Productivity Tools
At Catalpa, we make use of a number of tools that help us stay organised and connected.
Google Drive
Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service that allows users to store files on their servers, synchronize files across devices, and share files. Google Drive encompasses Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, which permit collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. Files created and edited through the office suite are saved in Google Drive.
Used by everyone at Catalpa, including some external partners.
Slack
Slack is a business communication platform that offers features such as persistent chat rooms (channels) organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging. It is the most active communication tool used at Catalpa.
To better understand their purpose, channels often have common prefixes:
#pm_to handle project management. Ex:#pm_canoe#code_for engineering talk. Ex:#code_canoe#shared_for channels involving external partners. Ex:#shared_ openly
For more information on how to use Slack at Catalpa, check our Guide to Slack.
Used by everyone at Catalpa, including some external partners.
Trello
Trello is a web-based Kanban-style list-making application. It allows users to keep boards that hold cards representing tasks and that are organized in different columns. Each column typically represents a state which tasks have to go through, namely "To Do", "In Progress", and "Done".
By allowing tasks to be visual and easily accessed by other team members, Trello boards are helpful to keep projects organized. Some useful features are: card labeling, user assignment, and the ability to define deadline dates.
More advanced uses of Trello can include extra columns that contain additional, quickly-accessible information to help keep team members on track.
Mostly used by program management, to help organize activities for the duration of a program.
Github
GitHub provides hosting for software development and version control using a system called git. It offers the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git, plus its own features. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, and wikis for every project.
Github Project Boards
We levearage this particular feature of Github to keep our engineering in sync with people external to engineering. Read more about Project Boards on the Agile Project Management section.
Mostly used by engineers but also design and product staff.
InVision
Invision is an online tool for design collaboration. It integrates well with our other tools like Sketch and provides a place to share, comment, and collaborate on high fidelity mock-ups of products and features.
Mostly used by designers but also product staff and engineers.
Each project can have one or multiple private or shared drives, depending on who we need to share documents with.
COORDINATION
Sometimes, it's important to get the whole team together to share information. Here's how we do it.
All Hands Stand-up
We're interested in what others are developing and it's nice to hear their voices, telling everyone what's new on their field. This is why we meet every Monday morning (Timor-Leste), making sure everyone is given access to the latest news. What was once a standing event in Dili, has now become an online event with people connecting for a number of different countries.
For future reference, and for those who can't join, notes are taken and stored in Catalpa's Drive.
If you're taking notes, use this template
TEMPLATES
We leverage Google Docs to easily create and share documents that other can contribute to. To help keeping a standard, we add a template to Docs everytime we see there is a need to use it recurrently. Templates can be found on this page.
Support & Maintenance (internal use)
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