At Youth Can Do I.T. we have embraced modernity in almost every facet of our operations. Technology has become the backbone of the work we do as a team in order for us to meet all the challenges of being a company in 2017. We are constantly innovating our modus operandi which has fostered a culture of growth and progress.
Our latest project DAB Summer ‘17, was planned and organised almost exclusively using online services and platforms. During the month of June cloud storage became a YCDI Intern’s best friend, Google Drive being the platform of choice for this particular endeavour. A myriad of documents, presentations, spreadsheets and schedules related to the camp were available to us anytime on any platform of our choosing provided we had an internet connection. This provided us with the type of flexibility so many crave, being able to work on our own time and at our own pace (though still having to meet the obligation of office hours). Google Drive also mitigated any potential clumsiness which may have lead to important files being lost which gave each of us significant margin for error.
Like most other companies, we organised ourselves into various teams with clearly designated roles specifically for the project. As such, an effective method of communication among teams became needed; to achieve this we chose Slack. Slack is an incredible platform which has made inter and intra team coordination a breeze, similar to whatsapp it is available in both mobile app formats as well as desktop variants. It goes much further than Whatsapp in providing channels and subchannels in which teams can communicate and exchange files and other forms of data. The way we set it up, Slack essentially allowed us to see our entire organisational structure and communicate on any level of it; a truly “mobile” office.
The biggest challenge in any project is actually accomplishing the tasks needed to meet your goal(s). Traditionally, to-do lists and calendars have been used to achieve this. In the contemporary world these have been superseded by smartphone apps such as Google Keep. At YCDI though we decided to use something called Trello. Trello is an online service which is essentially a giant organisational to-do list. It is supremely useful for project coordination, since all the tasks we need to do can be visually mapped out for everyone to see. The to-dos are organised by team, then by individual and also allows for collaboration. Trello is the king of team organization platforms, if used properly it can become a visual roadmap of whatever project you are working on.
Some of these platforms are new to me, some I was previously familiar with but I must admit I’m thoroughly impressed with how we’ve managed to utilise technology in our day to day work. YCDI is a company which embraces all the technological amenities available to us in the modern age in order to effectively carry out our projects.