Ask HN: Best Tool for Sharing Developer Notes, Processes, etc

7 points by skenflow 13 years ago | 6 comments

We are a small startup that has added 3 developers in the past 6 months. Life is still good. Developers have a lot of autonomy, and we are still sharing most of views, thoughts, processes by email, IM, phone or in-person. However, the transitory nature of those communication channels is beginning to cause a problem.

What tools are startups using to share persistent information between developers?

We have tried using basecamp but everything gets buried in messages. The important stuff does seem to bubble up to the surface.

We tried dropbox and google docs but there is no separation between personal and startup. Plus its a mess.

We thought about standing up a wiki but I'm not very enthusiastic. It seems like creating technical documentation.

The best option I have found is crowdbase but I thought I should search HN to see if it has been discussed previously. I couldn't find anything which has triggered me to ask, what are other startups doing?

devonbarrett 13 years ago |

I like teambox http://teambox.com/

It gives you the formality of setting tasks and road-mapping a project.

And then for when you quickly want to throw ideas around there is a group IM which is quite neat.

Plus it will be free for the three of you.

miga 13 years ago |

As soon as you try to make communication permanent it seems to become documentation. Even if just for yourself. Best developers make it read like a book, so you may just ask them to be brief and make wiki consistent.

epikur 13 years ago |

Have you looked at Redmine? It includes a wiki, as well as 'projects', issue tracking, and email notifications for stuff.

http://www.redmine.org/

harikrishnan83 13 years ago |

Have you tried Asana? http://asana.com/

orangethirty 13 years ago |

I use trello. Works fine.

lauken 13 years ago | |

Interesting suggestion. I've never thought of trello as an platform for sharing but more as a task manager.

Thanks, I'll take a look at it.