Stephen,

>Where do you stand on these twelve questions?
>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

I fail to see what this really has to do with the original question. However reading this I can't disagree with it at all. Actually its a very good article to send to the management (I'm not the one pulling the checks), though for our project and devteam size and composition there are some sidenotes to make. Ironically, to pick one item, though we have been using bugtracking software from day1, we recently made the decision to go with fogbugz, a product developped by the author.