Productivity software for a research group
November 18, 2022 2:31 PM Subscribe
I work doing field research in a group with three grad students, another tech, and a PI. The grad students are based at a different location from the rest of us and we have enough going on during the growing season that meeting synchronously is hard. We need productivity software to share information. We have around ten projects at a time.
PI would also like task tracking so that they can see who is in charge of what, what the deadline is, and task status (started, completed, etc.) Ideally, these would be the same system. Things we've tried inside. What is our ideal free/cheap solution?
Tools we use(d):
Zoom - we have weekly zoom meetings scheduled, but they often get cancelled or people have conflicts, sometimes at the last minute. Usual format is going through each project and updating status. People sometimes take these on their cell phones while they’re walking somewhere or in their cars. If someone has a partial conflict, they go first and leave, if someone needs extra time they stay in the call with just PI. Sometimes these are 15 minutes, sometimes an hour. We still need some way to handle communication between meetings and track experimental details.
Box - we have a shared Box drive that holds our data, plot maps, etc. I’m the only one who saves stuff like drafts of papers and presentations there. Box Notes was woefully inadequate when we used it a couple years ago.
Gantt chart - We drafted one of these in Excel at the start of the year, and it was really handy to me and PI to see what our approximate schedule was / when we could take vacations. I updated it every few weeks throughout the season as things changed (projects added/canceled, weather causing things to happen later or earlier).
Text - we text each other, but some folks are working early/late/weekends and that’s disruptive and things aren’t organized by project. Not usable on desktop.
Slack - used for information sharing this year to collect notes about experimental methods, photos of plant diseases, etc. on one channel per project, and it was handy. Unfortunately, it now costs per user to see messages older than 90 days and the downloaded archives are hard to browse. Being able to set when you get notifications is a great feature.
Potential future tools:
GChat - everyone has a Google account through our employer, so I’m looking at this to replace Slack. Some of us have multiple google accounts, which is a potential but manageable problem. I don’t think it has adequate task management, but it’s hard to tell. PI uses Outlook for calendar so something that plays more nicely with that would be nice.
Teams - we have MS Teams through our employer, but nobody uses it and it’s intrusive. Sometimes we get added to groups we don’t care about and get excessive notifications from them. Not sure what the mobile interface is like.
Kanban boards - PI suggested Kanbanflow, I have an existing personal Trello account. This would be excellent for task tracking and the right solution might just be this + GChat. But it requires getting everyone to use this AND an information-sharing platform.
So, what is our ideal free or cheap team-on-the-same-page solution?
Tools we use(d):
Zoom - we have weekly zoom meetings scheduled, but they often get cancelled or people have conflicts, sometimes at the last minute. Usual format is going through each project and updating status. People sometimes take these on their cell phones while they’re walking somewhere or in their cars. If someone has a partial conflict, they go first and leave, if someone needs extra time they stay in the call with just PI. Sometimes these are 15 minutes, sometimes an hour. We still need some way to handle communication between meetings and track experimental details.
Box - we have a shared Box drive that holds our data, plot maps, etc. I’m the only one who saves stuff like drafts of papers and presentations there. Box Notes was woefully inadequate when we used it a couple years ago.
Gantt chart - We drafted one of these in Excel at the start of the year, and it was really handy to me and PI to see what our approximate schedule was / when we could take vacations. I updated it every few weeks throughout the season as things changed (projects added/canceled, weather causing things to happen later or earlier).
Text - we text each other, but some folks are working early/late/weekends and that’s disruptive and things aren’t organized by project. Not usable on desktop.
Slack - used for information sharing this year to collect notes about experimental methods, photos of plant diseases, etc. on one channel per project, and it was handy. Unfortunately, it now costs per user to see messages older than 90 days and the downloaded archives are hard to browse. Being able to set when you get notifications is a great feature.
Potential future tools:
GChat - everyone has a Google account through our employer, so I’m looking at this to replace Slack. Some of us have multiple google accounts, which is a potential but manageable problem. I don’t think it has adequate task management, but it’s hard to tell. PI uses Outlook for calendar so something that plays more nicely with that would be nice.
Teams - we have MS Teams through our employer, but nobody uses it and it’s intrusive. Sometimes we get added to groups we don’t care about and get excessive notifications from them. Not sure what the mobile interface is like.
Kanban boards - PI suggested Kanbanflow, I have an existing personal Trello account. This would be excellent for task tracking and the right solution might just be this + GChat. But it requires getting everyone to use this AND an information-sharing platform.
So, what is our ideal free or cheap team-on-the-same-page solution?
Response by poster: I guess my summary question is: is there anything that does basically-Slack and basically-Kanban in the same platform?
