I've been asking around among friends and colleagues to find out which Project Management software people think is the best, particularly for accommodating Agile development, and have been getting a lot of mixed responses, so I thought it would be a good question to post.
At present, I've narrowed our main options (if we were to change software, which may or may not be worthwhile) are Atlassian's JIRA http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/ with Greenhopper http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/ and Confluence http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ OR as an open source option, OpenGoo http://www.opengoo.org/ We currently use a combination of Unfuddle, Harvest, and Open Atrium (we tried out Freshbooks and didn't really find it useful, but largely because of it not being integrated into the other apps).
Ideal Requirements
- Issue tracker that is Agile-friendly (ie. can accommodate sprints/milestones) and can handle many different projects at once, for example Unfuddle (which we currently use, and works reasonably well)
- Nice prioritization and categorization for issues, ability to batch change these, and other labels (milestone, assigned to, component, severity, etc.)
- Integrated Version Control (SVN + Git or Bazaar)
- Time tracking against specific issues, and against estimates. Something like Harvest (which we currently use and like) but that ties to specific work items more nicely
- Wiki functionality, ideally which can be tied to specific project content (like Open Atrium, which we like and use)
- Client/contact management, something like Freshbooks
- Good reporting - % done, deviation from budget estimates, sprint velocity (based on time spent or points)
Would love to hear any experiences people have had using the Atlassian products or OpenGoo, or any other suggestions...
Comments
Jira + Fisheye + SVN serves
Jira + Fisheye + SVN serves us pretty well. The only thing I am wishing for is free tagging.
Hmm... yes, freetagging on
Hmm... yes, freetagging on Open Atrium is very, very nice. So, Fisheye is the SVN integration then? (It's really hard to tell from their site.) So there is time tracking and all that other stuff in Jira?
Atlassian
I haven't used Confluence, but we use Jira+Grasshopper, and in general I'm a fan. It's definitely Agile-friendly. I don't know how much SVN integration you get without Fisheye, which we also use, but with Fisheye it integrates very nicely. For example, when you enter a Jira issue number in your SVN commit message, you automatically get a link in your Jira issue to that commit. What I don't know is how well any of it works for client management -- tracking against estimates and suchlike.
And there is my answer about
And there is my answer about the SVN integration... great, that is basically how Unfuddle does that (with the commit message and the link), and I am a big fan of that.
Trac
trac is my favorite. Out of the box it has:
It will hit all the goals you stated above except for maybe client/contact info, although there are a load plugins if you need to extend it further. http://trac-hacks.org/
http://trac.edgewall.org/
I'll second Trac
We use Trac pretty extensively as well. The only thing that I would add to above is that pretty easy to add post-commit hooks that allows you to use syntax in your svn commits like this:
svn commit -m "some commit fixes #1"
And that closes Trac ticket 1. You can also use "addresses #1" and that will comment the ticket.
yes, unfuddle does that as
yes, unfuddle does that as well. it's moreso that we are looking for a toolset that encompasses more than just the issue tracking and version control side of things...
Also interesting, just
Also interesting, just brought to my attention: http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/ which are very Agile focused - their release mgmt stuff is interesting looking, and the PM stuff seems fine... just again, doesn't cover all the needs, so not really worth switching to.
Now, Trac...
Seemingly with a bunch of add-ons, maybe we could get to where we need...
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/AgileTracPlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/AgiloForScrumPlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TimingAndEstimationPlugin
BUT - to quote someone who knows better than i ;-) it's "python, self hosted, and kinda crusty".
Jira, Confluence, Grasshopper still seem nice, but are more just replicating our current system, with maybe one more integrated bit, and more Agile oriented. But the time tracking and client management are super important pieces of this pie... it really doesn't seem worthwhile going through moving all of our projects otherwise.
Which leaves OpenGoo (and I only know one shop using it, but it LOOKS the closest to our needs, though less customized for Agile) OR writing the Unfuddle-Harvest bridge (as they both have open APIs) ourselves, and just using Open Atrium alongside.
Redmine
Open source Rails option. Comparable to some of the other's discussed, but with superior multi-project management and a better UI/UX. Pluggable architecture, and there are already some good plugins available. I've been happy with it for 2 years now. http://redmine.org.
Lev Tsypin
ThinkShout, Inc.
thinkshout.com | twitter.com/levelos
Remine + Harvest as a Possibility
We use Redmine, and are going to integrate our Harvest account with it for more complete time tracking. See http://www.getharvest.com/blog/2009/11/harvest-integration-with-redmine-... for more info.
