
Ask YC: What do you use for Project Management? - Flemlord
I've been fighting with Microsoft Project all day and I'm getting fed up. What does everybody use for project management? We do Agile development.
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nostrademons
Trac.

If you're a small enough team, you can also get by with a notebook or stickie
notes. At my last job I just used a 5x8" spiral notebook, wrote down tasks
when my boss asked, and checked them off when I was done.

It's kinda ironic that I've got a more formal process with my one-developer
startup than at my last job, but I found that I needed to write lots of little
design notes on each feature and cross-reference them as I was implementing.
Flipping through pages is a real pain. Plus, it's really satisfying to just
say "fixes #11" in a commit message and have the ticket automatically closed.

~~~
ktheory
We've had a lot of success with Trac. Over the past 18 months, we've tweaked
our milestones/iteration process several times, and each time we've found Trac
suited to our style.

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TFrancis
Here's another vote for Trac.

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thorax
This feels a lot like the other posts I've responded to in the past 4 days.
Sorry if I'm getting redundant.

We use a scrum-like backlog methodology based on ROI:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122203>

At some jobs, I've used very complicated spreadsheets for this method (to
track dependency costs, etc), but lately Google spreadsheet works pretty well
for individual assignments and status. There are some Scrum-based software
solutions out there that somewhat support this approach. (e.g.
<http://www.acunote.com> ) There's also a scrum plugin somewhere for Microsoft
Project, but I haven't used that either.

It depends on the size of your group, probably, what will work for you. Also
it depends on the size of the upward corporate group that needs reporting.

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dkokelley
I use "Project Management" or "Planner" available in Ubuntu's repositories.

Their site's at <http://live.gnome.org/Planner> if you like, but I don't think
it's available for windows.

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mtoledo
We use unfuddle (<http://unfuddle.com/home>)

It's a bit basecamp like, but it has a better support for tickets and reports.
We moved from basecamp to unfuddle 4 months ago.

And it has an svn repo built in it also which updates your tickets based on
your commit comments:

A commit with a message "Closed #44, #45, assign #54 to Joe" does all that in
the tickets repository, which helps developers who don't like visiting the
management application too much.

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terpua
Ditto to mtoledo's comments. Handy for virtual teams as well. We moved from
basecamp to unfuddle a few months ago as well.

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edu
I don´t know what _everybody_ uses. I survive with a Moleskine, a pencil, a
rubber and a set of pens of different colors.

~~~
sgoraya
I love my moleskines and 3x5 index cards! Though I mainly use it for my todo
items, notes and basically any idea that I would like to capture (tech and
non-tech alike).

That said, I have been using MS Project for quite a while - At the game
development company I worked for prior to my startup, MS Project was used by
everyone. From the Devs, to the Producers and platform account managers (SONY,
NOA, MS) - So I learned how to use it and have been using it ever since -
Granted it is bloated with a ton of features that I never use, but IMO, it
gets the job done and is used by a lot of people - I can shoot over an *.mpp
file to to any of my colleagues to keep tabs on all aspects of our projects;
\--

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mixmax
For the last year I have been thinking about how to do a proper project
management app on the web - and once you start thinking about it you realise
that it is a lot harder than you think. Basically the problem is that if you
have 100 project managers they will manage in 100 different ways. Which makes
it extremely hard to do something that will have exactly the features each
manager need.

As it is now you can basically choose between project (great with gannt charts
and dependencies, but you can't do much else and have to spend loads of time
updating it), excel (lots of lists but nothing else, and no interaction with
other people), or something like basecamp, which is pretty simple and really
just an extended to-do list.

Whatever project you do, and whatever you choose it never quite fits, there's
always something missing.

The real killer, of course, is that even though you need a gazillion features
for all the different sorts of projects and managers it still needs to be
simple to use.

So this is what I spend my time developing - who knows it might even work...

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gnaritas
Basecamp from 37signals, love it.

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mattculbreth
You need to use Rally. There's a free version--go try it now for an iteration.
You can trust me on this.

<http://www.rallydev.com/>

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cpinto
Mingle <http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence>

~~~
hsuresh
same here. and its free for less than 5 users

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joseakle
i´m trying fogbugz, after getting nowhere with msproject or basecamp. i´ll
report to you when i have more data

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mdemare
I'm using fogbugz, like it a lot!

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spif
How have you integrated it with your SCM?

That was the major stopper for us in using FogBugz. We're using git and trac
now, but would love something that tracks burndown.

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mdemare
Haven't, would like it (I'm using git too) but it wasn't a showstopper.

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gibsonf1
StreamFocus.com (Integrated Project/Workflow/Action Management with workflow
organized files, Critical Path management, Collaborative GTD, etc.) Private
beta launching in March :) (First 30 days free, then Personal version starts
at $20/month, Business version starts at $40/month)

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zemariamm
We're using redmine, <http://www.redmine.org/>

~~~
jamesbritt
Same with me.

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pkaler
Index cards and a Moleskin. But that's because I'm a one person team right
now.

I'll move to FogBugz eventually.

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henning
Backpack - <http://www.backpackit.com>

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DarrenStuart
I am a one man band so I just use <http://backpackit.com> not going to be that
useful for teams. basecamp is pretty cool.

have you looked at liquid planner that was showcased at demo 08? that looks
pretty tidy.

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wamboldt
"I use "Project Management" or "Planner" available in Ubuntu's repositories."

Same as me. Free, and easy.

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jeffw
We're using Target Process (targetprocess.com). They are basically a Rally
competitor, but we found their product much simpler to use and much cheaper.
We love it.

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DanielBMarkham
Bunch of cool stuff out there -- Basecamp seems to be a fave.

I'm writing an Agile PM tool as a side project right now. Let me know if you'd
like to beta it.

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nreece
For smaller projects: ΤΙΜΙΟΣ Gantt Designer @ <http://timios.net/Gantt/>

For bigger projects: MS Project

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walter_b_marvin
I've always wanted to charge Bill Gates for third party testing services. MS
project is all right for simple gant charts I guess...

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slim
we use dokuwiki with SQL plugin in conjunction with flyspray and webcalendar.

since both webcalendar and flyspray use a database. it's very easy to make
dashboards.

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redorb
backpackIT.com is nice -

