting pictures and videos from YouTube and, of course, integration options with other services. Integration capabilities allow you to connect third-party tools to your Slack group. You can either install publicly available tools from Slack's marketplace, or use the Slack API to develop your own and use them within your group. Slack integration capabilities allow you to schedule meetings with your team members by sending them a message, set repeat reminders, receive notifications when a new user registers or subscribes, order food delivery, react emotionally to certain messages, and so on. Slack's search engine is reliable. Every message is indexed, so it's very easy to retrieve what was said in any channel.
Who is it for?
Of course, Slack is for teams. But as a developer working solo on a side project, I encourage you to open your own group and take advantage of everything Slack has to offer. You can increase your productivity by setting alerts and scheduling meetings in Slack instead of using different browser apps.
Best practics
Explore the best integrations that Slack offers and use them in your group;
develop your own integrations using the open access libraries found in the Slack API. You can receive notifications about new subscribers and always be aware of all the team's affairs. Slack helps you build a great company culture;
Learn the Slack keyboard shortcut to increase your productivity;
Explore BitBucket integration for Slack to notify a specific channel to encourage productivity in a particular area;
learn about the capabilities of the All-in-one messenger tools for more effective use of Slack on your computer.
Price policy
Slack's pricing model offers a free plan that's great for small teams, with the ability to search and access your last 10,000 messages (once you subscribe, all your messages will be available to you). For Standard and Plus plans, you pay for team members and get more integrations, features, responsive support, and more.
Advice for advanced users
Slack is used not only in closed groups, but also in open communities. There are thousands of Slack communities you can join (most of them free) to discuss product, design, development, and more with people all over the world. One of the directories with a list of Slack communities is Slack List. Slack link
TRELLO
What is it used for?
Trello is a simple yet great task (or project) management tool. Trello can be used to manage processes and tasks, for marketing projects, blogs, online businesses and more. Trello's user interface is very simple and minimalist, but has everything you need to manage a project with up to 10 team members - task tagging, attachments, task assignment and scheduling.
Who is it for?
For a freelance developer running a project, Trello can be a great way to manage your tasks and workflow. Once you've added up to 10 new team members, Trello gives you everything you need to manage your project productively. Please note that Trello may not be suitable for projects with more than 10 team members.
Best practics
use boards for different projects within the team. You can open boards for marketing, back-end and front-end and other areas;
use different color splashes for each board for more convenient and quick recognition;
leave the left menu open for faster navigation;
assign tasks (tasks) to team members or view them yourself by dragging a profile photo from the right menu to a specific task;
When starting a project, define your own shortcuts. To do this, open the task and click on labels. Here you can title your labels so you can tag your tasks later;
Use different columns to list the different parts of your system, or for To do, Doing, Done lists.
Price policy
All the core features that Trello provides are free. For integration with other services, greater security and support, check out the Business and Enterprise plans . Although, in my opinion, as you expand the scope of your projects, you may want to resort to other ways of dealing with task management issues.
Redash is a great open source tool that allows you to visualize your data in thematic dashboards. Redash provides the team with all the capabilities to query, visualize, and share data. It can connect to all the most popular databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch and many more. With Redash, you can create visualizations to track key events and keep your team up to date on what's happening with your project. You can also create alerts that will notify you of important changes in a timely manner.
Who is it for?
Once you have implemented your software product and started collecting information into a database, you should consider using Redash. The application will help you track potential problems, progress towards achieving results, obtain information from the database and much more
Best practics
integrate Redash daily metrics with Slack. In this case, the entire team will receive automatic notifications in Slack every day.
Pricing model
Redash is distributed under the Open Source model, which means you can take its code and deploy it completely free of charge. But if you want to get Redash with special hosting and a number of advantageous features, then use one of the paid plans .
Advice for advanced users
Once you realize that something is missing in Redash, implement it and contribute to the public repository on Github . Link to Redash
ZAPIER
What is it used for?
