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I have been looking around for relevant project management software in regards to this, but it is pretty much impossible to find, at the fault of how meta searchs of google work. When I search a phrase like "Project Management for Software Development", it only shows information on "Project Management Software". Mostly just All around Project Management software.

I have tried a couple different types of software, but none seemed to be useful for these type of projects. I have used: collabtive, Microsoft Project, and even Basecamp. none of which seemed to fit the bill.

The best I have come across is Atlassian JIRA, and the plugin project manager. It is nice, but I dont really have a server that can handle it that great at the moment. 2-4gb of ram is pretty expensive.

Are there any other Server, or Desktop Software based Project Management Programs that are either; directed at software developers, or would at least be really useful for a software developer, but not necessarily directed at being for that use.

What are your guys thoughts on this? Does anyone here know of such programs? I am sick of filling my office with sticky notes..

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I can tell you what not to use: Clarity. Ugh, ick worse software I have ever had teh displeasure to use. – HLGEM Aug 29 '12 at 22:31
Try looking for bug trackers. We used those at one job in liue of project management software. – HLGEM Aug 29 '12 at 22:32
Can you clarify what you'er looking for? What features are you looking for in a Software Development oriented tool that are not there in the general purpose tools? – Chris Quenelle Aug 30 '12 at 6:10
@ChrisQuenelle I am basically looking for something simple, something I dont have to spend forever trying to learn all the features. Something I could basically add updates like they were "tweets" or something, and have a timeline, and maybe a gaant chart so I could look at the overall progress over time. It would be nice to be able to upload resources. Maybe I could merge code like a Git/svn repo. OR screen shots of graphic work. Or just something I can see the results. Bug tracking is nice.something that isnt necessarily aimed at a whole team, something just to keep me on track and organized – insomnia Sep 1 '12 at 23:47
Also I would like to note. It would be nice to have something really simple, like I said. Maybe I could upload it to my server, but if its a server app, I want it to not require a lot of resources.. I would rather just have a standalone application on my own PC. But something on my server that doesnt take up a lot of resources would also be very desirable. – insomnia Sep 1 '12 at 23:50

5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Give http://trello.com a try. It is good for agile development.

Check out this article that explains how they use Trello for software development: http://www.uservoice.com/blog/founders/trello-google-docs-product-management/

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Okay thanks I will definitely check that out. – insomnia Sep 1 '12 at 23:48
I think i am in love with Trello so far. I am really liking it. If it is truely free like it states then I think its the way to go. It seems to have all the features I need, and there isnt a learning curve. It allows uploading of content which is great, nice overview of whole project, and nice update system. Its great because its hosted on their own cloud servers, and best of all it has Mobile Applications for use on the go. Seems pretty perfect at this point. I think this might be the choice to go with. – insomnia Sep 2 '12 at 0:23
Action Method by Behance is similar, both are really nice. Behance is a Design Industry as well, so its a little more focused at Design which is pretty perfect. – insomnia Sep 2 '12 at 1:04
i added extension on Google chrome : Trello calendar and its very helpfull – saber tabatabaee yazdi Feb 12 at 5:19
up vote 2 down vote

Project management is project management, whether for software, construction, making movies, putting on plays, or anything else. Software developers (I am one) are always thinking "but my world is different" when it comes to project management, and looking for the magic bullet software tool that will make it work. There isn't one.

Learn and understand the processes and procedures and checkpoints you need to manage your project, and you can make any of the tools (or even a notebook full of paper and a wall calendar) work for you, regardless of whether you're using a waterfall, iterative, lean, agile, scrum, or any other overall process. If you don't understand how to manage a project, no software is going to work.

My personal experience is that Atlassian Jira gives me the closest match in software to the way I want to work with my team. I've looked at Trello and it looks like might be pretty nice for a smaller project. MS Project can be used, but it is really easy to get distracted (either by yourself or upper management requirements) into managing the MS Project Plan into looking good instead of actually managing the work.

