With that need in mind, I asked the teams behind several startups what tools they use to collaborate. There was a definite split between the tools teams use for rolling out a specific product or project, and the tools startups use when they’ve got a longer development plan ahead of them. These are the tools that fit with specific projects or products.

1. Ta-da List: Veribook uses Ta-da List. Keith Chung says, “We’re a small two person start-up that works separately probably 99 percent of the time. However, we work incredibly closely developing our website using Ta-da List almost exclusively. By having a series of sortable to-do lists that we share, we’ve been able to develop dozens of features, debug hundreds of bugs, and fulfill numerous business requirements. While we understand that there are better and more robust tools out there, we find a simple, easy-to-use, and fast app such as Ta-da List great for a small company such as us.”
2. Notable: ClickEquations used Notable for a recent website redesign. Alex Cohen says, “I found Notable through Techcrunch. It stuck with me, because I used to send design feedback either by writing long emails with bullet points or marking up drafts and scanning them. Obviously, that’s incredibly inefficient and not a process that works during a website redesign with multiple stakeholders. I took to Notable, because it’s easy-to-use, simple to refer back to my notes and I could share my feedback with the designers, my CEO and coders all at once. All that for a pretty low price and no contract made it a no-brainer.”
3. Pivotal Tracker: Future Simple uses Pivotal Tracker. Uzi Shmilovici says, “For us, as we continuously build and improve PipeJump — our simple CRM for small businesses — Pivotal Tracker has been tremendous. To start with, it helps us organize the roadmap for the product and stay on top of the next tasks that need to be performed. That is super valuable by itself and helps bring a lot of order to our day to day development process. The really great thing about Pivotal though, is that every task is measured by points. The points not only reflect the complexity of the task but most importantly the amount of value we create for our customers. Every task (or story, as they are called in Pivotal) is written from a user-centric point of view. So for instance, a story can be: ‘As a user, I want to receive a weekly PDF report about our won deals to my inbox.’ That not only helps the developer understand what the task on hand is, but also helps him understand how valuable and important is this task for our users. At the end of the week you can look at the number of points achieved as a measure for the progress in the product.”

What collaboration tools do you use in your startup?

Photo by Flickr user Hotel Casavelas, licensed under CC 2.0.

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The tool allows everyone to provide feedback and stay in the loop with a design’s progress, as well as archiving the design’s history. You can control who can see and leave feedback on each captured design. For example, a project manager could share one page with the copywriter, another with the whole team and yet another with the developers. The feedback occurs multiple ways, instead of one-way.

For example, let’s say I open a Notable account for the meryl.net web site. I work with a designer and a blog app expert; we’re all web workers living in different states. I capture different pages on my web site to highlight the current problems and identify ways to improve them, as the screenshot below shows.

While I could use my screenshot application to get a snaphot of the page to make comments on, Notable works faster. With a screenshot app, I’d capture the web page. Then, I would use the application’s drawing tools to add call outs. Notable takes care of everything for you. All I have to do is click and enter notes.  This video shows the process of capturing and annotating a site.

Notable offers a Firefox plugin for capturing any web page, which is especially helpful for those pages stuck behind logins. I grabbed Facebook pages and other password-protected pages with the plugin. You can also capture pages from a URL from within Notable, use a special URL formula to capture a web page (for example, www.notableapp.com/www.webworkerdaily.com would capture the home page of this site), download the iPhone app, or upload an image.

I can send my notes for one page to the designer and notes from another page to the blog expert. Or I can send it to both. Notable gives you control on what feedback and notes you share with others, and you can remove someone from the discussion after the fact. The designer and blog expert can capture their own pages to add notes or leave comments on my notes.

In this case, I have a workspace called “meryl.net” for the meryl.net redesign project. I can organize the pages into three sets: one for the business section of the site, one for games and one for the pages about deafness, as the next image shows.

Notable sends email notifications whenever someone adds notes and shares them. You can control who receives the notification to be able view the specific page and leave feedback. Permissions are also available on a per-set basis.

You can also see different views of each page. You not only view the design, but also you can see and post annotations on the code (the underlying HTML code of the page), the copy (just the page’s copy, without any distracting visual elements) and search engine optimization (which lets you see the page’s structure for SEO purposes).

Currently, Notable works with Firefox and Safari. However, I could leave comments and view notes in Google Chrome — just not capture pages. One of the biggest benefits is that it cuts down on emails and confusion. The only emails you receive are notifications of new notes or updates, rather than a bunch of emails from different people on a project and trying to keep track of it all. Best of all, Notable is fun to use. While it works great for teams not working under one roof, but it’s suitable for those that do because the work is centralized and visible in one place.

Check out the use of Notable on the CNN and MSN home pages. A free plan is available that handles up to three users, 3 GB storage, one private workspace and the iPhone app. However, the free plan doesn’t come with enhanced security or private URLs. Other plans range from $24 per month up to $119 per month, based on number of users, storage size and other features. You can try any paid plan for 30 days with no obligation.

Have you tried Notable? What do you think of it?

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