Best way to manage projects

Question

What is a best way to organize many software development projects, interaction with clients, project documentation, sources, emails, knowledge, time tracking, issue and features tracking, support for releases and versions etc. for a small company?

For me (and I believe for many others) it is obvious that it must be some sort of web-based solutions. It would be great if it could provide an interface for iPhone (if not, it is also OK).

Important thing: it must be hosted on our servers, so PHP + MySQL is the best platform so far.

I have found the following system to consider:

• http://www.activecollab.com/ (but I didn't found issue tracking as well as support for releases and versions, so it is not the best match for software development company)
• http://www.mantisbt.org/ (Great tool, but no project planing...)
• http://www.twproject.com/ (didn't try yet, but it has very strange interface)

But none of them is a 100% solution for me.

It also should (but not must) support SCRUM

We have about 25 people in our team and about 50 from client side. At once we run about 3-7 projects (some in dev. phase, some in support).

So, my questions: does anybody knows any good web-based system that gives everything software development company needs? I believe this information will be useful for many of us.

Answer 1

Trac with Agilo plugin might be a good option.

Here is link for Trac pluigns, some category are:

• Code Documentation
• User feedback and discussions

Answer 2

I think it really depends on your company size. I used activecollab for a while but it never really convinced me and then they made it commercial anyway. There is an open source fork of it called ProjectPier.

Even if it is not MySQL + PHP but Ruby On Rails Redmine convinced me the most from all tools I tried (and installing the ruby module into apache is a question of 5 minutes). It is simpel and yet has anything I need (including Eclipse Mylyn, SCM integration, E-Mail Notification and time tracking). With a little RoR knowledge it is easily customizable, too.

The most popular Open Source sollution is probably Trac. It is written in Python, so it is not a PHP either.

But maybe it makes sense to consider a non PHP sollution. I didn't find any PHP open source tool that had the functionality and simplicity of Redmine or Trac. If you don't mind a hosted sollution Basecamp is probably the first address to turn to (never tried it though).

Answer 3

I would recommend FogBugz

They have a very interesting (admittedly not everyone's cup of tea) scheduling system and is apparently supporting scrum.

Their support for release management is something i'm particularly fond of, but i should also say that i have very little experience of other similar systems.

Another feature that I like is the ability to link different e-mail accounts as well as pure HTML forms to different projects.

Oh, and it is not a MySQL/PHP solution.

Some of the features are:

• Issue tracking
• Project planning
• Scheduling
• Customer support
• Wiki

References: Scrum and Fogbugz / Fogbugz questions / FogBugz Knowledge Exchange

Answer 4

For another pespective - having used many of the above solutions, and liking them very much for bug tracking, wiki documentation and tracking information - I tend to move towards keeping much of my project "meta-data" (summary information pulling together wiki, bugs, schedules, communication) in spreadsheets now.

For those now climbing onto the top rope of the ring preparing for a takedown, here's why... I come from a programming background, and one of the best books I read early in my career was The Pragmatic Programmer. One of the tenets they preach is finding a fundamental editor that you like, and get good with it (for various Very Good Reasons). After trying (frustratingly) to port and adapt my PM/Dev Management approach multiple times to multiple systems, I've extrapolated that Pragmatic tooling philosophy to the product/project management world I now inhabit. To stretch the metaphor, my editor is now Excel.

I can't guarantee that for any company I work with, they have "Software Project Management xyz" or "Bug Tracking System abc" with the proper plugins - but I can be darn well sure they have Excel or some variant available. I know if I get ninja-like with that tool, I can continue to use it - and focus on the project, not the tools.

This spreadsheet approach comes with some caveats:

• Excel done poorly can suck. We've all seen that. Watch for bloat and stupidity.
• Keep the bugs in the bug tracking system, the wiki stuff in the wiki. The spreadsheet is meant to pull this stuff together, not replace it.
• Keep it readable. Don't stuff everything in just because you can. Summary sheets are good.
• Try to standardize your templates and macros meaningfully for tasks and information, to maximize reuse over time and projects. Just like good programming.
• Back it up - use a document management system if you can. This approach isn't in the cloud or hosted centrally by default, so be aware of that.

Answer 5

You might like to consider http://targetprocess.com/ We use that in my current job and it works pretty well, from a developer point of view. I'm unsure as to whether it supports your installation requirements, however.