You’re starting a new software development project. What are the best tools to help you succeed?

You can deliver on time, on budget, and with the features required and still deliver no value! Focusing on Project Management only works for delivering products that already exist. However in software, we are always creating things that have not been done before, that's why we are coding and not buying. The focus instead should be on Product Management.

Clearly written REQUIREMENTS and ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA, including wireframes, precise, expected inputs and outputs (especially for complex algorithms). If you don't have a solid idea of what you're supposed to build, you ought not start. Getting stakeholder signoff on each and every single last requirement (whether user stories, hierarchical requirements, decision trees, etc) is critical for success not only to support TDD, but to ensure that the stakeholders very clearly understand what they're requesting, that all involved stakeholders AGREE and are held accountable to their asks. This must all occur before a single design is drafted, to minimize change and thus expense, and mitigate inevitable future changes effectively and economically.

First of all define a clear methodology to adopt like (Agile, scrum, Kanban, CMMI or your own customized process). Once done, you can choose the tool set that will provide you what you try to achieve with Project Management in your new project. Then clear requirements including acceptance criteria are important to take into account from the start. When it comes to tool choice, I will say in case you haven't decided yet, go GitHub and/or Azure DevOps as these tools are the nr 1 worldwide tools to guarantee your traceability during your project development lifecycle. From (Idea (requirements) to production and vice versa) that is the key for these tools/ DevOps platforms.

Project management involves coordinating tasks, resources, and timelines to achieve specific goals within an organization. Data-Driven Decisions: Utilize data analytics and project management software to gather insights, track progress, and make informed decisions. Agile Methodologies: Embrace agile project management methodologies to promote flexibility, iterative development, and rapid responses to changes. Stakeholder Engagement: Foster strong relationships with stakeholders by actively involving them in the project lifecycle. Risk Management: Implement robust risk management practices to identify, assess, and mitigate potential risks proactively.

Tools like Trello, Jira, ADO can help plan track progress and collaborate with team effectively . IDE ‘s like Visual Studio code, Eclipse can provide comprehensive set of tools for coding , debugging and version control. Continuous integration tools like Jenkins, Travis CI can automate the process of building , testing , deploying code. Collaborations tools like slack, MS Teams can be helpful for team collaboration and communication.

Version control is like having a time machine for your project's code and documentation. It allows you to track changes, collaborate seamlessly, and revert to previous versions if needed, ensuring consistency and reliability throughout the development process. It's the backbone of efficient teamwork, enabling multiple contributors to work concurrently without fear of conflicts or data loss. In essence, version control adds a layer of organization and control that is essential for modern software development and project management workflows.

Many Teams can collaborate on whichever kind of project shared on a central repository, keeping history in a database sometimes managed by an external team. Senior Developers can review, comment to advice, resolve and merge pull requests which are from developer changes done from their local machines

Git is now a days the defacto used as version control. Team should follow devops practices like CI/CD to ensure smaller and frequent commits to code. Practices like PR review by peers ensures the good code quality to be maintained amongst the team members.

VSCode , IntelliJ, PyCharm, webstorm are code editors which are widely used by organisations. Good Integration to Github and CI/CD tools help developers to improve productivity and effective usage of tools plugin helps developers to speed up their work.

One thing I found extremely helpful was to make sure that you are flexible to move between modes of communication. Whether it be email, to 1 on 1's, face-to-face, phone calls, teams chat. Make sure you're understanding each of your audiences needs and can meet them where they are for the maximum engagement and success of your project.

Micrsoft Team and Slack are versatile communication tools that has built in features to create team sites, instant messaging, video calls, wiki sites, document collaboration and sharing, tracking tasks, meetings call and recording for training purpose, granular access control to team content, as well huge repository of third-party collaboration and coordination apps and tools. Microsoft team is part of O365, whereas Slack requires separate license.

An example I have seen on this to be helpful is to have a quality center that allows you to track and complete testing for each segment of testing you complete. Automative testing is incredibly important as well as documenting errors you expect to see. The quality assurance that can come from using such tools is more than seventy five percent better than any manual tracking of testing or entering results. I'm always looking for suggestions and examples of testing tools.

Testing frameworks are like quality assurance superheroes, ensuring that software meets performance and functionality standards. Cypress, in particular, adds a unique perspective to testing with its focus on end-to-end testing for modern web applications. It offers a robust and developer-friendly environment for writing tests in JavaScript, allowing teams to create comprehensive test suites that mimic real user interactions.Overall, Cypress empowers teams to create robust, maintainable, and efficient test suites that enhance software quality and accelerate delivery cycles in modern web development environments.

Docker as a development environment to keep things consistent for all team members. It will also be easier to deploy if you already use docker as your development environment.

Jenkin is one of the opensource tool that can be used to create deployment pipeline from dev to test to prod servers, when used in conjunction with Ansible playbook can automate the deployment process.

The very first step is some initial research based on the requirements gathered with the project stakeholders. I find that ChatGPT these days can get you on the right "thinking track" and give you some key inspiration. I would then move on to mocking up the app if there is a UI/UX otherwise a diagram highlighting the system architecture is usually better than a 1,000 words. A great mock up tool is Balsamiq. I heard Figma was also good. Once all of this is approved then it's time to start Sprint 0 and SCRUM the rest of the project

Application monitoring - to track performance bottlenecks so that we can address such concerns early. Requirements, defects tracking tools.

Requirements Gathering: Clearly defining and understanding project requirements is essential to ensure that the final product meets stakeholders' expectations and addresses user needs effectively. Code Quality: Emphasize clean, maintainable, and well-documented code. Tools like code reviews, static code analysis, and automated testing can help maintain high code quality standards. Security: Incorporate security best practices throughout the development lifecycle, including secure coding practices, vulnerability assessments, and regular security audits to protect against threats. Also consider, Performance Optimization Documentation Collaboration Tools Feedback and Iteration

Be resourceful. Books, websites, past work are all good resources, but don't be afraid to use your network of people as resources also. Build a network of people resources and utilize them!