FogBugz or Rally (or other)

Question

I'm currently trying to decide on a bug tracking/project management system for a pretty small team of 2 developers, 1 QA, and 2 designers/product managers.

Our team builds web-based software and we have two products, both of which are now complete, but are continuing to be developed on (additional features, refinements, etc). We need to track projects, bugs, etc. We are big fans of clean simple software, but are willing to learn new systems if they will really help our efficiency and productivity.

We've seriously considering FogBugz and Rally. Rally's plus side is it's project management, and it's downside is the overhead of learning a complicated system. FogBugz doesn't seem to have any project management, but maybe there are simple conventions to help with this?

Looking forward to your suggestions. Thanks everyone!

Answer 1

While back I blogged on this topic comparing ThoughtWorks Mingle, Version One, Rally, or Team Foundation Server 2008 at http://blog.newagesolution.net/2008/09/choosing-thoughtworks-mingle-version.html

Hope the blog helps on your quest.

Answer 2

I can wholeheartedly recommend Fogbugz - it's big strength being: it just works! It's easy to use, easy to understand - it just plain works.

Fogbugz does have some project planning stuff included - most notably a feature called "evidence based scheduling" - but it's big strength (and origin) definitely is bug- and issue-tracking which it totally excels at.

Marc

PS: also, there is mounting evidence that there will be a Fogbugz 7 release sometime Real Soon Now, and it's a good bet the project planning and management stuff probably will be one of the areas being improved (just my guess).

Answer 3

I would not really say there is no project management in fogbugz - it depends on what you mean by that. You should also contact fogbugz before making the decision - I think a new version is coming soon.

I use the hosted (free) version for startups for two codebases and I really like it. I have no experience with Rally.

I have used trac and it is acceptable, but you might not like the lack of project management.

Answer 4

One thing I love about fogbugz is that it doesn't force me to be complete.

I can add a task "Do open ended high priority thing for boss" with no associated data, and fill in the blanks later.

I find other trackers/managers try to force me to be complete up front, which often means that small or ad hoc tasks don't get added.

Answer 5

We've had good luck with TeamSupport. Easy to use, great interface, hosted, etc.

One of the big differences between TeamSupport and others (like FogBugz) is that TeamSupport is also designed for the help-desk crowd. This lets the customer service staff use the same piece of software that we are using and really helps our internal communication.

Answer 6

A very cheap alternative but nonetheless also a great bug tracking tool we use is Fixx, i found the interface a lot more intuitive then most others. It has KISS written all over it yet is advanced enough to be satisfactory.