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What Are The Best Tools for Project Management ?

Started by Fred Brunel · 10 months ago

This is a question I ask to everybody: what are the best tools for project management ?. I never found a good answer — especially in the corporate environment.

I’ve tried to propose Basecamp to my company but the confidentiality of online tools make people nervous %2 ... Continue reading »

17 comments

  • macournoyer

    2 years ago

    I've tried all sort of tools and always ended up with Trac. In combination with the commit hook allowing to close a ticket from the commit message, I think it's the most efficient way to deal with task, features, bugs and documentation (on the wiki). The probleme is: people have to use it! So be prepare to write a lot a lead by example.

    Also, I always use CruiseControl so everyone know that breaking the build is BAD! and fixing it is always priority #1.

    And at http://www.standoutjobs.com we're starting to use Campfire for sharing code and ideas. with great success I think.
    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    2 years ago

    Hi Marc,

    We also use nightly builds and continuous integration as part of our development process.

    I like Campire very much. What makes Basecamp great is the integration of these services in the context of your project.

    But we still haven't made our mind.
    reply
  • Jon

    2 years ago

    There's no need to be scared off by online project management tools, I've been using http://www.huddle.net which has excellent online security features. They don't have anything in their terms of service about changing rules, seems to be a good, secure solution. It's also loads easier to use than Basecamp- you should def check it out.
    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    2 years ago

    Hi Jon. Thanks for the info about Huddle, I will definitely have a look.
    reply
  • Sdeluca

    1 year ago

    Hi fred,
    it was obvious for everyone here at mobiluck.com that efficient data manegement tool was part of the success of our dev effort. As soon as i joined the companyy i've made basecamp hq as the central db of the company. No more plethoric-hard-to-track to do lists. No more mail torrents, no more i-told-you-thisk-2-weeks-ago thing. Now everything is stored once, up-2-date. Specs included.
    That's not perfect though. But productivity dramatically improved.
    reply
  • Robin

    1 year ago

    Hi Fred,

    about the activeCollab project, you're comment is a bit misleading. The licence will remain free, but like many projects of its kind, you will have the possibility of paying for commercial support. It's using a derivative of the GPL. Hopefully, we can convince the author to switch to GPLv3 now that it covers a loophole the HPL wanted to seal, thus making its licence compatible with more software.
    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    1 year ago

    @sdeluca Hi steph, thanks for sharing your experience with Basecamp. I do think that Basecamp is great but is just not easy to convince people to use it in the corporate environment like you apparently did.

    @robin I don't think the activeCollab 1.0 will be under GPL, it will be a commercial licence only -- or do I misunderstand something?
    reply
  • Robin

    1 year ago

    http://www.activecollab.com/blog/1/why-is-activ... says:

    "Making money. I find it normal to expect something in return for your work. activeCollab will always be free but there will be commercial support as soon as we hit 1.0 for people who need a little more that community support, you can hire me to customize activeCollab to fit your needs or help you integrate it with system you are already running on your server. Or you can just see what I can do and hire me for some project not related with activeCollab."

    It's pretty rare to go from a free licence to a proprietary one and to announce it in advance. It doesn't help get collaborators on board :)

    Also, it's not GPL but HPL, which is a derivative of the GPL, much like the Affero Licence, which addresses distribution as a service. The GPLv3 too addresses that loophole, that's why I'm hoping it will be changed from HPL to GPL with an upcoming release.
    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    1 year ago

    Thanks for the update Robin, I completely missed that. It's a really good news by the way. I'm very excited to try the 1.0 version.
    reply
  • Robin

    1 year ago

    Glad I could help :)
    reply
  • Stephen

    1 year ago

    I think you are out of luck Robin, it will not be moving to the GPL with version 1.0, quite the opposite.

    The page you quoted was posted on 18 June 2006. Since then Ilija Studen has had quite a change of mind and is moving the software to a commerical license starting with the largely rewritten verion 1.0. A free to use version will be available but it will be of the Lite variety, while all "business features" will be available on the commercial license. The source will be available but from the sounds of it, under a pretty restrictive license.

    0.71 is still available under the GPL and Project Pier are trying to fork from that code. But from the looks of the website, I've personally no hope of that project taking off anytime soon.

    See these posts for clarification:
    Status update
    Status update followup
    reply
  • Robin

    1 year ago

    I guess I should have kept a closer eye on this thread. Oh well. Thanks for the update Stephen although you're quite right, not exactly the twist I was hoping for.

    I don't care about freeware as you probably figured. It's free software (open source, call it what you want) for me or nothing. Of course, the licence is always in the hand of the developper and I respect that.

    I'm surprised I didn't see the followups you linked to. I'm not perfect :)

    Thanks also for the link to Project Pier, I will keep an eye on that.
    reply
  • ceciiil

    1 year ago

    Hey Fred,

    Just found out that ToughtWorks (Martin Fowler company that just hired Ola Bini from the JRuby project) offer an Agile PM tool : Mingle.

    Maybe it's worth having a look http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-...

    Cheers - c.
    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    1 year ago

    Thanks for the link Cecil, I'll have a look.
    reply
  • Slava Imeshev

    1 year ago

    Fred,

    No project can go without a build and release management system. Our Parabuild may be a good option to address this need: http://www.viewtier.com/parabuild.htm

    Regards,

    Slava Imeshev
    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    1 year ago

    Thanks for the link Slava.
    reply
  • Slava Imeshev

    1 year ago

    Fred,

    You are welcome.

    As I see it, automated build and release management (this includes Continuous Integration) is the last untapped source of significant increase of productivity in the software development life cycle.

    Tools-wise, we've gotten it covered from the requirements gathering to CM and issue tracking. Build and release management adoption is still (yet?) dragging behind. Only the finest software organizations are already using it.

    Regards,

    Slava Imeshev
    reply

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