Tools to create maximum velocity in a .NET dev team

Question

If you were to self-fund a software project which tools, frameworks, components would you employ to ensure maximum productivity for the dev team and that the "real" problem is being worked on.

What I'm looking for are low friction tools which get the job done with a minimum of fuss. Tools I'd characterize as such are SVN/TortioseSVN, ReSharper, VS itself. I'm looking for frameworks which solve the problems inherient in all software projects like ORM, logging, UI frameworks/components. An example on the UI side would be ASP.NET MVC vs WebForms vs MonoRail.

Answer 1

• Versioning. Subversion is the popular choice. If you can afford it, Team Foundation Server offers some benefits. If you want to be super-modern, consider a distributed versioning system, such as git, bazaar or Mercurial. Whatever you do, don't use SourceSafe or other lock-based tools, but rather merge-baseed ones. Consider installing both a Windows Explorer client (such as TortoiseSVN) as well as a Visual Studio add-in (such as AnkhSVN or VisualSVN).
• Issue tracking. Given that Joel Spolsky is on this site's staff, FogBugz deserves a mention. Trac, Mantis and BugZilla are widespread open-source choices.
• Continuous integration. CruiseControl.NET is a popular and open-source choice. There's also Draco.NET.
• Unit testing. NUnit is the popular open-source choice. Does the job. Consider installing the TestDriven.NET Visual Studio add-in.

That said, you want to look at the answers to Essential Programming Tools and What is your best list of ‘must have’ development tools?; while not .NET-specific, they should apply anyway.

Answer 2

Great tools and frameworks are essential, but the other essential is great project leadership.