Managing Project Development for Single Programmer?

Question

I am going to be starting a new job in a few weeks where I will be responsible for both the maintenance and development of a couple of existing web applications and the development of new web applications.

As I will be the only developer on the project and the previous developer was more of a hobbyist, no formal project management or planning techniques have been followed. Additionally no bug tracking has been used or if anything has been recorded its just been notes on paper.

I would therefore like to introduce a better system to help resolve some of the issues and help ensure things run more smoothly. I intend to develop using an agile process (likely scrum) and would therefore like to know what all-in-one solutions people could recommend for me to look into further. I am looking for something which will provide at minimum:

• Project Planning
  • Defining new features
  • Time estimating
  • Ability to organise tasks by priority
• Project Management
  • Tracking active tasks
  • Reporting
• Bug Tracking

I would also like to let other staff easily submit new bugs in the applications which they find or customers report. Additionally support for them to add new stories / high level tasks would be of use so they can note down other new requirments/features and I can then work with them to outline more detailed tasks and estimates.

So far I have looked at a number of systems including:

• FogBugz - Seems great for bug reporting but would need something else for project planning / management
• Agile Buddy - This is probably the best solution I have found so far
• Trac
• Smart Sheets
• Pivotal Tracker

However, as I have not actually used any of these systems myself I do not know what ones would be best or whether there is a better solution out there??? So any recommendations you can provide would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Actually, FogBugz does project management as well. It will even try to learn how accurate time estimates for features are from each user, and give you estimated milestone completion times accordingly, with probabilities of finishing at various dates. I've used it for the bug tracking, and really liked it, but I've also read enough about its project management features to know that it has them, and they're pretty good.

FogBugz feature list

Answer 2

When I was working as a solitary developer, I picked up a copy of Planning Extreme Programming and bought a pack of 3x5 cards and a plastic box for them. I used those in the Planning Game and stuck the ones I was working on on my wall. My boss could walk by and see what I was working on. This worked well and cost little.

We're currently using Zen at work - it's a web-based Kanban board for planning. This is nice when your stakeholders aren't co-located or if priorities/requirements change frequently.

You can enter bugs as user stories with either system, or you could use a separate defect-tracking system.

I'd question if Scrum is suitable for a one-developer shop. It's targeted towards project management. I'd rather not have a stand-up meeting with myself. ;) XP (minus pair programming) works fine for a solitary developer.

Answer 3

For a one-man show, you don't need any tools to speak of.

Tools -- generally -- are for coordination.

If it's just you, what -- precisely -- are you coordinating?

If you want to make things visible, a pair of simple internally-focused web pages built from static content will do.

Bugs.

Burndown for Features.

That's about it. Use the simplest tools you can possibly use. I recommend using docutils to generate the HTML from plain, simple text.

Don't go tool-happy until you have a large enough team that simple text doesn't work any more.