
Ask HN: How do you track issues, todos, features? - karjaluoto
For the past few months building our app, we’ve used BugHerd for three main purposes:<p>1. Tracking issues<p>2. Posting to-do items<p>3. Noting new features<p>BugHerd is great for client websites, but we feel like it’s not quite right for a more long-term build.<p>Specifically, our lists get so long (we have a few hundred items in the Backlog) that it becomes difficult to find certain issues. Plus, organizing them isn’t that smooth.<p>I know some use Jira for this sort of thing, but it feels pretty old-fashioned. And, I know there are many other products, but researching all of them seems daunting.<p>So, I’m going to cheat, and ask: What do you use? Why? Do you like it?
======
aturek
At my company, over the last 6 months we've tried Trello, Pivotal, and
Sprintly. At past companies I've used Trac, Jira, and Asana. And for the last
7 years I've kept a daily todo.txt, where I append today's date and the 1-2
things I want to try to get done, adding detail as I figure out plans. (This
is the only task tracking tool I've recommended that coworkers adopt and are
actually using years later)

I've come to conclude that no tool for this will ever satisfy everybody's
needs perfectly. Part of that is that everyone has different priorities for
their task tracking tool. And frankly, some of those priorities are directly
contradictory. What's trackable and detailed to a project manager who lives in
the task tracker is heavyweight and clunky to an engineer who sees it as a
bookkeeping annoyance. My personal todo.txt is exactly me-focused and only
changes when I want it to, but it scales to exactly one engineer.

I think you just have to pick something and use it. Changing tools just adds
friction and costs you familiarity. Ideally, the people who have to interact
with it the most choose the best tool for them.

~~~
dorfsmay
Same here, I have to track at a personal level, I'll update the Jira etc...
But I still have to track it. I've tried Task Coal, org mode, Remember the
Milk, etc... But at the end of the day I always go back to a Simple text file.

For family stuff (eg: shits that has to be done before we go on holidays)
we've been using Google doc which allows concurrent access all sort of
devices.

I don't use Google doc for my personal list because I'm still more efficient
at whacking text in vim. I need evil mode for Google doc :-)

~~~
collyw
Actually thinking about it, a google doc with my todo list has been about the
most efficient tool I have used for task management.

~~~
dorfsmay
Not just TODO lists:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10610840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10610840)

------
web007
I would recommend Jira - get the GreenHopper plugin to make it less "old-
fashioned", but it's the right tool for the job. You can customize it if you
want to go down that rabbit hole, but the built-in workflows should get you
started. Projects, epics and tags should solve the problem of finding issues.
Set each client as a project, or more likely as an epic so you can have one
view for your developers / designers that splits by client.

Currently using Pivotal Tracker after coming from a Jira shop, and it's awful.
Others seem to like it, but it's too simplistic for my taste. Even something
as simple as "A blocks B" isn't possible, and seems to be by design.

~~~
ashwinaj
+1 for Jira. It's clean, simple and easy to understand.

~~~
orless
I'm a fan of JIRA but wouldn't really call it "clean, simple".

------
lobster_johnson
We're using Asana at the moment. It's decent, but flawed, so I'm not happy.
We've been through Pivotal, Lighthouse and Trello, and one team is still using
JIRA.

That said, our use case is explicitly tracking backlog — _work_ that needs to
get done. My philosophy is that any issue tracker that is treated as a
database and that disassociates items from assignments will decay into a pile
of rot almost immediately. Especially bugs. Don't put anything into the
database that does not represent work to be done within the next few days.

So we use Asana as a collaboration tool that brings together stakeholders,
information and assets. Typical workflow: Account manager brings issue to
attention of project manager, who brings it to attention of developer, who
does the work, sends it back so customer can be notified. Task goes away.
Another typical workflow is an actual project, with steps to complete and a
launch timeline.

The only way, in my experience, to manage _bugs_ is to give them to a project
manager. The PM triages: Forget or hide the unimportant ones away in a drawer,
and fix the important ones ASAP. Bugs that linger aren't important enough to
consider. Sometimes everyone is too busy and the bugs are important but not
critical; schedule a single day of the week when everyone puts aside their
main work and plow through the bug backlog. We call them "bug days".

For new features, use something else, like Google Docs. But it will rot, too.
It's better to do whiteboard sessions that are turn into discrete tasks and
discrete projects.

