I recently went from working at a great company to freelancing on my own. I'm about to start two projects where I will be acting more as a PM than the sole developer. I really want to follow a solid process and I'm trying to figure out the best set of tools to use and am pulling my hair out.<p>Things I would like: (1) An elegant, usable, hosted app (2) manage user stories (3) manage dev tickets features/bugs (3) track time against tickets (4) manage overall milestones and project status, feedback look w/ client<p>I feel like I've signed up for every trial out there and nothing really satisfies everything. The <i>right</i> solution feels like it should be some mashup of Basecamp + Harvest + Pivotal Tracker<p>What tool or combo of tools are you guys successfully using and can recommend with conviction?
I've used Redmine extensively both as a freelancer and in small and medium sized shops. It satisfies (1), has the capacity for (2), especially with certain plugins, takes care of (3) better than any other app I've used...<p>You have (3) twice, but it also handles time tracking, and via other plugins handles it quite well and can even handle billing and invoicing from time tracking data. Project status, milestones (it calls them versions, but everyone I know uses them as milestones), and so on.<p>And if there's anything you don't like about it, hey, it's a rails app, or if you don't want to change it yourself, there's a very vibrant community around it, and I even know a guy who does custom Redmine development work for a living.