Videoconferencing

  • AnyMeeting Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • BlueJeans Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes. Reputation for good audio quality.
  • ClickMeeting Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • GoToMeeting Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • JoinMe Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Microsoft Teams Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes, with Microsoft 365.
  • Ring Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • WebEx Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Zoho Individual free: Unclear. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Zoom Individual free: Yes, limit 40 minutes per call. Paid plans: Yes.

Virtual Office

Group Chat / Messaging

  • Azendoo Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Bitrix24 Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Chanty Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Chatter (SalesForce) Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Cisco Spark - see WebEx
  • Fleep Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Fuze Individual free: Unclear. Paid plans: Unclear.
  • Google Hangouts Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: No.
  • Hive Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Jostle Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Rocket Chat Community free: Yes, but you must self-host. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Ryver Individual free: No. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Samepage Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Skype Individual free: Unclear. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Slack Free plan: Limited space and messages. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Yammer Now part of Microsoft 365. Pricing is unclear based on website.

Collaborative Document Editing

  • EtherPad Plain text files only.
  • Google Docs Document formats: docx, odt, rtf, pdf, txt, html, epub. Spreadsheet formats: xslx, ods, pdf, html, csv, tsv. Presentation formats: pptx, odp, pdf, export jpg, png, svg.
  • Microsoft Teams Word, Excel, PowerPoint; with additional license, Visio.
  • ThinkFree Office Documents, spreadsheets, presentations. Whimsical website design but little concrete information.
  • Zoho Documents, spreadsheets, presentations. Supported formats unclear based on the website.

File Sharing

Shared Calendar

If your organization uses a scheduling application such as Microsoft Outlook, the application probably has a shared calendar feature you can use for distributed/remote work.

Remote Retrospective Tools

You can also use any collaborative whiteboarding, task board, brainstorming/mindmapping or similar tools to support remote retrospectives.

Collaborative Whiteboarding / Drawing

Collaborative Diagramming

Shared Mindmap

  • Miro Templates for: Kanban board, mindmap, user story map, customer journey map, retrospective, product roadmap, flowchart, and roll-your-own
  • Mural many templates
  • Samepage Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Stormboard

Shared Task Board / Kanban Board / Card Wall

  • Miro Templates for: Kanban board, mindmap, user story map, customer journey map, retrospective, product roadmap, flowchart, and roll-your-own
  • Samepage Individual free: Yes. Paid plans: Yes.
  • Trello Simple columnar "card" layout.

Group Decision-Making

Issue Tracking

Also see product reviews on Capterra.

  • Freshdesk
  • Github If your team's code base is managed on Github, you can use Github's issue tracking feature
  • Gitlab If your team's code base is managed on Gitlab, you can use Gitlab's issue tracking feature
  • Jira Used in many companies; probably has largest marketshare, so is familiar to many people
  • Solar Winds Service Desk
  • Team Support
  • YouTrack JetBrains issue tracker

Timekeeping

Distributed Pair Programming Support

Remote pair programming benefits from seamless realtime collaboration on the same desktop. There are two ways to achieve this: (a) Full-access remote desktop tools, or (b) remote collaborative programming features of software development tools. Remote desktop tools are designed to support remote technical support and system administration, so they provide the other person unrestricted access to your system. Use these tools only with partners you trust.

You can also use a videoconferencing tool with screen sharing capability in conjunction with a procedure to commit changes and switch who is sharing, to allow each person to type. However, only one person at a time owns the keyboard and mouse.

Remote desktop tools

  • Microsoft Remote Access For Windows access to other Windows systems.
  • Use Together Cross-platform (Mac/Windows) real-time simultaneous control for up to 4 participants. Free license limited to 30 minutes per day, paid licenses and on-premise version available for corporate use.

Collaboration features of development tools

LiveShare is a low-bandwidth option for up to 30 participants. It is not screen-sharing, and has many limitations. eg. Intellisense does not work for guest participants. Very limited ability to share a terminal session and debugging session. Sessions work across IDEs and platforms (Mac / Windows / VSCode / Visual Studio).

Distributed Mob Programming Support

When following a strict style of Mob Programming changeovers, the use of a videoconferencing tool for screen sharing and a common version control system usually provide a good developer experience. You can also use the same tooling as for pair programming.

  • Mob Mob Programming changeover tool - handles push to mob programming branch and changeover to new Driver; requires Golang installed; works with Zoom screen sharing
  • Mobster Timer for Mob Programming sessions

Team Member Recognition