TargetProcess and BitBucket

Using tech to collaborate

and to make your life much easier (and complicated)

Assuming that we have our team, eager and ready to go ahead with coding, 

(you can stop here because i am sure that probably hasnt happened)

There are a few tools that will make your project all that more fancy.

1. A tool to document and display your progress with the planned goals. (TargetProcess)

2. A version control system that will make collective coding much easier. (BitBucket + SourceTree)

TargetProcess:

                                                                  TargetProcess looks like this

It relies on user stories, attaching effort needed to complete each task, and then you can divide your project deliverables and work based on a timeline. It can prioritize your work, assign work to different members, and display all of this info clearly on a board.

Setting this up is pretty straightforward;
Create an account for each member,
Login, and add the members into a single team (max 5 for the free version)

and then the site has all the functions listed in an interactive guide.

SourceTree:

This is the normal interface (with some of my projects) in sourcetree

This allows the members of the team to have an updated copy of the project, and to contribute to it easily.

The normal way that a project goes is; first the project base is created and then is zipped and sent to someone over facebook or email (or the good ol flashdrive) 

Then the other person opens it up and does his changes and zip it back and gives to the next person.
See what is wrong here? its SEQUENTIAL, and is a major waste of time because all the members cant work on the same thing.
Also, the data usage for uploading and downlaoding the full project all the time is a complete waste. Especially with SLT's generous data packages (sarcasm: for the first time in my blog) it is not a good idea. 

With sourcetree, when someone is going to do some coding/contribution to the project, what he needs to do is "PULL" the most updated project files from the cloud. Then do his changes, COMMIT, and PUSH it back to the cloud. Here, sourcetree only updates the CHANGED files to the cloud so that only these files are updated and tracked. If the others do not like the change, they know what files are changed too and if disaster happens, it can be easily reversed to the earlier version by reverting back the files that were changed. 

how to get this working is;
- get an account registered at BitBucket (this repo allows private repositories) 

- register the group members too and make a group

- create a new repo and all the team to it, and fork it down via SourceTree (which you will be asked to install to your PC) 

- when forked, the SourceTree application will open the link and create a directory (preferably empty) in your computer. This folder has all it's files tracked for changes. 

- from there on, all you need to do is create your project in that folder, and then push it. The rest of the team will be able to download/clone this project in their computers as well.

This software is very snaggy at first. But get it working and it all goes very smoothly!
A common problem a lot of my friends had was adding the global account for SourceTree to use.
For this the error message actually gives you the direction to resolve the issue, go into console and add the global.user variable and the name then you're good to go.
It is also a good idea to have the SourceTree and it's working directories in places that do not require UAC.