Somehow I got roped into a thread on Quora and noticed this item http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-online-project-management-software-for-a-startup
Lots of people shilling their Web 2.0 SaaS services for project management but at the end of the day, you have to ask why a startup even needs project management software.
I’ve been thru a few startups either as founder or CTO and I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the easiest and cheapest project management system of all:
A pencil and paper.
The average startup in the software space is 3-5 people. Right? 3-5 people is a small army when it comes to developing software and who is going to be coding if they are busy using same fancy Web 2.0 app like Clarizen to manage Gantt charts and integrate with SF.com
Your first order of business is to iterate quickly and get real people using the product.
Hold on a minute – what about the design?
Yes, Roberta, there is no design.
If there is no design, then there is no Gantt and no 200 page SRDs, PRMs, SES, SRS, SIS, SDA and all the other vintage SDM-70 TLAs
Instead – you have an idea. A few smart people. A software architecture and set of programming standards that you can write down in less than 20 pages.
So – you have a startup.
You can spend the time coding and selling or you can spend the time planning, updating your Gantt charts and having ops reviews.
As a programmer colleague once said: “Code overrides all memos”