As we all know, our lives have changed dramatically in the last 2-3 months, depending on where you are located. Back in early January, when I was booking my flight from Austin, Texas to Dhaka Bangladesh, I had no idea or nor did I hear anything bout Covid19. The first time I heard about this was the day before I had to fly to Asia to meet with the HeavyTask team in Bangladesh.

Fast forward two months, our lives have changed forever. A lot of us may have lost family and loved ones; small to fortune 100 companies are all suffering due to this pandemic; we have never seen this type of downturn. For growing technology companies, there is no way we can afford to take a day off or slow down because of this pandemic.

HeavyTask LLC, located in Dallas, Texas, has been using the distributed workforce model since it’s inception, primarily due to the need to provide around the clock support to our clients and partners around the World. Over the years, we have managed to stay organized and delivered countless projects on time, working around various religious and government holidays. Because of the fact we have team members around the World, it gives us an advantage, and in the time of such a crisis, our transition has been quite smooth because of our existing distributed workforce model.

We are using the following tools daily to stay organized to deliver quality codes when they are shipped. 

We can break down the tools into three main categories : 

Project Management: For all software and product project Management, we are using Trello and Slack. As you may already know about the most popular project management tools, Trello and Slack allow us to stay agile and nimble and work quickly. 

Github and Gitlab: Depending on which one your organization is using, it is a ubiquitous platform for engineering team members. For all software projects, we utilize Github to collaborate with engineering team members. 

Communication: Without skype or GotoMeeting, running my organization would be almost impossible. Not only do we use Skype for internal communication, we also use it to speak to clients from all over the World. Skype groups are also an excellent way to create separate department chats for internal communication. 

Overall, thanks to all the tools that are available for both small and bigger size organizations today, smaller organizations and startups can stay sync and work seamlessly with team members from around the World. In the past, only large fortune 500 companies had the tools necessary to run effectively around the clock. Fast forward to the present day, most of the tools mentioned above have some version for free of charge. I hope we recover quickly from this global epidemic; everyone, please stay home, stay safe, and let’s find ways to stay productive!