I'm looking for a tool to aid in managing the development and maintenance of a single web app. It will mainly be used by one project manager and one or two external developers. Until now we have been mailing an Excel spreadsheet back and forth for tracking tasks and progress, which is not sufficient for a number of reasons. This project has no formal development methodology, and the tool shouldn't require a lot of knowledge on any methodology.
The tool should:
- Be simple to adapt to
- Allow the follow operations on tasks: categorizing, activating/inactivating, prioritizing, estimating time needed and scheduling expected completion and required completion
- Offer email alerts for new critical tasks or changes to critical tasks
- Be web based, hosted
- Be cheap or free
- Allow exporting data for safekeeping
- Bonus: Powerful enough for future expansions of the team and operations