Advanced bug and feature tracking software

Question

I'm looking for the “best” agile feature and bug tracking software. We currently use fogbugz, but this is not very useful for teams, following a flexible methodology, as far as I can tell. There are better tools for this, such as Greenhopper for JIRA. I used to use JIRA, but I wonder if there are other tools that are better.

Answer 1

I will tell about my experience, hoping that it will be useful.

We started piloting Scrum using maps on the wall. We decided that we would move on to the tool as soon as we started to do it for real. We created our defect tracker ( Redmine ) using the User and task history and created a way to smooth out each project. However, we found that you really do not get the radiator transparency of physical information. People walk on the map wall and can see the progress of the team. Very few will check a website as often as they check a map wall. So we are currently making a map wall for the current Sprint and tracking Sprint in Redmine, which gives us historical information.

Since we increased the number of teams to more teams than we had space on the wall, we realized that we would need a tool that could work like a map wall and be a “real” flexible tracker. So, we looked at a few tools, and our short list included Version 1 , Rally, and Mingle . Any of these products may be the best for you, but in the end we chose Mingle for various reasons.

The only thing I'm worried about is the loss of map walls. It is difficult to explain the transformational value that these radiators of public information had. Teams get great visibility from product owners, as well as from management and other interested parties. I'm worried that visibility will be lost if we move on to using the tool exclusively. I may have to create panels that rise on the wall monitors, acting as a high-tech version of the map walls. One thing we did was to purchase some touchscreen boards that would allow standups teams to move virtual cards in a familiar way using the tool map drag and drop interface. I hope that this will allow us to preserve the communication and communication advantages of the team that we saw when we gathered around the map wall.

In any case, good luck in your quest!

Answer 2

We use PivotalTracker (http://pivotaltracker.com) in our projects. It is a lightweight and easy to use tool. It works in the cloud, so creating an account and creating a project is a matter of minutes. Custom storytelling and error entry are pretty simple. The tool supports a standard task workflow consisting of the states “Not Running”, “Started”, “Finished”, “Delivered”, “Accepted” and “Rejected”.

I have not tried fogbugz yet, but I used JIRA, Greenhopper and VersionOne before PivotalTracker. The disadvantage of all these tools against PivotalTracker is that using them brings you too much overhead. You must configure and maintain them. You must configure them. And since they are harder to use, they require more time for daily use. I have seen that developers hesitate to use these tools because they create too much friction. IMO PivotalTracker is the best tool in this regard.

The disadvantage of PivotalTracker is that it only provides a few configuration options. This does not allow you to configure workflows. It has few user authorization options. But in our case, it is very suitable for our needs.

Answer 3

To some extent this may not be the answer, but I hope that it will still be informative and add value.

I have been on several teams using a variety of tools, including physical boards and Greenhopper. Other flexible teams in my department used and evaluated various other options. If you are talking about finding the most effective way to manage a team as part of a sprint (as opposed to scheduling release, backing up, etc.), I came to the following conclusion: Nothing would be a great option if you yourself did not write an instrument or did not use the sheets. Yes, the spreadsheet. This is the most flexible option I've come across. We use fancy with burning schedules, etc., but it works great.

Any tool that you find now that might be perfect will ultimately not do what you want. Here is an example from my own recent experience:

We have been working to reduce the time it takes to report status during the daily bout meeting. The problem was that the developers were inclined to describe in detail the problems they encountered while working on the task. We are trying to postpone these discussions until the end of the meeting. This was difficult to do until we started simply highlighting any elements in the spreadsheet that we need to discuss further. This will allow us to continue the meeting, but not lose information about the issues that need to be discussed. It was easy to introduce into our process precisely because we used a flexible tool such as a spreadsheet. The tool did not interfere with improving our process.

Regarding troubleshooting, most teams in my department use JIRA.