Right now our solution is going to be GChat + Kanbanflow, but if we only have to get people to use one app, that's easier and more resistant to breaking. Anything you can't easily use on your phone is overkill.
posted by momus_window at 3:49 PM on November 18, 2022
Right now our solution is going to be GChat + Kanbanflow, but if we only have to get people to use one app, that's easier and more resistant to breaking. Anything you can't easily use on your phone is overkill.
posted by momus_window at 3:49 PM on November 18, 2022
I’ve been in a Google Classroom for a year which has been okay with a lot of outdoorsy work (deffo usable on smartphones, though crowded). I don’t think the teacher-role is much into fancy computer stuff, it’s possible there were things not ever set up.
Looks like Google can put a Gantt chart in a browser, with a bit of set up.
posted by clew at 4:27 PM on November 18, 2022
Looks like Google can put a Gantt chart in a browser, with a bit of set up.
posted by clew at 4:27 PM on November 18, 2022
You want Asana.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 4:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 4:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
I hate to say it, but it's amazing (depressing?) how many projects I've seen tracked via Excel (in the old days) and Google Sheets (in the new days). Complicated projects, consisting of hundreds/thousands of moving pieces, created by teams of dozens of people, with multiple steps requiring notes and approval for each moving piece.
It sucks in every way. However, it sucks in exactly the way you want it to suck, since it's basically a blank slate that you can do whatever you want to with. I know a guy who has spent the past 20 years writing one piece of project management software after another, and he always says that his real competition is a spreadsheet.
You have to have a person with a strong vision of the desired process - a project manager - dedicated to designing and controlling the spreadsheet.
This is a bad suggestion.
posted by clawsoon at 7:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
It sucks in every way. However, it sucks in exactly the way you want it to suck, since it's basically a blank slate that you can do whatever you want to with. I know a guy who has spent the past 20 years writing one piece of project management software after another, and he always says that his real competition is a spreadsheet.
You have to have a person with a strong vision of the desired process - a project manager - dedicated to designing and controlling the spreadsheet.
This is a bad suggestion.
posted by clawsoon at 7:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yes, Asana. Jira takes a fair amount of setup but will accomplish same. Get a plug-in for Slack so you get notifications about issues you’re watching.
posted by supercres at 10:23 PM on November 18, 2022
posted by supercres at 10:23 PM on November 18, 2022
If your employer is an academic (or larger) institution, it might already pay for a subscription to a project management platform. It's probably worth an investigation for free/ reduced cost options.
Like I know there's a lot of hate out there for Microsoft Teams, but IMHO the hate is mostly unjustified*. Microsoft Teams is a perfectly serviceable approach to do most of what you need... for the low low price of already paid for. (With the bonus that of additional support / security that comes from being a paying customer). It can integrate with Box and other apps much like Slack does. It can replace Zoom for team meetings (provided that your administrator has enabled a dial in numbers, or people don't need to dial in with a phone number). In my experience Teams works fine on a mobile device. It's possible to mute notifications.
Is the paid Slack option "better" than (already paid for) Teams? Possibly. But I do think paid Teams is a strong contender over the free version of Slack. And in Microsoft's credit, it tends to kill apps less frequently than Google. (IIRC in the past few years there's been Google Meet, Google Chat, and Google Hangouts...)
*with the caveat that historically it's been a bit of a resource hog, so it didn't seem to always play nicely with lower spec machines. I think it's better now (or maybe people just complain about these things less) now that Microsoft has been focusing on getting Teams in the K-12 education market.
There is also something to be said for not using Google when Google is often tied to personal email accounts.
posted by oceano at 12:41 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Like I know there's a lot of hate out there for Microsoft Teams, but IMHO the hate is mostly unjustified*. Microsoft Teams is a perfectly serviceable approach to do most of what you need... for the low low price of already paid for. (With the bonus that of additional support / security that comes from being a paying customer). It can integrate with Box and other apps much like Slack does. It can replace Zoom for team meetings (provided that your administrator has enabled a dial in numbers, or people don't need to dial in with a phone number). In my experience Teams works fine on a mobile device. It's possible to mute notifications.
Is the paid Slack option "better" than (already paid for) Teams? Possibly. But I do think paid Teams is a strong contender over the free version of Slack. And in Microsoft's credit, it tends to kill apps less frequently than Google. (IIRC in the past few years there's been Google Meet, Google Chat, and Google Hangouts...)
*with the caveat that historically it's been a bit of a resource hog, so it didn't seem to always play nicely with lower spec machines. I think it's better now (or maybe people just complain about these things less) now that Microsoft has been focusing on getting Teams in the K-12 education market.
There is also something to be said for not using Google when Google is often tied to personal email accounts.
posted by oceano at 12:41 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm a project manager working in higher education and I came here to suggest Microsoft Teams as well - it will do task tracking, document management, work on the phone...
but above all, you need a good process first and then sort out the tools.
posted by coffee_monster at 4:03 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
but above all, you need a good process first and then sort out the tools.
posted by coffee_monster at 4:03 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
It sounds like your problem is less your tools, but the lack of someone actively responsible for and managing project processes, someone who can say "No. That's a cool tool, but we don't use it. You will use tool X."
