So your venturing into your own waters, got a brilliant idea about the product and now your picking up the bits to make it happen.

Two tools you will defiantly need are Source Control and Project Management.

Well, there are several options.

For source control, my best suggestion would be SVN. I would suggest it even for larger companies (I am sooo crying right now because we are too deep in Source Safe that we can’t switch over… from the other side, all my personal projects are in SVN).

One great free option is Google Code… http://www.googlecode.com

You can setup your projects there, manage them and everything… it works great.

Also, SVN generally isn’t hard to host… you can bring it online in a matter of minutes (probably it takes more to download it then to set it up :))

Ok, so the other part is Project Management… I am personally a proponent of Scrum, like the tools I try to use… it seems so frictionless, no hassle, no fuss… just easy and simple methodology to manage my projects. Again, I would be really happy that we don’t have our own internal methodology so I could utilize it… but at least this way, I just “rip” off from it bits and pieces I can use easily implement and that bring real benefit to my projects… e.g. daily standup’s.

Back… now, two tools I’ve found easy enough, free and quick. Both are free for small teams and small projects, both are hosted online and both are quick&easy:

- http://www.acunote.com/ - Scrum based online project management tool. Seems really good.

- http://www.basecamphq.com/ - Not Scrum based, but still quick&easy

Hope this gives you some ideas! I am taking for a ride Acunote and GoogleCode on my Akua framework (although it is my private, non profit project… still it could benefit from some PM, and SC is already there :)):

http://vladanstrigonet.googlecode.com/svn/akua/trunk

Cheers!