Setting up a new Java development shop

Question

I\'m setting up a Java development shop, currently just for myself as the only developer, but with hopes of needing to hire others as the business grows. Obviously I\'m hoping

Answer 1

Most important, the right staff:

• get great people who find work and handle customers (aka sales)
• get software engineers who are smart and get things done (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/05.html)
• get someone who knows about accounting and the local legal and tax regulations, so you don't get any surprises

Tools / Processes:

• use a distributed version control system like git or mercurial
• jira or the like for bug/issue tracking
• continuous integration with hudson or cruisecontrol
• wiki system to share the teams tangible knowledge
• unit tests, clover, checkstyle, findbugs, ...

From a managerial point of view i would try

• daily standup meetings (checkout scrum) to keep the team updated members to commit by saying what the did, do, and will do
• timeboxed meetings, everything else sucks.
• plan iterations/sprints
• let team do task time estimations
• pair programming (gets you better code)
• code reviews (builds trust)
• weekly in house "techtalks" to build a strong sense for the team
• twitter like communication tool to keep all insync and informed with minimal distraction
• develop team towards dynamic languages (groovy, scala, ...)
• yourself, listen to what the guys at http://manager-tools.com/ have to say...

good luck!