A number of tools integrate with others, and even Zoom has a Kanban option in its Whiteboards now. You could use a Jamboard to create a Kanban view, although I'm not certain about how you'd integrate it. A number of people suggest using Google Tables for Kanban functionality and it can integrate with Sheets as the data source.
My very personal opinion is that saying that Teams is your solution is a bit like saying that you should use the internet and all your problems will be solved. Teams is "sharepoint with a fancy front-end, plus chat" but like many tools it's very extensible and flexible, so it's not a solution per se. You have to make decisions and lay down the law on how it will be used. Just as an example, there are multiple Kanban-type options in Teams/Office365 I think, and lots of integration options.
Again, speaking personally, I think of Teams as a slightly crappier Google Workspace. You could do all you wish in Google Workspace, if you all get on the same page about how things will be done. It might be helpful to know that there's a new timeline/Gantt view recently released for Google Sheets. I've also seen this suggested as an alternative to Google Tables. More and more, just typing "@" in a Google document or sheet is enlightening.
It sounds on the face of it like you don't even have shared calendaring / access to each other's calendars, but again, if your PI isn't laying down the law on attending weekly meetings, then people will defer and schedule other things. Your meetings need to be worth attending, I guess, so having an agenda will help.
I've spent chunks of my career looking for the ideal tool and hoping it will solve my process problems, and most of the time, it's not about the tool, but about people using whatever you choose in consistent ways. Broadly speaking, I would suggest avoiding complexity, and having a single definitive starting point for each project.
posted by idb at 7:34 AM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
A number of tools integrate with others, and even Zoom has a Kanban option in its Whiteboards now. You could use a Jamboard to create a Kanban view, although I'm not certain about how you'd integrate it. A number of people suggest using Google Tables for Kanban functionality and it can integrate with Sheets as the data source.
My very personal opinion is that saying that Teams is your solution is a bit like saying that you should use the internet and all your problems will be solved. Teams is "sharepoint with a fancy front-end, plus chat" but like many tools it's very extensible and flexible, so it's not a solution per se. You have to make decisions and lay down the law on how it will be used. Just as an example, there are multiple Kanban-type options in Teams/Office365 I think, and lots of integration options.
Again, speaking personally, I think of Teams as a slightly crappier Google Workspace. You could do all you wish in Google Workspace, if you all get on the same page about how things will be done. It might be helpful to know that there's a new timeline/Gantt view recently released for Google Sheets. I've also seen this suggested as an alternative to Google Tables. More and more, just typing "@" in a Google document or sheet is enlightening.
It sounds on the face of it like you don't even have shared calendaring / access to each other's calendars, but again, if your PI isn't laying down the law on attending weekly meetings, then people will defer and schedule other things. Your meetings need to be worth attending, I guess, so having an agenda will help.
I've spent chunks of my career looking for the ideal tool and hoping it will solve my process problems, and most of the time, it's not about the tool, but about people using whatever you choose in consistent ways. Broadly speaking, I would suggest avoiding complexity, and having a single definitive starting point for each project.
posted by idb at 7:34 AM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'll emphasis idb's comments...almost any of the tools out there can do what you want...the problem is not technology. It is culture. You need to train/encourage/model the app behavior that you want. Good, small teams can often organically build a way of working that is efficient. Larger, dispersed and more green teams often don't. People end up using the tools in vastly different ways and not towards the organization's common goal. Which then leads people hunting and searching for the next silver bullet to attempt to solve your problem.
posted by mmascolino at 8:37 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mmascolino at 8:37 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mattermost provides both discussion channels and Kanban boards.
posted by ContinuousWave at 2:51 PM on November 19, 2022
posted by ContinuousWave at 2:51 PM on November 19, 2022
Response by poster: GChat and KanbanFlow it is! (We all have work Google emails, and the switching between profiles on Google apps has gotten much better.)
Oh believe me, I know that the real issue is culture. This is not the first research group for which I have posted an Ask about getting people to adequately use technology. Academia is fun! I did start to set up several of the suggestions in the answers, thank you!, but they all had issues for one reason or another.
posted by momus_window at 1:02 PM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh believe me, I know that the real issue is culture. This is not the first research group for which I have posted an Ask about getting people to adequately use technology. Academia is fun! I did start to set up several of the suggestions in the answers, thank you!, but they all had issues for one reason or another.
posted by momus_window at 1:02 PM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
trello could be a good fit for this. you might squeeze into the free plan if you can express your needs in at most 10 boards.
nearly every commercial software project i have worked on used jira for tracking tasks, features, issues, bugs -- jira also has a free cloud-hosted option for up to 10 users. many people love to complain about jira, but it does let you map out relationships between sub tasks and dependencies and so on, for complex long-lived projects with many moving parts and multiple people involved. maybe over-complicated for your needs, but depends how complex your projects are!
the choice of tool matters less than getting everyone to use the same tool and encode somewhat accurate information into it, so you can communicate async by reading and writing updates on ticket/cards, and changing their status
posted by are-coral-made at 3:12 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]