We've found Harvest (www.getharvest.com) to be invaluable at really keeping track of our hours and projects, and are looking forward to integrating our two best tools (Redmine and Harvest) in January. Not sure if it will do everything you want, but it might be worth looking into.
Redmine, like Unfuddle, seems
Redmine, like Unfuddle, seems pretty decent (ie. don't know what I'd bother switching to such a similar system), but I totally agree, We love Harvest... the more I dig into all these other systems, I think just putting the time into bridging the gap from Harvest to Unfuddle (and maintaining use of OpenAtrium for the wiki and client mgmt) rather than switching systems may be the way to go...
Let's hear it for Redmine
I can second Redmine. I like it a lot more than Trac, especially due to its support for multiple projects. The only glaring omission that is the lack of private ticketing, which should be addressed in the upcoming 0.9 release of the software. Check out the plugin list at http://www.redmine.org/wiki/redmine/Plugin_List for customization options.
Redmine ^2 + paymo for time tracking..
My redmine db is the only db we backup in 3 copies.
It is the heart and center of our business running dozens of project in parrallel.
My develpoers love it. Our client love it and I love it.
Linnovate - Community Infrastructure Care
Drupal Services in Israel
http://www.linnovate.net
We are using Cashboard,
We are using Cashboard, Unfuddle and OpenAtrium (reduced from a combination before of highrise, harvest and a local basecamp and then some).
moved over not too long ago, and after the transition, I think it is working pretty well, and helping improve efficiency and effectiveness. That being said, sometimes its better to stick with the devil you know :p
Ryan
I love Cashboard for (very)
I love Cashboard for (very) small business accounting. its great at estimates, invoices, time tracking, expense tracking, ...
Assembla or PivotalTracker
PivotalTracker is the most interesting agile PM tool that I've seen in a long time. Really cool interface. Very "prescriptive" (like Lighthouse), but it works.
I use Assembla. It's expensive, but allows you to choose PM tools on the fly - such as a number of integrated version control systems (Assembla-hosted git or svn, GitHub, etc), similarly, it allows you to choose ticketing/wiki systems (its own, Trac, etc). It doesn't have Harvest integration, but it does have it's own very basic time tracking system. Another great feature is that it allows me to setup automated backups to EC2 - so I don't have to fret that if my SAAS tool goes down, I'm totally hosed.
Not to take this thread off topic, but what are you all using to actually schedule developer time? I've got a small shop with 3-4 developers working on milestones across 5-6 client projects. Scheduling work by prioritizing individual, highly-granular development tickets across multiple projects isn't efficient - and if you're doing agile, that approach doesn't work for scheduling out devs over the next 2-4 weeks.
I want to be able to schedule devs in half-day "chunks" across projects, based upon the time that I've estimated for them in my project project proposals. A forecasting tool like this would also help when evaluating bandwidth for future projects.
Thoughts?
-Sean
Scheduling and the whole time
Scheduling and the whole time tracking integration is actually one of the big challenges/needs. We tend to have somewhere around 2-3 bigger projects and maybe 10ish maintenance clients at any given time, and about 8-10 devs. Each project has its own Unfuddle "project", and Unfuddle now allows you to input hours (initial estimate, current estimate, and then enter time spent working on issues), but there is no actual time tracker, so if we wanted to use it fully, we'd end up tracking time in Harvest and manually entering it in Unfuddle.
Also, Harvest allows estimates per task type, and then shows you how close to budget you are, which is nice... but a little iffy for agile. And it would be much nicer if the estimates from Harvest could be automatically pushed into the estimates in Unfuddle.
As far as actually scheduling dev time, we tend to just ballpark it at this point, and try and make sure nobody is on more than 2 projects at any given time. Obviously not the most efficient way, but it usually works... would be nice to be a little more methodical though.
Break out of scheduling tool convio
This is a key discussion for me. Breaking it off here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/40180
Repository hosting
I have been on the same kind of quest, myself, and discovered these alternatives to Unfuddle:
I'm pretty much decided about Repository Hosting:
I am still on my free trial, so I have not much experience with it yet. Still, I HTH.
15 Project Management Apps That Help Web Development
Just got out: 15 Project Management Apps That Help Make Web Development More Efficient.
