Best programming for a team of two web devs?

Question

We are a small team of two web developers and want to know which programming technique (XP, Agile, Scrum, Kanban) and tools (CVS, Git, Issue tracking) are the right for us. We are developing a product for ourselves, so we are our own customers.

Answer 1

you don't need these goup techniques, just separate problem in two loose parts and work independently

Answer 2

This should be decided by you guys. Read about the methods/tools listed (or ask more specific question here), see which one you feel the most fitting to your specific situation and concerns, then start using that and see how it works for you. Check regularly what can be improved, and work out your own process. But don't spend too much effort in advance to work out the "perfect" process and toolset - for a team of two, it would just be overkill.

Without details, noone can answer your question. Except one thing: CVS I do not recommend. It has several problems, and there are loads of better and more modern SCM tools available.

Answer 3

The be honest, I think the size of your team has little bearing on your methodologies and toolset. You don't mention anything in your question which can be used to recommend any approach.

In terms of your methodologies, I think you are unlikely with a team of two to have the spare resources to worry about sticking to any methodology, and you are equally unlikely to encounter many of the problems these methodologies are designed to solve. Simply try not to do too much without feedback from your target audiance, and put your main effort into delivering a working product.

Choose your VCS/DVCS based on your programming environment, infrastructure and personal experience. So long as you have something that you are using and its working properly for you, it makes little difference whether its git, mercurial or svn.

Better to build something good using an imperfect setup than then obsess over the perfect setup and never ship anything.

Answer 4

If you're that small team then go with a lo-fi approach to project management. Keep lists and notes on paper of things you need to do. Go through each morning what you're supposed to do and discuss if there are any impediments and how to solve them.

For version control use git or mercurial because their repositories are easy to set up (git-init, hg-init). Netbeans has support for mercurial right off the bat. Once you've picked the version control, you might want to look at Trac for issue tracking as it is the easiest one I can think of to set up.