Communicate Openly: managing project development with available and open-source tools Marliese Thomas * Auburn University Libraries Email PROS - Good for small groups of people - Great for internal communications, like meeting agendas - Everyone has email CONS - Can quickly fill your email inbox - Difficult for collaboratively working on documents Listserv ([email protected]) keeps everyone in the loop easily Blogs, Wikis, & Google Docs PROS - Great for document editing by multiple people - Relatively easy to set up and manage - no special expertise (unless it’s on the Intranet) - Creates a historical record of the project - It’s free! (usually) CONS - Must create an account to create these things - Can be limiting in your choice of format, document types Redmine: an open-source tracking system PROS - One location for receiving technical bugs, enhancement requests - Tickets can be assigned to multiple people - Documents related to the project can be uploaded and saved in one place - Reporting a problem is as easy as sending an email - Updating a ticket is as easy as replying to the email report - Users can be assigned different administrative levels * Allowed us to seamlessly transfer project administration as we went from development to maintenance mode. CONS - It’s open-source, so some technical expertise and hardware is required - We haven’t figured out a way to keep spam from generating a ticket Original image by knezeves: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8729549@N08/528199341/