Experience With Multiple Systems - No Silver Bullet
I thought I'd post my thoughts on this based on a convo I had the other night. I've used tons of PM systems as I typically do large client development projects with a lot of subs. We always end up in multiple systems, so I've got to run the PM gauntlet on a few of these.
Here is a really good writeup on a guys blog about this sort of thing: http://obsessivecollaborator.com/ (just wish it was updated more regularly)
No silver bullet indeed... I
No silver bullet indeed... I am sad to hear OpenGoo doesn't integrate with SVN, that really takes it off the major winners list... I had someone scowl at me about Redmine, but I'm not sure exactly what it's negative points are yet!
The trend I'm seeing is that at least right now, it seems to be unrealistic to expect to find a single streamlined system that can manage everything (big surprise). ;-) I guess my next step is going to be a little more digging on how hard it would be to bridge Unfuddle > Harvest, and see whether that is really viable.
agilefant
Has anyone looked at agilefant?
Firefly
Not to be too much of a shill but we have a hosted, multi-project trac-based system:
http://firefly.activestate.com/
It supports some agile / scrum features, but more than that allows you to have several projects with different project participants. Might be useful for a shop like 'Bridge.
Does Firefly provide project integration on the dashboard?
Does Firefly provide some kind of integration on the dashboard? I mean, would I be able to see on the dashboard some sort of list of tasks extracted from all my projects? Because that seems to be the main problem with all companies that have their systems based on Trac: each project is manageable as an independent unit but you don't get a group perspective of milestones, tasks, issues... across projects. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
unfuddle does have a
unfuddle does have a dashboard that shows milestones, etc for all the projects, but i wouldn't say it's amazing ;-)
looks ok but...
yeah, we checked out firefly when it launched - it has a bit more of the integration we are looking for (time tracking, wiki) and has a nice interface, but not really all-encompassing enough to make a change worthwhile... plus we're not really huge trac fans so that sort of takes it out of the running ;-)
We use Trac throughout our
We use Trac throughout our organization for project management and svn integration. we also make extensive use of email lists with a web based archive.
We love the trac wiki and ticketing, with the SVN integration. We do not capitalize on all of the trac features, for example, we actually do not use the estimating and time tracking aspects of trac very much.
http://GregoryHeller.com
PointKit is a new option
Hi,
A friend referred me to this conversation and suggested I shared PointKit -> http://pointkit.com
At this point PointKit is on Beta so you are welcome to try it for free and give feedback, suggest features, etc.
The best way to describe PointKit is to imagine Basecamp and Freshbooks combined.
Or, Harvest with a stronger emphasis on task managing, all within a very well though-out beautiful interface.
At this moment, PointKit has no file-sharing, wiki, SVN integration, or reporting as I decided to release the product with the minimum feature set and built more upon feedback.
However, you will find PointKit it is quite valuable if you are a small team, or individual that needs a powerful To-do list seamlessly integrated with Time tracking and invoicing.
Like I say, it may not fulfill all Arianek's needs at this point but I thought it would be worth mention it as maybe some of you may find it useful.
I would like to also hear what would you like to see do so I can have an idea on where to concentrate development efforts next.
This is your chance to talk directly to the developer of one of these tools and be one of the first people to contribute to make it a great product.
Of course, in exchange of your feedback you will get a lifetime free membership to PointKit.. the least I could do ;)
Make sure you send me an email and refer to this conversation together with your feedback.
Note: If site is down for maintenance you can alternatively watch a demo video at -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8BW-7TxOS4
A vote for Redmine. It
A vote for Redmine. It doesn't look like much out of the box and many people find enough value in it to develop modules er plugins. It takes some investment and you can adapt it to improve to your particular situation.
hmmm sounds familiar
be well
how does this help us? what would be more helpful?
Small pieces loosely joined
I'm liking Harvest's great focus on time tracking + invoicing. Not something I would give up, esp. for the way you can add third party consultants etc. It's got an API, so I would go from there looking at features.
If you're going to be focusing on Drupal, then I think that Open Atrium + Harvest API would be a really good connection. But, this is the most expensive option for you (opportunity cost of your hourly rate for developers means that unless you do it for goodwill, you could pay for any hosted system for YEARS before you saw the ROI).
Having used Trac at the dawn of time, I can't really recommend it anymore.
Atlassian's tools are very widely used in industry, which is something else to consider. Lots of people love those tools.
