Saturday, September 29, 2007

Issue tracking systems for Agile development

I have been using Microsoft Project Server for my softwares projects, but i have never felt comfortable with it even once. I think it is not for software development, but is general purpose project management tool. Software projects are not projects like building an apartment, or making a road, or some others. Especially, agile development is much different than regular projects. We build something in first phase, and then adding new features and changing current modules to make better product, but not final one, and goes on in this way. I gave up my .NET job a month ago and now i plan to migrate back to PHP development with Zend Framework and Ajax technology which can absolutely be called as "Agile development environment". So i needed an issue tracking, or project management software that i can use for my projects to track its progress, roadmap, bugs, etc ... Found out Trac, which uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management, has integration with Subversion, has built-in Wiki system and detailed reporting tools. Trac is mostly used for agile web development projects, exactly the thing i was looking for ;) There are alternatives to Trac as well. During my research, i have compiled dozen of open source bug tracking softwares, most of which are minimalistic and simple to use, and for agile web based software projects. Here they are;

  • Trac is a web-based software project management and bug/issue tracking system. It provides an interface to Subversion and an integrated wiki.
  • Roundup is a simple-to-use and -install issue-tracking system with command-line, web and e-mail interfaces
  • Mantis is a free popular web-based bugtracking system, written in the PHP scripting language and works with MySQL, MS SQL, and PostgreSQL databases and a webserver. Known to be good one written in PHP.
  • Flyspray is an simple, web-based bug tracking system written in PHP for assisting with software development.
  • Whups is Horde's bug tracking/ticketing system, designed to be extremely flexible in letting users define kinds of tickets, different lifecycles (sets of states) and priorities for each kind of ticket, and mixing types of tickets into sets of queues.
  • EZ-Ticket is a PHP/SQL web based Ticket system, built with SIMPLICITY in mind. Unlike other ticket systems, this ticket system has the same functionality that other ticket systems have, without all the complexity, making it's use efficient and effective.
  • Eventum is a user-friendly and flexible issue tracking system that can be used by a support department to track incoming technical support requests, or by a software development team to quickly organize tasks and bugs.
  • BugTracker.NET is a free, open-source, web-based bug or customer support issue tracker written using ASP.NET, C#, and Microsoft SQL Server
  • phpBugTracker is a web-based bug tracker with functionality similar to other issue tracking systems, such as Bugzilla. Design focuses on separating the presentation, application, and database layers.
  • Zwiki Tracker is a simple issue tracking system which can be enabled in any zwiki. Issues can be created via web form, by mail-in, or by renaming an ordinary wiki page.
  • BUGS - the Bug Genie is an open source enterprise level issue tracking system, built on open source technology. "BUGS" enhances your development process, by offering an advanced tool to manage bug reports, feature requests and user feedback for your products.
  • JTrac is an open source and highly customizable issue-tracking web-application written in Java.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can not see JIRA on the list which is the world 's topest best issue tracking tool ever been developed.

We use it we like it. It is a wonderful tool i think. Just give a try.
Yours

bayarsaikhan said...

Hi Ibrahim,

As you see the list, it contains very few of them but for small or medium sized AGILE projects.
JIRA and BUGZILLA are for big projects as i understand. And JIRA is also not free as far as i know.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Trac is a great tool for those wanting an easy to use system that needs to be used by people other than programmers. I happily have my clients prioritising their own tickets into relevant milestones.

Even better, I have both my SubVersion and Trac hosted externally by hosted-projects.com, for only $15 per month. All with support for isolation of Trac and SubVersion between different clients.

Nothing else gets close to that price. I would love a hosted Jira installation but cannot justify the cost for the client base I have.

Unknown said...

If I were you - I would seriously dedicate 10-15 minutes of my life to evaluate JIRA. You can download it for 30day trial, and it's free for open source projects. Besides - after you check it out, the price tag is very reasonable, and I may even say cheap for such a great product.

I was responsible to replace a legacy system in our company to BugZilla, but after several days of Bugzilla installation I gave up. It's just too restrictive, too complex, the install is HELL. JIRA took about 5 minutes to install (including the download time).

bayarsaikhan said...

For liam,

I appreciate JIRA and BUGZILLA. They are both used widely in big projects and by big companies. No doubt. Industry level, proven systems. But i am evaluating system for small teams or organizations.

For Kesor,

I really do not prefer to give my sources, tickets, reports in someone else's hand.

Corey said...

I'm the author of BugTracker.NET, which is on the list here. I think it is "Agile" in the sense that it is easy to get started with it and very lightweight to use. It doesn't force you into setting up permissions, doesn't have required fields beyond a one line description of the item.

I created for me and my small team of developers. It wasn't aimed at management, MS Project types.

Here's what some other folks have written about it:
http://www.ifdefined.com/bugtrackernet_others_say.html

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