Getting the inital project in and "Dev Ready" is easy.  How I do it is create the new template project out on a web server (with the full sitefinity install), setup the project name, etc, and allow the wizard to drop the files on the file system, create a virtual directory and prepare the database.  From there, you have three things accomplished: 1, the bits to check into your source control are there and ready on the file system.  2, your common database is now setup and ready for you. 3, you have your QA environment and a place to push your updated code.  What else could you ask for?   I highly recommend using this setup for a project of any size.

Sitefinity is very developer friendly -- no really!  Since it's all built on .net2, there's a comfort that they're user controls; real, honest to god user controls with .ascx extensions that you can open, move things around, etc etc.  Adding a field to the meta data is easy too, A quick change in the web.config, drop in a label or whatever is necessary, match up the IDs, done.  If you need more than that and have to hit the code behind, "Managers" are your friend.  CmsManager, EventsManager, etc will give you what you need.  Knowing those two things, feature development gets crazy fast.  Do more for your client(s) in less time (wow that sounds like salesman speak).  We look like superheroes, clients love their end product, what's not to like?