Timetracking widget for Atrium
I heard through the grapevines that Fuse is developing a timetracking widget for Atrium. Perhaps they'd be keen on sharing it...
We are indeed working on a
We are indeed working on a few things. And of course we like sharing!
so you say...........that
so you say...........that would be very, very interesting... would just have to develop a bit of stuff to manage estimates and printing out invoices and BAM!
I will be working on this too
A time tracking tool for Atrium is on my list of tasks for a current intranet project. I'm not sure exactly when we'll be tackling this, but within the next three months.
@lil.destro I would love to collaborate or share info with you or anybody else that is interested ...
I'll start a thread on the Atrium community.
M.M.
Might I suggest a slight variation on this idea?
Time tracking's a beast. There are many open source projects (many in Drupal specifically) that handle 90% of the requirements, but are rendered useless for the 10% that they lack. IMHO, integrating OpenAtrium with Harvest would progress the toolset further/faster/cheaper than rolling our own Drupal-based feature.
You should check out Time
The Time module is designed to handle the complexity/flexibility you discuss through abstraction on the base class. For example, I wrote a Time handler for Quickbooks and would hope to see others do the same for e.g. Harvest, Freshbooks, etc.
For the reasons that Campsoupster describes, please consider joining forces on something extensible rather than starting fresh and falling down the rabbit hole on your own.
The Time module needs some love, but I understand that it's working well for folks. We would LOVE some funding to proceed with this work!
YES Thank You Allie
This looks like a great start.
I will be looking into this as a jumping off point when I dive into time tracking. First thing I see (exciting) is room to add a "persistent clock in/out" user interface. Like as a block or something.
You will hear more from me in the coming months or weeks.
Best.
M.M.
try redmine
redimine is a great PM software: http://www.redmine.org/
Geshan
Scrumy + Trac
We used to use Trac for its task tracking, wiki and subversion integration. When we went more agile, ie. we introduced weekly iterations, it became apparent that Trac's issue tracking has no nice and easy overview mode. For this, we have now settled on http://scrumy.com . I'd love to see an integration though of Trac tasks with the easy drag'n'drop UI of Scrumy.
Planigle
I just did a survey of 20 different PM tools: http://drup.org/20-basecamp-alternatives-project-management
Including some Drupal based offerings. The one that I have started using is http://www.planigle.com/ which is focused very much on a scrum/Agile approach and has a really nice user interface. Plus their main website is in Drupal :)
Planigle is open source and they will host your project for free with some limitations.
We at segments.at have pimped
We at segments.at have pimped our Open Atrium install a bit with home-grown features (for now these just package some modules) and we added some cck-fields for start-end dates and est/real/paid work hours .
With the help of modules like timeline and bubbletimer and Date+Calendar + some semantic-rdf tagging (mindmaps and delicious-like bookmarking for your atrium too) from a friend company called Pronovix (watch video here http://pronovix.com/category/all/open-atrium ) + numerous features from feature-servers around the world I think that in time Atrium is going to kick ass :)
Are we a drupal community or what :)
PS. Can't wait to see the 1st Aegir hosted (SaaS) sites with preinstalled atrium with features... It will be like all the above mentioned webapp players but Drupal-based!! Maan. NOTE: Many times the coolness and the use-case coverage are much better out of the box in specialized systems like trac/redmine or all the webapps out there. Be creative and do not worry. Use what is best - drupal is not always best.
PS2. I greatly appreciate all insight in this thread so far - many great webapps and packages up there. To those that cannot choose I would say - consider YOUR TEAM and yourself first and tools second - it is mostly what you really NEED in your workflow and then how fast are you able to CUSTOMIZE/SETUP it and then how much does it have Out of the Box... Use your feelings. Check usage/popularity.
STORM module for Drupal
The one that better matches my needs is STORM. It's a Drupal module at http://drupal.org/project/storm. It's base on Views and CCK so it can be customized to match your needs. Plus it's free, open source and supported by a friendly community around it. I'm using it for Agile (Scrum) methodologies.
Try out a demonstration at http://d6-storm.drupal-demos.org
---
How to contribute to Drupal.
I was wondering, how did you
I was wondering, how did you tailor Storm for Agile?
I'm debating between Storm and Assembla for project management, as Assembla really rocks. Please relate your experience with using Agile on Storm.
Thanks.