~~~
gull
Can I ask what you dislike about Asana?

I haven't used it. What's the biggest feature of Asana, and how is it flawed?

~~~
lobster_johnson
Oh, where to start!

So Asana is a todo list. Everything is a task. Tasks are assigned. Tasks can
have subtasks. They can also have comments, tags and attachments. The top-
level organizing construct is the project; projects have tasks and also team
members. Oh, and within a project, tasks have order (something which doesn't
really work in practice).

So far so good. Most of the problem with Asana is in the UI. Asana is all
about lists. Unlike Trello, for example, Asana only has one view: A vertical
list of tasks. This list UI is very much like a classic outliner or even text
editor, in that there's almost always a cursor that's editing something. You
can use the keyboard to navigate around. This leads to some immediate
weaknesses: Since there's usually a cursor, typing something will typically
have the text land in some random, unpredictable place. Hitting Enter creates
an empty task. So if you're not super careful, your lists will be littered
with errand characters and empty tasks.

This information-dense view means there is never a place to "rest". I can't
keep a single task open. There's a split screen that allows you to maximize a
task, but it's not quite the same. So in Asana, you never feel like you're in
a specific location. It's always the list. It's easy to get lost because
there's little or no sense of hiearchy, even though the data model is
hiearchical. This UI is doubly problematic because Asana is a heavy single-
page app (it takes several seconds for it to "boot") that doesn't lend itself
to being opened up in multiple tabs. So it's not very web-app-like.

Really, this kind of editor-like "live" UI seems more appropriate for personal
todo lists, but not for collaborative ones. In my mind, a task is a kind of
mini project, and a task with subtasks is a _bigger_ kind of mini project
(usually you use these for multi-step tasks like launches or big features),
but Asana treats them all with equal lightweightness. In fact, in your "My
Tasks" view (also a list), Asana will comingle subtasks and top-level tasks,
making it confusing because subtasks don't carry their context with them — so
"My Tasks" will list something like "Add CNAME", which on its own makes no
sense, until you click on it and see that it's a subtask of "superproduct.com
launch".

There are lots of minor flaws. The editor is horrible — pasting and undo/redo
tend to make the cursor lose its place, there's basically no support for
pasting code (no syntax highlighting), the keyboard shortcuts are non-standard
and weird (they use tab (!) instead of alt or ctrl as a modifier), and you
can't turn off the stupid rich text mode (no Markdown). As mentioned, startup
time is bad, and the main page loads as a POST, so if you restart the browser,
the browser needs to ask if you "want to submit this form", which is bizarre.

The more I talk about, the less I like it. Unfortunately, so far I haven't
found any alternatives that look good enough to migrate.

------
anonymous_shoe
I use a TODO.md doc in the project root as long as it's <50 lines of todos and
issues. You can use `- [ ]` to create checkbox lists in markdown.

For a larger project I use GitHub issues with tags.

~~~
tomswartz07
This is a similar method to what I use as well.

I even wrote a Vim syntax plugin for the todo files:
[https://github.com/tomswartz07/vim-todo](https://github.com/tomswartz07/vim-
todo)

------
mmwako
This is a fascinating problem, the "Project Management Tool dilemma": there
are hundreds of software alternatives out there, and there seems to be another
one coming out everyday, and nonetheless there is always demand for new
solutions, and no clear leader in this segment (altough Jira is pretty ahead,
and Trello is the strongest newcomer). I've been struggling myself trying to
find one in my new work context. I guess there are so many project use-cases,
that it's impossible to have a one-size-fits-all solution (and get the pricing
right!).

It could be fun to have a global online poll to see who's using what, to know
which tools are the most popular, just out of curiosity.

------
JasonCEC
We've been using Phabricator[1], a spin-out of Facebook, and love it. It's
perfect for technical teams, and usable enough for the rest of the company.

