Online workspaces for project management
I’m really excited about the future of software as a service, and looking forward to the big fight between Google (e.g. Google Docs) and Microsoft (e.g. Office Live) for dominance of the online software market. Project management seemed a great candidate for an online service, so I’ve signed up for an Assembla account to try the concept out. So far I love it, here are the main things I like:
- No setup - I don’t have to install and maintain Subversion for source control, Trac for ticketing, a wiki - Assembla provides them all. I can concentrate on developing software.
- No backups or disaster recovery plans needed - I trust Assembla to provide this. My office could burn down, and everything important (code, tickets) would be safe. Assembla even has plans to allow you to download backups for you to keep, so even if Assembla exploded, you have all your data.
- I or anyone else I allow can access it and contribute from anywhere.
Here are some limitations:
- Customisation: you don’t have control.
- Continuous integration: you can’t (at the moment) easily run continuous integration on your source repositories. (There are plans to introduce this feature.)
- Speed of checkin / checkout: slower than a local repository on your intranet
For small teams / companies I can see Assembla being a really attractive solution.