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wow its been a minute since I checked this and lots of good answers. But your getting me wrong here man, I am not thinking like this at all.. I dont think there is some "project management software that is going to make me on top of game or something".. I just want something that is more simple, something I don't have to spend forever learning this software, wasting valuable time I could be using developing. – insomnia Sep 1 '12 at 23:43
up vote 1 down vote

FogBugz by Fog Creek (also the makers of Trello) is great. At the heart it FogBugz is a bug/issue tracking tool. However, because software project management deals with managing LOTS of tasks (you can think of each function/feature as a task) you can use FogBugz to help you manage these tasks. (Actually they've added many features that aids in project management many years ago to FogBugz). I find the Evidence Based an amazing feature. It essentially uses a developer's/team member's history of time estimating vs. actual to help you forecast when you can really ship your product!

Check out their project management features.

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I just heard of that recently. That seems like an option. – insomnia Sep 1 '12 at 23:48
I would choose this, but the price is a little steep.. I could pay 10$ hand down, for a year license for JIRA. This is over 25 a month. – insomnia Sep 2 '12 at 0:28
up vote 1 down vote

I recently moved my project management from Trello and FogBugz to JetBrains YouTrack and TeamCity. The primary reason for the switch-over was a lack of integration between the daily workflow (Trello) and the long-term planning (Fogbugz).

YouTrack handles feature and bug tracking with built-in support for Scrum and Kanban workflows (Kanban is essentially the same workflow Trello provides) so I now have one central place to manage the entire development process. Additionally, TeamCity is a build system which tightly integrates with YouTrack. Bug and feature cases can be commented, updated, and closed by including simple comments within my daily commits.

YouTrack is available free for small teams as both a cloud service or local install. TeamCity is free for small teams on a local install basis. Both products are cross-platform Java technologies.

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I think it requires too much resources though. I wanted to use YouTrack, because I love JetBrains, and it seemed like the next best choice under JIRA. But I am not sure I can run it on my server, as I dont know the resources it requires. Havent been able to find anything in regards to that. – insomnia Sep 8 '12 at 23:53
I'm working with fairly small internal projects, roughly 50 cases open at a time with only 1 concurrent user, and the Tomcat process takes up 200mb to 250mb at any given time (running as a service on Windows 7 x64). CPU usage for the process hasn't jumped beyond 10% - that's during the TeamCity commit checks. Otherwise it stays in the 0-5% range for me (high-end c2e x9650 processor). – A. Smith Sep 9 '12 at 8:03
hmm.. I wonder if I could run them successfully on a small 768MB RAM, OpenVZ Virtual Private Server? I wonder if it runs on Linux with the little resources it needs on your Windows System..? I guess ill give it a try. I have the YouTrack JAR file, just failed miserably with JIRA so I didnt think of trying with YouTrack. Ever ran them on a linux server before? – insomnia Sep 9 '12 at 22:38
Sorry, haven't ventured there yet. Would love to know how it goes for you though. I'll eventually move both YouTrack and TeamCity to Linux and migrate the internal DB to MySQL. – A. Smith Sep 12 '12 at 6:39
up vote 1 down vote

I have used a LOT of these systems - Track, Trello, Jira , MS Project and the like.

For me, one clearly stands above the rest: Pivotal Tracker

I consider it to have met my personal bar by being so neat I started using it for my own personal web sites and projects, just as a great and quick and easy way to stuff all my idea, bugs and chores.

I like it because:

  • it's simple. You can add a new ticket in seconds, which is NOT true many other systems.

  • it's minimal. It's not bloated with features that get in the way of just developing software.

  • it's 2.0 Uses lots of ajax (well) and with collaborators you can see the changes being made in real time if the project is open on your pc.

  • it's clear. There are only three types of tickets - features, bugs and chores.

  • it provides management with REAL feedback on how the team has performed historically (via points for stories and a velocity that reflects points over time to see what the real pace as as opposed to the 'we think we can get this done' approach.

  • it is good for Agile Project Development

  • non-technical users quickly embrace it and like to use it.

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Wow, this is really nice. I would of never realized how nice Pivitol Tracker is. I like it alot, and in fact I think I like it better than Trello. Trello may be a better choice just for my Graphic Designs or something. But this is cool, I am going to give it a try, see how my workflow goes. And thanks for the detailed explanation, I am new on this SE site, so I dont have enough to upvote you at the moment unfortunately. – insomnia Sep 8 '12 at 23:51
i added extension on Google chrome : Trello calendar and its very helpfull – saber tabatabaee yazdi Feb 12 at 5:20

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