[1] [http://phabricator.org/](http://phabricator.org/)

~~~
jon-wood
Even if you're not in the market for management software you should go and
look at their website. I really want to use it just because they had the balls
to advertise Awesome Edition and Serious Business Edition.

------
tedmiston
We use Jira Agile, like a lot of startups. The metrics portion is really
sophisticated which is a plus for management, but from my experience most devs
hate working with Jira.

I've also used Trello with teams which I find more pleasant especially if
designers need to give you assets, for comment threads, etc.

I mostly use a simple todo.txt for my own personal projects. Though I've been
by somewhat migrating these into Bitbucket issues.

A few months ago I wrote a Python script called Jello (Jira + Trello) to copy
our sprint tasks from the Jira API into a Trello board via their API. This was
pretty awesome and satisfied the devs, but I didn't find the time to build
2-way sync, so someone manually updated Jira at the end of the sprint. Someone
built an even better version called Gitlo (GitHub + Trello) [1] which front
paged momentarily last week.

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572701)

------
jblake
I'm a solo developer.

For short term, post-it notes and legal pads. There's something for me about
having those TODO's constantly in my face. I always get them done. And it
feels so good to crumple that ball of paper and throw it into the bin. Each
sticky is 5-30 minutes of work.

For longer term/planning: Trello. When I'm ready to tackle something, I
convert the Trello card into a sticky note, archive the card, and get to work!

Sometimes when I am feeling super unproductive/lazy, and have a buildup of
sticky notes, I'll convert all those sticky notes into a neat 1 page legal pad
page - handwritten, with checkboxes. By the time I'm done doing converting
(and crumpling up all those sticky notes!) I feel rejuvenated enough to work
on that second pass.

I love throwing stuff away. When I am SUPER unproductive, I'll tear away the
blank part of the sticky note and throw that away.

~~~
SyneRyder
Any trick you use to get all your tasks into Pomodoro (<30 min) size? How do
you handle a coding task that might take half a day?

------
8ig8
Still a happy user of FogBugz.

[http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/](http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/)

------
phankinson
I'm actually working on a new start-up to try to take a stab at this problem.
Would love to get some beta users, if any of you are interested:
[http://hellofocus.com/](http://hellofocus.com/)

~~~
edent
Could I politely recommend that you put some screenshots on your front page.
Generic statements and stock photos really don't make anything more than a
superficial impression.

I'd like to get an idea of what I'm signing up for before I commit.

~~~
phankinson
Thanks for the recommendation. We do have some screenshots on the features
page. Ideally next iteration will have more focus on the screenshots. Much of
our design is changing at the moment while in beta.

------
Ologn
I worked for a company that used Request Tracker for this stuff. It worked for
our purposes. I also used it in another context after that.

For the free software projects on the web I'm familiar with, many use Bugzilla
to deal with issues and feature requests. Also popular, although a little less
so, seems to be Trac. They are all over the web -
[http://bugzilla.redhat.com](http://bugzilla.redhat.com) is one example for
Bugzilla,
[https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/latest](https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/latest)
an example for Trac.

------
robbiep
Looking at some of those 'complex' management tasks it seems like a missing
feature would be to poll your repositories to look for TODO: 's and list them.

For instance, I'm the sole developer of my web backend, iOS and android
platformy thing and while android studio has good TODO: Integration sublime
and Xcode require plugins, it would be awesome to have something that looks at
all three repositories and tells me where i have scribbled a TODO: somewhere;
or even just for comparing the different method names of my app across
platforms -

Perhaps someone knows of some such tool already out there that does this?

~~~
random_rr
Might not work for your development needs, but such a feature exists in
PHPStorm/Webstorm, and I'm guessing probably all of the other IntelliJ
products.

There is a 'TODO' tab that shows you all 'TODO's in your project directory.
Like so: [http://i.imgur.com/TW4jXN8.png](http://i.imgur.com/TW4jXN8.png)

~~~
robbiep
Yes, that's exactly what android studio has (to my understanding it's just a
modified IntelliJ environment). But I want one that knows about all three Of
my repositories (all of them relating to the same project). A global IDE, if
you will. Or at least a global coordinator

