project manangement software chosing war - developers vs PM

Question

Hello,

We are constantly trying to find tools that helps us better manage our projects. But all the time we have a dilemma, we find some tools that are better as far as the developers are concerned, but suck as far as project managers.

The best example is: as a developer the best choice would be TRAC

as a Project manager i would go for something like Web2Project because it has things like multiple projects, companies, Gantt charts etc.

But it would be a big time loss to use both of them, at least in my opinion. Have you guys found a tool that suits the needs of both worlds, and preferably open-source :D

thanks a lot

Answer 1

Have you looked into Trac plugins? You can find some at the Trac website's plugin list or a site called Trac Hacks.

You mentioned Gantt charts, and I see a plugin to enable Trac to do that at Trac Hacks, although I've never used that plugin, so it might not be what you need. You can handle multiple projects with multiple Trac installs, as well. If you have other needs, there are a ton of other plugins for Trac on both sites, so you can probably find something to meet most your needs.

Answer 2

I think the problem is that you are trying to use a single piece of software for completely different groups that have completely different requirements.

PM software should be chosen by the Project Manager. Dev's don't need project management, they need task lists with priorities and ways of reporting status.

Whatever you choose should have some type of work item interface that the dev's see. Depending on your environment, I would recommend finding something that integrates source control, bug tracking, etc into the mix.

Answer 3

The short answer is: No, there is no tool that provides both developers and project managers everything that they would want, as a matter of fact, there's no single tool that does a great job for either.

Trac is more issue focused with integration into source control and, if configured properly, able to be auto assigned based on workflow. PM tools are geared more towards longer, larger tasks.

In order to developers/PM's to work nice together, there first needs to be a top down (project based down to line of code) management tool the takes into account the various project management and SDLC approaches with their 100's of local variations. Can a tool like that be created? I think so, but looking at the last 10 years of attempts it seems to be a bigger job once you get into it.