My current employment is within an enterprise however the team size is small at 5 individuals. On top of that we are dispersed geographically, 2 in one state, 1 in another state, 1 in another state, and 1 in another country.
Our success thus far has hinged on using cloud based solutions within a Scrum methodology. We use tools such as ScrumWorks free offering (since it can be hosted within our domain however VersionOne has a free offering that can be up and running within their domain) as the base of the process. We then leverage Planning Poker which is also another free offering.
We follow the typical Scrum process complete with a daily stand-up meeting. The stand-up meeting has by far been the best approach in attempting to bring about cohesion throughout the team and attempt to remove the isolation that can exist in this type of atmosphere. The daily stand-up coupled with a live form of communication (we use Office Communicator in the enterprise however any IM client would suffice) are critical to insuring a sense of community.
With varying native tongues amongst the team the telephone is a prominent form of communication for in depth conversation however the benefit tends to vary as it can sometimes make the communication much more difficult; as a given accent can sometimes make it difficult however as with anything the more you do it the better you become.
On the flip side I have worked within a team that was located within the same building and no technology or methodology has provided the type of cohesion that close proximity can provide. There was a recent study that provided *empirical evidence to the fact that close proximity of team members is beneficial to the long term goal of the project.
Bottom line is that you will need to find out what tools work best for you. Make sure that the entire team speaks their mind on what is and is not working or isolation will surface very rapidly.
*I can not find the link at the moment but will post it once I do.
EDIT:
Based on comments...
Source control is via svn which is addressed by the enterprise via a custom solution leveraging CollabNet. This solution also takes care of defect management at a higher level as we then port those defects to ScrumWorks to get placed on the sprint backlog. In addition it also provides access to a build environment for CI and deployment.
Testing is attached to the stories from a unit/integration stance; ie...a stories point estimation should and will include testing. That is not a separate component; it is part of the development effort. The testing framework used is NUnit and tests are then ran within the IDE (Visual Studio) via a tie in into NUnit.
This allows the developer to constantly check in and run their tests as needed. Since we are a small team; ownership on problems within the code base rarely happen and we do not implement a strict only check-in when the code has passed all tests mentality as that is not the purpose of version control. Being dispersed it is critical that we check in frequently.
If you do not have access to an enterprise solution your next best bet would be to leverage a VPS hosting solution as they can be had for fairly cheap ($20.00 US/month) and it would allow you to centralize your source, provide version control, DR, deployment of ScrumWorks and other needs as they surfaced.
I am doing it with a team of one currently (I have been promised help in the near future).
But I find it useful for planning (I drag in other developers to help in estimation processes so it is not just me) and tracking progress (for both me and the management team).
Also when other team members join they will be able to see what tasks are currently available to work on and be able to jump in and help.
During planning it still works for prioritization and the demo are still cool.
Best Answer
The best ticketing system by far is a white board with sticky notes.
This doesn't meet the requirement of integrating with STS, but I find sticky notes beat any software solution (as long as the team is not geographically dispersed).
As for source control, use SVN or Git. If your employer demands you use some kind of heavyweight, bogged down "enterprise scm" that only gets in your way, use Git anyway and push to the central SCM on sprint boundaries.
Continuous Integration in Java projects is usually handled by Hudson/Jenkins these days. It's very quick to set up. Make sure you put up a radiator screen in a visible place!