The first steps are to (re)build the project scope and have a plan, but in the meanwhile your new team will need to have the tools to start their work. As PM you probably will have your own tools and templates but the team will have an IDE and that’s it. You should not deal with technical issues, but the reality is that as PM team will depend on you to get the right/optimal resources to simplify the developers work.

If you are those lucky guys that receive a software project since the beginning and not sometime after then you will have a better chance to get the right resources. My recommendation: Keep it simple but useful -even notepad is a useful tool if you use it correctly.

Your team needs:

1. Deal with versions. Even before start your coding phase you MUST have a concurrent version system. In the market you will find a lot, but probably the common ones -and open source are: CVS and Subversion (a.k.a. SVN). Versions will force the team to work closer and with the same structure. If your IT team do it well, you will appreciate it a lot.
2. Common IDE. Developers have their own affairs with specific IDEs. But you are the PM, ask your IT lead and force them all to use the same. I don’t like democracy, PM rules! However, as developer, I love Eclipse IDE.
3. Documentation System. Most of the developers around the world will hate to document their code or applications. At least here in Colombia, when you ask developers to document their code or provide formal documentation they will give you the bad-eye look (in Spanish the malde’ojo) and you will understand that not the greatest documentation will be available at the end of the project. So provide the team with the tools to make this pain softer. I recommend only WYSIWYG tools like a Wiki, Google Docs, or any other fancy tool.
4. Track their progress/work. Development tracking tools are suspiciously linked to Bug Tracking but it is not necessarily the truth. I’ve been using bug tracking tools like Mantis BT and Jira as Tasks Assignation tools. Keep in mind that a Bug is a request to do (fix) something. So why you cannot split your work packages in work items and assign them to the team -as you do with bugs.
5. Provide test environments. I have to say this, why non-developer centric companies like Creative Agencies building Web applications do not understand that a Test Environment IS NOT the developer’s computer. What is this all about? What is the mystery? Test environments are needed, mandatory needed. Release building is a complex task that will have a lot of manually interactions -team pushing changes and enhancements- and it is NEEDED to have a place where to put all together and validate it before release it to a client -even to a client test environment. Please do not cut costs here. I will start a facebook group named “Why we do not have a test environment?” -BTW I do not like facebook, I do not even use it.
6. Put it all together and working. This is the real thing about IT support. Install software is a piece of cake, is not a complex task, put all together and make it work smoothly is the key. So ask you IT team to do it, or do it yourself, like I did for some of my dev projects. There are many ways to integrate everything but I’m giving you some useful links to found the way to do it:

• SVN, MediaWiki and BugZilla working together
• MantisBT & DokuWiki
• MantisBT & Subversion

SpZ Team is currently designing an All-in-One integrated solution. For latest updates check the Framework page.

This is the first of a set of posts when I will present how I start my projects when no software support is available. Of course I suppose you will have little help of the IT department to get at least some free/usable servers for your purposes. This one will present a small but useful list of tools and their licenses.

You will find a lot of tools that could make easier your life, but obviously, the success of any software tool is based on the use we gave it. Below you will find a list of project management software tools that I recommend for small/medium projects, all of them are free or open source projects

• OpenProj
  • CPAL
• GanttProject
  • GPL (almost all)
• Open Workbench
  • MPL/Proprietary
• Clockingit
  • MIT/X11
• B-kin Project Monitor
  • Spanish version only
  • Propietary
• Dotproject
  • GPL
  • Documentation site

I think is good enough for now, I don’t want to make expectations about those projects, all of them have their pros/cons. If you have comments, feel free to submit them. The whole idea is to build a knowledge base for those who are starting to use a software tool or are evaluating its use.