Web App Project Management & Workflow Holy Grail? Part 1

Building web apps is getting harder and harder. When you build a desktop application whether it be for a PC or a Mac you know what the platform and environment allows. In this 2.0 age of web development where technologies change frequently based on industry demand, timelines get shorter and costs need to be controlled. It is becoming increasingly difficult to control and manage a project timeline and costs with so many moving parts.

I've done a lot of research on a software package that could control things from end to end. Call this the web development and project management holy grail? The following are some of the requirements I think an all encompassing solution needs:

• Permission granted access / user rights to system functionality
• Workflow Management (Interactive real-time)
• Assist with budgeting and estimating
• Document Management (Proposal, Strategy, Architecture, Sitemap, Wireframes, Concepts)
• Centralized Content Management / Data Warehousing
• Real-time Project Plans
• Milestones
• Team/Task Assignment (who's doing what)
• Versioning of project documents (Check in/Check out)
• Code Library / Shared Assets
• Group Communication and discussion / Feedback
• Bug Tracking (Tickets)
• Quality Assurance and Testing
• Deployment between environments
• Technical Infrastructure Management
• Source Code Protection
• Centralising Server Architecture (FTP/WebDAV etc)
• Faciliate Deployment - Pushing files/databases between environments (Staging/Production)

It must be said no amount of software no matter how good can fix a disfunctional environment with no process or guidlines in place, where team members are disfunctional and kaos rules. You've got to have a system in place before you can start refining it! So let assume you have a process and some guidlines but your projects are growing in size and scope and its time to move on from static project plans, excel documents and email... whats next? I will delve into some system options more in Part 2.