------
edimaudo
I concur with dangrossman, you need to think through your process & systems.

~~~
sageabilly
Yup, seconding this. You can't implement a solution without thoroughly
understanding what the problem is. Also, be sure you're looping in everyone
who would be working with the new system at some point to get their thoughts
and feedback- after all, if they have to use the system every day you want to
make sure it actually helps instead of hinders them!

------
pkfrank
We use Trello with a slack integration on certain boards.

------
cskakun
The search for a perfect todo, project management app and bug tracker is the
perfect distraction. I think what we want the most is the ability to schedule
and forget about it until the time it's ready to be done. I've used Todoist,
Trello, MantisBT, my own home made todo list and a dozen others. Nothing ever
beats pen and paper or just a good review. I'd say Trello, Todoist and a good
bug tracker are enough for any small team. Larger teams, I can't speak for.

------
huuu
Imho Jira is one of the best tools voor large projects. From brainstorming to
development to support. But maybe it feels too old because it can be difficult
to setup?

------
cweagans
Something simple like Wunderlist or Asana is a good choice, IMO. The less time
you spend dealing with your PM tool, the more time you can spend on actually
doing important things.

I've also heard this argument if you're running a product, though I'm not sure
how on board I am with it: don't record user requests. The important ones will
be requested enough that you'll remember it.

~~~
win_ini
The important ones do keep making it to the top - it's important to have the
pattern recognition and telling others that even though we're saying "not now"
for a feature...that can change if it comes up more and more often. The hard
part is that people don't tell you when the issue occurs again because they
"know you already said no to that..." It's a tough line to follow.

I direct all feature requests go on a list that CS owns and we review it with
our customer team, vp eng, myself and qa in a weekly meeting. We talk about
the problems, get shared understanding and we collectively agree if we can say
"not now". "Worth looking into". "This is easy let's do it now". "This could
be tough or easy - needs more info". This is basically what partly feeds a
short backlog (~20 items) that gets prioritized during sprint planning. Plus
longer term roadmap stories.

Roadmap - a ppt with: Next 3 months (most detail) Next quarter (high level,
use cases identified) Next Half (broad themes)

------
Killswitch
I use GitHub issues and labels. Every issue starts out with a backlog label,
when I pull it off the backlog, I assign it to a team member, add in-progress
label, and the assigned member will go through it and apply an estimate label
saying how long they think it'll take to do. When they're finished, they'll
submit a pull request mentioning the issue, and apply a spent label signifying
how long it actually took them.

All issues also get scope and type labels. Type signifying bug, feature,
hotfix, etc. Scope saying what piece of the software it's for.

We also use milestones for releases. Each release gets a codename, and that
codename is used for the milestone and all backlog and in-progress issues are
applied to the release it's meant for.

Right now there's no UI for anything, but we're building internal tools that
create a visual of this whole system for us.

------
meesterdude
Sounds like you need a general project management system? I would give
basecamp a go, if your needs are simple. If your needs are simpler, a text
document is great and can take you fairly far. It works for a lot of people
and use cases.

Most of the time, as a dev working on a client codebase, i do just fine with
github issues.

But for everything else, if you're like me and have a lot of different things
to capture and track, I haven't found anything that cuts it. So I'm close to
launching a data platform for when you want to have your own workflows,
analytics, monitoring and reporting of... anything. So you could use it to get
an email every day of your open todos, or to nag you until you workout, or
just simply act as a place to keep bits of information.

------
pythongonode
I use Things for my todo list. Been using it for years and once you get the
flow down it's amazing.

~~~
sotojuan
Things is the perfect midpoint between a simple todo list and a complex,
overwhelming GTD-like system. You can easily use it however you want, and the
iPhone syncing is great.

------
OopsCriticality
I use and highly recommend Fossil ([http://www.fossil-
scm.org](http://www.fossil-scm.org)). It can handle each of your main purposes
out of the box with ease.

It's got a good command line interface, a built-in web interface, it's self-
contained, and the model is easy to understand. It's simple enough that I can
use it as a replacement for RCS for personal stuff (like a LaTeX document) but
it scales to large projects too (it's used by SQLite and Tcl/Tk, for example).

It's also trustworthy, with a solid, portable, and well-tested code base—not a
surprise since it was originally authored by D. Richard Hipp. I have no clue
why it isn't more popular.

~~~
fundamental
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be all that much discussion about fossil compared
to a few years ago. It is clunky in spots (e.g. the command line interface to
tickets), though its a pretty interesting option.

------
crcw
I will highly recommend Redmine. Using it for almost 2 years and love it. It
has pretty much all the features of Jira but absolutely free of cost.
[http://www.redmine.org/](http://www.redmine.org/)

------
rylee
We've been using Taiga[0] recently. It's pretty nice, and free for now. I'm a
big fan of how easy it is to loop it into our workflow.

