Do you prefer Analog or Digital Issue / Task Management?

Question

Do you prefer digital issue management software (FogBugz, Sharepoint, etc) or analog workflows (recipe cards, white boards, etc) ?

Answer 1

I think you are kind of comparing issue tracking and design here a bit? I would do issue tracking with digital and design analog. You don't want anything to be lost with issue tracking but you don't want anything to slow you down with design.

Answer 2

We are using Bugzilla, which has some huge benefits over analog methods:

• Issues have a history, nothing is ever lost
• Issues can be linked through dependencies ("I have to fix this one before I can fix that one")
• Issues can be cloned ("This is similar to something I have done a week ago")

I don't see how you could do good issue tracking "on paper".

Answer 3

It's fine to do brainstorming with analog, but it's always a good idea to put something into a searchable digital format that you can archive somewhere for easy reference in six months when you're wracking your brains over something that you know you thought of back in the design phase. This also comes in handy six years later when someone you've never met is doing software archaeology on the code you wrote.

Answer 4

I prefer to use software for long-term storage of project information (bugs, requirements, etc. all go into TFS). Post-it notes, whiteboards, etc. are for short-term storage (e.g. daily priorities, meeting notes).

Answer 5

We do a bit of both. As we have a lot of out-of-house customers with select access to FogBugz we do our main case tracking in FogBugz.

But to keep focus and give ourselves something tangible to work with on the daily stand-up we have printouts of the first page of all assigned cases in the sprint and move those around on not-done/done magnetic boards.

Of course all discussion on the cases are kept in FogBugz. History on the cases is important.

Answer 6

For my money, analog beats digital while in the design phase.

However, once more than 5 people are using or developing on the project, you need to have a digital issue management, just so you can keep track of what everyone is doing at once, and have a history.

If you're smart, you bring something useful to the analog sessions to document them digitally. One of my favorite meeting-hacks is to snap a cameraphone shot of the whiteboard before erasing it.

Answer 7

We're using Bugzilla and Team Foundation Server. My favourite is TFS because of its tight integration with visual studio and MS Build.