What is the easiest way to collaborate on a project?

Suppose you have a development project (or more than one!) that requires multiple people to participate: coders, designers, project managers, testers and whoever else. What are some of the easiest, yet efficient collaboration applications available to make the workflow easy, productive and pain-free? Something that perhaps includes an easy bug-reporting module for tracking and solving bugs?

Would your suggestion of an app be different if it was more of an open-source kind of development with lots of people taking part in it?

Is Google Wave a good app to use?

Thanks for your suggestions.

When I was at Wintrust Mortage we used Basecamp with success. The team was three coders, a tester, management and the occasional contractor. I believe we used Kayako for tickets and bug tracking. It all worked fairly easy from my point of view.

I dont have any experience in large scale collaborations so I cant give any advice there.

Thanks VG.

Basecamp is obviously the brand behemoth of collaboration world and was one of the first tools I've looked at. But at $50/month minimum, and a recurring cost of $600/year, I think there just HAS to be better value out there. I found a very cool directory of collaboration software and tools at:
http://www.go2web20.net/#tag:collaboration

I am already discovering some very cool applications like TeamBox.com that are not at all worse that Basecamp, if not more feature rich, either free or at a fraction of a cost in comparison.

As project manager a long time ago I have also tried Factory Nova (http://www.stuffedguys.com/products/factory/), it was a very nice and user-friendly piece of software, but it has to be installed on your server (pros: one-time cost, cons: worry about upgrades, local install). Still a contender if used over long-term.

Originally Posted by Artashes Thanks VG. Basecamp is obviously the brand behemoth of collaboration world and was one of the first tools I've looked at. But at $50/month minimum, and a recurring cost of $600/year, I think there just HAS to be better value out there. I found a very cool directory of collaboration software and tools at: http://www.go2web20.net/#tag:collaboration I am already discovering some very cool applications like TeamBox.com that are not at all worse that Basecamp, if not more feature rich, either free or at a fraction of a cost in comparison. As project manager a long time ago I have also tried Factory Nova (http://www.stuffedguys.com/products/factory/), it was a very nice and user-friendly piece of software, but it has to be installed on your server (pros: one-time cost, cons: worry about upgrades, local install). Still a contender if used over long-term.

Sometimes it isn't all about features, its about reliability and support. Basecap always works, was never down and was overaell realiable. In the event it didn't work they had good support to get this back up. You loose this when you pay less, you could say its the cost to your savings. In the content of when I used basecap it was for a multi billion dollar mortgage banker so the cost was nominal at worst to them, the project we were on was a major one for them as well.

In the grand scheme of things lets you have three developers ($60/hr average each after benefits and such), three designers ($50/hr average each after benefits and such) and a project manager (120k a year after benefits and such). If they are all working full time your average monthly cost for manpower alone would be $23,200. $50/month and $600 a year is nothing compared to that.

True, but I am not planning on hiring people full-time (I am not there yet), so its for managing smaller one-time projects, based on fixed cost estimates. When you look at it that way, $600 pays for a tiny little program.

I've used Basecamp for years, and really like it but I agree with Artashes, the fee adds up over the year. I also had trouble getting reasonable answers to the questions I had, either from support or through the user forums. And it has become obvious to me that heavy use of BaseCamp really needs someone on staff who is endlessly fascinated by the system and knows its capabilities inside out. So I'm moving away from BaseCamp and working with education portals (as most of what I do is actually online teaching).

But then, Artashes, can I caution you that smooth running of any collaborative project has an element of social interaction (even if none of you are in the same town, let alone the same room)? Even the most highly recommended project management software out there will be less than excellent if you don't pay attention to the fact that you're also working with human beings and that i any group of three or more people there will be issues of interpretation and understanding, and likes and dislikes.

Basecamp is the most known. It is very easy to use, but has real limitations in to-dos. You can't create real tasks and milestones and dependencies. It is also not cheap! Clarizen is more professional, but expensive and too hard to learn. Other options are huddle (SharePoint alternative) and binfire (for working as remote team).

I've been a heavy Basecamp user for years, well I say heavy in the terms of it's the only thing I've used, even if I used it a little.

However, recently any of my clients will know that I have my own system now which I'm hoping to develop and release for consumers.

My system is basically just like a forum, it's a place to post to-dos and milstones, and leave comments on those.

I think Basecamp is good because there is a variety of different features that some people will find usable and others will not, but there is something there for everyone and it can be integrated nicely into a lot of other desktop and mobile apps.


Regards,
Jamie

Why not give Phabricator a go? its created and maintained by Facebook development team and It might provide a simple enough solution to your need... before you delve into full version control and similar software that will provide you the bug reporting features etc but tend to lack on the discussion side of the team environment.

We used to use Subversion or Git however use an internal PHP project management/communication/version control tool which we may release sometime in the future.

Link: http://phabricator.org/

Phabricator looks a bit more technical, but I will read more about it. I haven't heard of it before. Thank you for the suggestion.