[0]: [https://taiga.io/](https://taiga.io/)

------
orless
I use JIRA for my day work and GitHub Issues for my open-source projects.

I'm a long-term JIRA user (and even somewhat evangelist). There are probably
many much more "modern" issue trackers over there, but JIRA worked extremely
well for me for many years. There are a few big problems with JIRA, though
(field-level security and limited issue hierarchy).

For my OS-projects I've found GitHub issues to be more than sufficient. That's
what I'd call clean and simple.

------
chetatkinsdiet
We are a bit bigger (150 people or so, so take this with a grain of salt).

We use Zendesk to track bugs. It's nice because of its assignment features.
That said, I find it terrible about everything else.

Feature requests are currently in UserVoice, however we're about to move over
to Aha.io instead as we use that for product roadmapping and it's easier to
move a request right into the plan and then push into rally (we use rally
instead of jira for sprint planning)

------
prateekb
Our team uses Thoughtworks Mingle
([https://www.thoughtworks.com/mingle/](https://www.thoughtworks.com/mingle/))
Its got a simple, rich interface and is free for a 5 user team. You can create
your own card walls and track features/bugs/to-do items with different types
of cards. Works really well for Agile teams.

------
naveen99
Excel sheet on office online. Urgent tasks go on the top left. Quick tasks go
up.

Microsoft Outlook contacts: put the word todo in the comments field. Any notes
also in comments. Everything is searchable. Common items come up together on
search by keywords.

A todo folder in the file system full of text files backed by a Git
repository. This is kind of the equivalent of microsoft outlook contacts for
me.

Flags on emails.

------
kevindeasis
Trello + Slack + Github. 1\. Github to track issues, INTEGRATE it with Slack.
2\. Trello for your agile board, INTEGRATE it with Slack. 3\. If might also be
a good idea to write code that emails and sends a text message to all the
mobile phones of your developer.

Using those tools felt like a breath of fresh air. They have a mobile app and
web app that has an amazing UI/UX.

------
xn
I use LiquidPlanner because of 1) ordinal prioritization 2) confidence
interval based estimates 3) easy to track project status 4) easy to review
developer workload

More details in
[http://xn.pinkhamster.net/download/New_Process_and_Tools.pdf](http://xn.pinkhamster.net/download/New_Process_and_Tools.pdf)

------
agentargo
//TODO: fix this thing below here

Been mulling around making a vim plugin like vim-flake to put the todos into
the quickfix window on :w

~~~
logn
I use this feature in Eclipse. A GitHub plugin would also be cool (i.e., open
an issue when a new todo appears; close it when it's removed).

------
dyarosla
I like to use [https://kanbanflow.com/](https://kanbanflow.com/)

It takes the usual kanban approach that Jira and Trello use, but is contained
in a no-nonsense html5 friendly, mobile friendly website. No complaints, free
to start, and premium features aren't costly if you need them.

------
thecrumb
Iron out your process. Use free tools that make it easy to export your data if
it doesn't work.

Trello (other kanban tools) - very flexible. Gitlab. Free, open-source, host
it yourself.

Jira is a powerful tool, it's also very complicated and expensive. You don't
want to blindly jump into that commitment.

------
devopsproject
[http://ifdefined.com/bugtrackernet.html](http://ifdefined.com/bugtrackernet.html)

has just enough fields, features, and customization to be useful but not
overwhelming.

------
crisopolis
I use Trello for my side-project.

I like putting the tasks into the the different columns so I have a Ideas,
Open, In-Progress, Shipped.

Yes, I like Trello but sometimes I forget about it and yeah life.

------
tommob
We're using Usersnap and it works great for larger projects. With a easy to
use filtering / tagging & searching features it simple to find certain bug
reports.

------
JohnLeTigre
As a sole developper, I use TodoList from AbstractSpoon I am totally addicted
to it.

For a team, it's probably not what you need though.

------
karjaluoto
Thanks for all of the feedback and responses. This is helpful—and I have some
reading to do. :-)

------
epa
I've used Wrike a lot on bigger teams, works great. Not a fan of Asana.

------
ypeterholmes
We use redmine for development ticket tracking and basecamp client side.

------
wozmirek
Zenhub (integrates with github), Bugsnag.

------
snappy173
sticky notes!

