I do use a calendar (Google + iCal) for meetings. Begrudgingly. I just don’t use it the way some people advocate, i.e. putting *everything* on the calendar.

I use Trello or Pivotal for important project-related dates. Trello supports due dates, Pivotal has milestones.

A smart acquirer will perform due diligence on the code, the work process, and the people. They will find at least some of the quality problems and they will factor that into the acquisition terms. The company will sell for less, or there will be some kind of performance penalty built into the terms that kicks in later on, diminishing financial rewards to the seller. Also, the seller’s reputation ought to suffer if word gets out they peddled bad goods. This makes future projects/sales harder, if word spreads far enough.

If you can sell to a naive buyer, on the other hand, and you don’t have moral qualms about selling a shitty product to them, then by all means, pedal to the metal!

VCs can make good on those kinds of deals in the short run, I suppose. I don’t know what happens in the long run, i.e. does the VC’s reputation get tarnished too?

How do you reply to startups that have taken VC funding where the expectation is to get this thing out the door as quickly as possible before the money runs out?

I haven’t used Redmine. I looked at it a few years ago and it seemed more like the old-school project managers… gantt charts (which I don’t believe in as a tool), time trackers, etc.

I like Pivotal Tracker a great deal and use it on all my current projects for managing the software deliverables. Pivotal does require a certain willingness to “let go” a little of target dates for delivering things; some people hate that, but I think it’s a better reflection of the reality that people are bad at estimating work and predicting dates.

I’m also playing with Trello which, so far, I like a great deal for managing lists in general. (Not just lists of software deliverables.) I’m impressed by its simplicity and I think I can use it for a lot of collaborative list-building needs that Google Docs and Spreadsheets previously filled.