This service allows users to integrate the web applications they use. How many times have you said to yourself: If you could send Facebook ads to Google spreadsheets, that would be great! And then, a few minutes later, you're struggling with the API, trying to integrate... Zapier is a great tool to learn about for this very reason. It teaches developers that we shouldn't try to launch and implement every integration we want for the company. Not only this, but also the fact that the less code in our system and the less in-house development, the better. Zapier moves information between web apps automatically, connecting over 750 apps. IT allows you to create automated processes and workflows with a single click on a button for the rest of your life. With Zapier, you can, for example, send every question from BitBucket to Slack with a two-minute integration setup, or create a Trello card from a Google Form.
Who is it for?
As developers, we deal with APIs every day. I encourage you to check out what Zapier offers before writing your own integration plugin. This can save you a lot of time. If you run your own company, start using Zapier as early as possible to avoid unnecessary development projects, bugs, and technical glitches.
Zapier offers a permanent free version, limited to two-step Zap flows and integrations. This is quite enough to get acquainted with the tool. Once you understand the real benefits of Zapier, you can consider one of the paid versions with no limit on the Zap streams you can automate.
Advice for advanced users
Work with Google Sheets as much as possible. This will make your life easier. Link to Zapier
DRAW.IO
What is it used for
Draw.io is a great tool for creating prototypes, wireframes, and architectural design. Its range of uses is very wide thanks to its huge collection of templates, while the main purpose of using Draw.io is to design processes, systems and views before interacting with code (or Photoshop). Draw.io is an add-on to Google Drive, so it provides all the sharing and interaction features that Google Drive has. For example, you can easily collaborate with additional team members when designing server architecture. Draw.io offers a variety of elements that are easy to incorporate into your sketches. You can easily move from charts to Android, Bootstrap or iOS screens.
Who is it for?
Draw.io is one of the best sketching tools I know of, and it's completely free. I recommend you use it in your next project during the design stage.
Most of us use more than one way to communicate with colleagues, friends or family. Typically, each communication channel such as WhatsApp, Slack or Facebook Messenger has a separate web application, making it relatively difficult to stay on top of everything. All-in-One Messenger is a great Google app that brings all your communication channels into one place. It allows you to open a new separate tab for each communication channel and supports all popular applications. They look and work just like normal and are therefore easy to operate.
Who is this for?
All-in-one messenger is suitable for everyone who works with more than one communication channel every day - from independent developers to companies.
Features of use
You can add multiple tabs for one communication channel. For example, if you're in multiple Slack groups, you can open a separate tab for each group and rename it accordingly.
Price policy
All-in-one Messenger is free.
Advice for advanced users
If you want to work more efficiently (and you probably do, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this post), then do yourself a favor and turn off notifications in the settings tab. Link to All-in-one Messenger
BitBucket
What is it used for?
BitBucket is a distributed version control system that makes it easy to collaborate with your team. BitBucket is owned by Atlassian, which also owns Jira, HipChat, and the aforementioned Trello, which are also great products for developers. The main important difference between BitBucket and Github is the availability of free closed repositories for up to five users. BitBucket's interface is very nice and easy to use, and the integration options that BitBucket offers are very useful.
Who is it for?
For development teams, the benefits of version control are obvious (I hope). As a self-employed developer, I recommend using BitBucket as a version control system to manage code versions, deploy applications to production, and integrate with third-party code review tools.
Best practics
Use the BitBucket&Slack integration to send notifications directly to your development channel within the Slack group.
Price policy
As mentioned above, BitBucket offers free, private code repositories for 5 employees or less. Once you decide to expand your team, you should upgrade your subscription and pay monthly for the new user. BitBucket Link
POSTMAN
What is it used for?
Postman is a Chrome app that easily allows you to send HTTP requests to both local and global servers with any parameters, headers, and authentication settings you need. Postman, unlike other tools, has a nice graphical user interface (GUI) for defining your HTTP request and parsing the response.
Who is it for?
From independent developers who create and test their own APIs, to companies that require team collaboration and sharing.
Best practics
Keep Postman open while building web applications and you'll see how useful it is in practice.
Price policy
If you are an independent developer working on your own project, then the permanent free Postman plan will provide you with everything you need to get started. For team collaboration and advanced features, explore paid plans . Link to Postman
conclusions
To make your web development workflows more efficient, it's imperative to create productive habits and tailor them to your needs. For your own effectiveness, as well as that of your future team, try using different tools and see what works for you.
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