agileagile-project-management

Agile issue and feature tracker software


I'm looking for the "best" agile-friendly feature and defect tracking software. Currently, we are using fogbugz, but this is not terribly useful for teams following an agile methodology as far as I can tell. There are better tools for this, such as Greenhopper for JIRA. I've used JIRA before, but I'm wondering if there are any other tools that are better.


Solution

  • I'll relate my experience, hoping it will be helpful.

    We started piloting Scrum using cards on a wall. We figured we would switch to a tool once we started doing it for real. We set up our defect tracker (Redmine) with User Story and Tasks, and have a way to create a burndown in each project. What we found, however, is that you don't really get the transparency of a physical information radiator. People walk by the card wall and can see the team progress. Very few will check the web site as often as they inspect the card wall. So currently, we do the card wall for the current Sprint and track the Sprint in Redmine, which gives us historical information.

    As we scaled up to more teams than we have wall space for, we realized we're going to need a tool that can work like a card wall and be a 'real' agile tracker. So we looked at several tools, and our short list included Version One, Rally, and Mingle. Either of these products might be best for you, but ultimately we chose Mingle for various reasons.

    The one thing I worry about is the loss of the card walls. It's hard to explain the transformative value that these public information radiators have had. The teams get lots of visibility from the Product Owners as well as management and other stakeholders. I worry that the visibility will be lost if we switch to using solely the tool. I may have to build dashboards that go up on wall-mounted monitors, acting as a high-tech version of the card walls. One thing we did do was procure some touchscreen whiteboards that will allow teams in standups to move virtual cards in a familiar way, using the tool's drag-and-drop card wall interface. I'm hoping this will allow us to retain the team communication and interaction benefits we've seen when gathered around a card wall.

    Anyway, good luck with your quest!