{"id":1922,"date":"2009-10-03T11:21:44","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T15:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2020-05-09T06:47:24","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T10:47:24","slug":"bug-tracking-and-software-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2009\/10\/03\/bug-tracking-and-software-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Bug Tracking and Software Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I think that my company\u2019s structure needs some structure in order to stay cool without swamping us (me) in support calls. It occurred to me that many development teams use some sort of bug \/ feature \/ request tracking system. Broadly, instead of selling 10 more copies and struggling to stay current with support, I would like to sell 200 more copies and have a well organized system for improving the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I googled around and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/articles\/fog0000000029.html\">read this<\/a>, which seems pretty enlightened. I like the personal accountability aspect. If \u201call of us\u201d own something then none of us is responsible for it. So I picked up a demo copy of the product he mentions, and I\u2019m trying it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Turns out that my company already has three different solutions in use for this purpose:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>* <a href=\"http:\/\/bestpractical.com\/rt\/\">RT<\/a> by best practical \u2013 allows us to funnel emails into a tracking system \u2026 where they tend to languish. It fails (from Joel\u2019s article above) because: <em>The golden rule is that only the person who opened the bug can close the bug. The programmer can resolve the bug, meaning, \u201chey, I think this is done,\u201d but to actually close the bug and get it off the books, the original person who opened it needs to confirm that it was actually fixed or agree that it shouldn\u2019t be fixed for some reason.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>* <a href=\"http:\/\/basecamphq.com\/\">Basecamp<\/a> is a web based project tracking system that provides file sharing, email lists, and time tracking \u2026 but very little in the way of planning support. We\u2019ve also sprawled out into like a billion projects for our seven person team \u2026 and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s recoverable without a forklift redesign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>* <a href=\"http:\/\/trac.edgewall.org\/\">TRAC<\/a> \u2026 which seemed like a good idea at the time, but it falls down in terms of being way too tied to \u201cwhat line of code did you change\u201d and less focused on \u201cwhose problem is this and when are they going to fix it? Again from Joel: <em>Avoid the temptation to add new fields to the bug database.<\/em> Yeah, look at TRAC for a great example of why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, the consultant part of my brain knows that any tool is useless unless you <strong>use<\/strong> it. There is no piece of software written that will \u201cdo my job.\u201d All I want is a tool that will make the job I\u2019ve already decided to do, easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So here are my questions for my smart and beautiful friends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>* What do you use for bug \/ feature \/ request tracking?<br>* What do you use for project management? Same? Different?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think that my company\u2019s structure needs some structure in order to stay cool without swamping us (me) in support calls. It occurred to me that many development teams use some sort of bug \/ feature \/ request tracking system. Broadly, instead of selling 10&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-management-leadership","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1923,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions\/1923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}