

Which product dev setup would you choose if you could start from scratch? - cwilson

I'm currently in the position of making these decisions for a new venture. I have a good idea of what I'd like to do but I'd love to hear what others are happy with and/or what they would do today if they could start from scratch.<p>The question: I'm curious what technical cofounders or product managers would put in place today if they could pick any set of tools and processes they wanted.<p>The only limitations or requirements here (though I don't think this will really effect many answers) would be that we are using Python/Django/Git. We're big fans of deploy-&#62; measure-&#62; iterate often.<p>I'm talking everything from project management tools (features, milestones, issues, bug tracking, backlog, etc) to how you deploy.
======
pxlpshr
Basecamp can be used in replace of redmine while the development team is
small, but redmine is generally better suited for bug/issue tracking as the
engineering team grows.

As far as processes are concerned at the start, I try to keep it to a minimal
as long as everyone is in the room together. If you have a bunch of remote
team members, Basecamp/Campfire will probably need to be used more.

We use fabric for python/django deployment and host on rackspace cloud. The
long-term goal is to reach continuous deployment but this takes time.
[http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/continuous-
deplo...](http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/continuous-deployment-
at-imvu-doing-the-impossible-fifty-times-a-day/)

Wireframe the product and customer flows before you touch photoshop or code.
But then I generally jump straight into code. CSS can get really out of hand
as an application grows if you don't start spotting reusable patterns in the
UI as soon as possible.

------
ethank
Github for source control, probably Firewall Install if we could afford it.

\- Pivotal Tracker for agile bug tracking.

\- Basecamp for non-programmer interaction and tracking (ie, mocks, UX, QA,
etc)

\- Campfire with custom bots for inter-group communication, use Pyro on the
desktop

\- Some sort of custom status-board type system (Geckoboard, etc) for tracking
in/out status of distributed personnel, system status, etc.

\- Zendesk for customer support

\- Rackspace cloud + Capistrano for dev environments. Or EC2. Either way.

\- Hudson for CI

\- Dropbox + Shared folders for file sharing

\- Google Docs for collaborative editing

------
rawsyntax
github for source control, redmine or possibly pivotal for issue tracking, and
the wiki on github for wiki info.

------
triviatise
what do you use for tracking and managing inbound user feature requests and
support issues?

