We user JIRA for bug tracking and release management and we have started using greenhopper for project management inside of JIRA but one thing that it lacks is the idea of user stories versus tasks in those users stories. Does anyone recommend other task board like agile project management tools that fully support users stories and tasks as well as being fast and simple to user. I started looking at targetprocess so if anyone has feedback on that specifically it would be great as well.
+3
A:
My company have been using TargetProcess for a while and we are very pleased with the product. Whenever we have experienced problems or bugs, we have reported it to them and the problem or bug is solved really fast. It's a great tool that worked well with SCRUM. I really recommend it.
Fossmo
2008-11-16 00:50:01
A:
take a look at jazz: http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=44577, http://jazz.net/pub/index.jsp
Ray Tayek
2008-11-16 00:51:38
+4
A:
TargetProcess is the least intrusive project mgmt tool I've used.
Todd Brooks
2008-11-16 01:38:12
I personally have had nothing but pain with TargetProcess. The UI is slow and extremely complicated, they continually make the app more difficult to navigate. I would not recommend TargetProcess to my worst enemy
Sean Chambers
2009-05-26 13:50:47
+5
A:
Whiteboard and sticky notes or note cards.
I know you asked for software, but depending on your environment it might be hard to beat the communication value of a publicly visible task chart.
But if you must have software there's also Rally and VersionOne.
tvanfosson
2008-11-16 01:59:06
We're using Rally. I find it to be useful but a bit _heavy_ at times. I dislike having to spend an inordinate time using tools that facilitate development than the development itself.
Matty
2008-11-26 20:38:30
+3
A:
A common anti-pattern for Scrum and XP teams is to break stories down into tasks, track those tasks, and at the end of the iteration notice that all tasks are done, but the user stories aren't (because they are more than just the sum of their tasks).
I highly recommend not tracking tasks at all. Brainstorm them for estimation, if you like, but always estimate and track whole stories. If a story is to big, break it down into smaller stories - that sometimes takes some creativity, but it's almost always possible.
You can use sub-issues in Jira to aggregate stories into bigger stories, although this isn't very well supported by greenhopper, as far as I remember. If your team is colocated, I would very highly recommend index cards on a white board, anyway - even additionally to Jira, if you have to (that's how we currently work).
Ilja Preuß
2008-11-16 13:24:40
@Ilja Preuß - no offense but i think you suggestion is a bit crazy. The ability to break things down into little tasks for estimating and tracking is critical to making sure the full list of things to do is covered. I do understand the anti pattern of forest versus trees
ooo
2010-07-19 17:48:49
A:
We use Jira with GreenHopper with no problems. If you have control over the configuration of your Jira instance, you can easily create a story issue type that allows having sub-tasks. During the planning phase, we drop the stories onto the next version, and split them into sub-tasks, estimated in more precise time and assigned to team members. If those tasks are separate you can also convert them into sub-tasks of a specific story.
Anthony Brien
2009-03-11 23:02:30
A:
In response to the very first question, Bright Green Projects has task board management and fully support users stories. http://www.brightgreenprojects.com
Rowan
2009-12-04 00:32:13