Tools, working environment, development methods, recruitment in starting a software/web development company.

Question

I am gonna start a startup on dotcom. Since I had usually been working freelance alone (from back-end to front-end) and have no experience in working with other developers on web development, I want to know what are the tools, environment, development process, etc. to start a software/ web development company.

Machines - Will use Mac. Tools - Git versioning. What other tools should I use, such as web project management...? Development methods - Agile? Scrum-based? Extreme?

What are the other concerns in setting up a web development firm?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Get some bug tracking software.

I'd have a company wiki so people can save those random thoughts as they come up. Everybody ought to be writing.

I think Joel's Evidence Based Scheduling is a must. I'm surprised that it's not more widespread.

You probably can't afford an expensive load testing tool, but I'd figure out how to get software and hardware sufficient to do some serious load testing of your apps.

What about security? Do you plan to have any "gray hat" tools around to test your own security before it goes out?

I don't know what you'll do for financials, but I'd get a good accountant to advise me there.

Need any data modeling tools for your back end? If you're going relational and not all NoSQL, maybe Erwin or something like it would be handy.

I think development tools from JetBrains are the best, but it depends on what language you're going to use. IntelliJ for Java, ReSharper for C#, and PyCharm for Python.