software enhancements tracking

Question

is bug tracking different than feature enhancement tracking? if so, what tools do you use to track newer features to be added to existing applications?

Answer 1

Shameless plug, we use FogBugz where I am now.

I really don't see too much of a difference between the two. They're still "work tickets"

Bug tickets describe something that's broken and needs to be fixed.

Feature tickets are something that's being requested.

Bugs might get higher priority than features; but that's for the PM's to decide.

Answer 2

At work, we use the same software (in some cases, a personnalized version of MantisBT) for both bug tracking and feature enhancement tracking : for us, they are actually quite the same :

• there is a demand
• is goes through a workflow of acceptation
  • in one case, reproduce the bug
  • in the other, decide whether or not we'll do the evolution
  • in either case, decide which priority should be aissgned to the ticket
• code / commit
  • with integration between the bug tracker and the version control system
• mark as resolved
• QA

Using the same process and software is simpler both for developpers, management, and clients ; and I don't see why we wouldn't track every modification to our code / application the same way.

Answer 3

Conceptually these are different but you can use same tool to do the tracking. Conflunce's JIRA does it that way as pretty much all other bug tracking tools such as Bugzilla

P.S. I can't believe people saying that bugs and feature enhancements "are the same thing". No, they are not. Bugs are defects and feature enhancements are not, pure and simple. What makes it confusing is probably that both of these can be tasks, tickets or issues and most of the software referred to here is Issue Tracking Software

Answer 4

I've used MKS and seen other people use other systems. Most often, both are tracked in the same system as "bugs" and "features", often with an ability to create links or relationhips between the two. For tracking purposes, "bugs" and "features" are different enough to be tracked differently, but similar enough to use the same containing system.

Answer 5

Typically, I have seen both bugs and feature being tracked in the same database or tool. A different way to think about these things is not "bugs" vs. "features" but, rather, "changes to be made to the software product."

Of course, also typically, bugs receive a higher priority than features within the database, although that is up for the team to decide and work through with their customers.

Answer 6

They (bugs, feature enhancements) are both "issues" in need of tracking when developing software. It's logical to have them in one tool so you can cross-link (feature x introduced bug y etc...).

We use Roundup issue tracker for tracking both bugs and enhancement requests. It's free, open source, flexible to adapt/customize (written in Python). It's been great for our needs.

A live example can be seen at http://bugs.python.org/ (the official Python language bugtracker). They also gather 'feature requests' as well as 'compile errors', 'bugs', etc...

Answer 7

Consider a program that does nothing, here feature request == bug. I think that they are the same thing: only priority should be used to decide where should you work first. As an example, in my current project, a customer is requesting a feature, which he is willing to buy with millions of dollars. Comparing to the corner cases that do behavior ugly but have easy workarounds, this feature got bumped to the front of the list.

Usually a company has their own tools, I had good experiences with Microsoft Product Studios. Never tried FogBugz, is there a good free one?