Twitter
-Michael
Redmine + Toggl from Nothing
At Palantir we've been trying to find the right set of tools as we've been to date relying on just ActiveCollab, and well it doesn't cut it, obviously. We've used all kinds of tools to manage time, task lists, resourcing, qa, etc. We're currently in the process of testing Redmine as our task management tool (primarily for development tickets) in combo with Toggl for time tracking. We've been pretty impressed with Redmine and Toggl so far, but we're gunna spend some time testing both systems out fully to make sure it meets our needs.
We chose Redmine b/c we really liked the features that Trac had, and visually it's great. It can be our client facing tool as well as our internal ticketing tool.
Toggl was chosen instead of Harvest because of it's reporting. Toggl is pretty friggin great. It handles so many different time recording workflows, and we have a pretty diverse bunch of folks here. It's important that the tool be flexible.
Redmine does allow for time recording and burn reports but we're not convinced yet that requiring our developers to record against tickets is the best use of time. We are hoping that through this testing process we will be able to determine if our PMs can track burn down against ticket completion with Toggl and Redmine. I'll update later once I know if it worked or not.
As an exploration we're investigating whether or not Toggl could record to Redmine. We even found a developer out there who's started the work on it and have started communications with them.
I promise to report back if we find any other tools, and how the redmine/toggl stuff goes.
thanks so much for this thread, it's been immensely helpful!
Colleen
-cc
Trac
At one of my main places of employment we use Trac, as it can do wiki, subversion, code reviews and is fairly stable. Our SVN(s) weigh in around 10,000+ commits for each branch and around 50 GBs in size. We also have over 2000 tickets with 10-15 concurrent users at all times.
Trac is pretty cool, but its a bit of a pain to maintain/upgrade. Lots of great features though
@caroltron I've never heard
@caroltron I've never heard of Toggl - will have to take a look at that, thx for posting!
We're still using Harvest and Unfuddle at Affinity Bridge, and experimented a bit with the time tracking in Unfuddle, as it allows more fine grained tracking of time against actual issues. But because Unfuddle still doesn't track time itself, it becomes a cumbersome double tracking procedure (with that and Harvest), which the devs HATE. ;) But it's provided really fantastic detail on time spent, and also is easy to visually look at how much time has been spent vs. estimated.
Unfortunately nobody's had time this summer yet to build a bridge between Unfuddle and Harvest (both have open APIs), but that's still what we'd like to do eventually, as once automated it'd both be easy to track and provide much more detailed reporting on time vs. issues/components/milestones.
Unfuddle Time Tracking
@arianek- I'm curious what you mean when you say "because Unfuddle still doesn't track time itself, it becomes a cumbersome double tracking procedure". I ask because we use Unfuddle's time tracking (http://unfuddle.com/about/tour/time_tracking) and find it to be mostly pretty awesome. The main drawback we have for time tracking is the same we have with their general reporting, i.e. it's hard/impossible to do audits from the unfuddle reports (for example, seeing what one person did in tickets/time tracking/repository commits over some period of time). However, we (really @aaroncouch) have created a reporting tool in Drupal that pulls customized reports for us that we can easily import into our billing/reporting templates (which are in excel), as well as create custom reports for whatever info we need. We'll probably release this code in the next month or two, but if you'd like to take a look sooner, send me an email/twitter dm/carrier pigeon and I'll give you a sneak preview.
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology
Hey Alex - I meant that it
Hey Alex -
I meant that it doesn't have an actual timer, whereas Harvest does - you chose which project/task you're working on and then start the timer, etc. Unfuddle has great time fields (initial estimate, current, final, etc.) but you still have to actually track the time somewhere else first (and also Harvest manages the billing/invoicing part, which Unfuddle doesn't do, at least not yet).
Your reporting stuff sounds interesting though - if it covers anywhere near what Harvest does, then all that would be left is to build the actual timer into Unfuddle and we'd be a lot closer to having it all in one place...
Thanks for the reply, and I'll definitely keep an eye out or ping you. ;)
Redmine Backlogs is very promising
Lots of people mentionned redmine, lots of plugins and some are helping agile but the best I tested so far and now use every day is Redmine Backlogs : http://www.redminebacklogs.net/
It's still in early stage of development and there are still some bugs, but its integration with Redmine is very well thought out and the current bugs are not really show stoppers (at least for me). It handles Sprint and Product Backlogs and has a nice Taskboard with a nice auto-update feature which makes it simpler doing agile with off site partners. It also ships with a burndown chart.
Give it a try and tell me what you think, I'd be curious to see what you think !