Ask Slashdot: Issue Tracker For Non-Engineers? 144
purplie writes My non-technical spouse is an analyst in a small county government department, a handful of people plus some contractors for projects. Their project/task management is mouth-to-mouth, sticky notes, and emails, and it's driving them crazy. I want to suggest something like an issue tracker. It would have to work for tasks both large (year-long investigations) and small (arranging catering for a meeting). The issue trackers I'm familiar with are too software-development-oriented, or make too many assumptions about your 'agile' religion. Are there any good options for non-engineers? They use mainly Windows and have iPads. I don't like web-based tools, but that might work better for them because they don't have administrative privs on their machines. Something that also incorporates a wiki might be nice. There will be resistance if it's not really easy to use.
Redmine is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Redmine is pretty flexible and has worked for us across multiple disciplines.
+1 for redmine (Score:5, Funny)
I've successfully managed to trick a bunch of psychologists into using redmine for issues management. These guys are the epitome of non-techies.
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+ another one for Redmine. Works pretty well, easy to customize, relatively clear, and sends a bunch of email to ensure that relevant parties see updates.
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I'll probably get down-modded for this, but Sharepoint is a pretty capable tool for issue tracking
I was working at a non-profit that used MS Office as their primary authoring tool
We were able to license Sharepoint for a pittance and decided to support it on an enterprise level
My group used Sharepoint lists to track all work in progress, publish white papers and best practices, and produce new website for the organization (via Sharepoint365)
I would suggest that they speak with their software rep for MS apps
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If you get down modded it will be because your post is unrelated to the GP you replied to, likely just to end up higher on the page.
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Thanks for the pointers, but the 'parent' that I replied to was identifying a project tracking software and there seemed to be discussion about getting non-technical people to us such software. I felt that it was an appropriate place to discuss experiences with 'other' software
and it was close to the top of the page :)
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No downmodding from me.
Sharepoint seems to be universally hated by the techies I work with. Maybe it's well matched to non techies.
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My initial reaction to it in 2005 was Gah! what is this FrontPage?
The most recent work we did in it relied heavily on Angular and a palette of templates that made for wordpress-like presentation
We had very spotty adoption by nontechnical people, i.e. a smattering of people who would take the time to learn how to configure their group pages, but most people coming back to us for anything like adding/configuring a list or other web part
Eventually we handled it like mini-dev projects with 2-3 one week sprints
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While Redmine definitely has plenty of plugins and features for "agilism," it's easy to bypass or ignore them. It also allows SSO for Windows users with fallback to user+password, sends change and assignment notices by email, and has a Wiki built in. You can auto-create recurring issues if that's needed (think assigned weekly/monthly tasks), and there's a knowledge-base plugin that we've also found useful. It is project centered, where you can assign subsets of users to projects when they're cr
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Asana (Score:2, Informative)
https://asana.com/ [asana.com] is the most pleasant issue tracking software I've used.
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Trello (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider Trello. It's not strictly an issue tracker, but it's very good for this sort of thing and already popular outside of software circles.
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it looks like a mess.
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Trello does look like a mess, but it looks like
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You do know that you're not allowed to have negative opinions anymore, right?
Of course, but you're expected to write a post explaining your contrary position, ideally backed up with a cite or your personal (anecdotal) experience with the product in question, not just mindlessly downvoting something based on the fact you played with Trello for four minutes, or that you disagree based on ideology.
OP: We use Trello for the tasks you're asking about, and it works well. I'd say the only hiccup is it's a
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Trello is *just* on the cusp of awesome though! I've signed up and will be watching that site's development closely.
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Another +1 for Trello, due to lack of mod points. It works well on mobile and ipad and even has an app (I think). And the metaphor is dead simple to use.
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For quite some time my team used trello as our software issue tracker before we got Jira set up. It works quite well.
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So sorry to hear you ditched something useful, simple and well-designed for Atlassian's overpriced bloatware. What was the appeal, how particular buggy versions of Java are required for some of their shi or how batch job threads like mail queuing stall out for no reason? Maybe put in a cron job to restart the festering pile of shit every morning and hope to god it holds together until quitting time.
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Well I did not install it and nor do I maintain, but it is way better (to use) than bugzilla from my experience.
If it were up to me we would be using GitLab issue tracker (which we also use to store our code). but my company is one of those obsessed with time-keeping every single thing we do so they can charge the client by the hour and Jira has some plugins that do all the processing for them.
Honestly it has a bunch of stuff I don't use that just gets in the way, but I got used to it after one week and the
It's used in Stack Exchange (Score:2)
I personally like Trello which is what is being used in Stack Exchange (makers of Stack Overflow and its ilk) http://blog.stackoverflow.com/... [stackoverflow.com]
We are an online company: we’ve been remote from day one and still to this day over half of the team (aside from sales) works from home. The only way to make that work is to keep the nexus of activity online: in chat rooms, Google Hangouts, Trello boards, etc. This keeps everyone on equal footing, whether you’re in the office or working from home.
The article was the one that introduced me to the tool and I am impressed by it. Though it still needs some explanation of how to use it. I suggest you look at Kanban but don't mention it as a methodology etc... just explain how to group the work and be done with it.
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I looked at Trello but then settled in on ProjectPlace instead. Mostly because the category views were easier to manage.
http://todo.projectplace.com/ [projectplace.com]
Both are good tools for managing task states though.
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Got a citation for that? 'cos it sounds like a pretty solid endorsement.
Trello (Score:4, Informative)
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I'd post as anon too if I was recommending Jira to "non-techies".
google docs (Score:2)
set up spreadsheets for each issue and use the cells to track progress
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set up spreadsheets for each issue and use the cells to track progress
I endorse this idea, especially since OP expects to get a good software solution from a bunch of people he just insulted by implying they're religious nuts.
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set up spreadsheets for each issue and use the cells to track progress
I might be picky, but I find a spreadsheet that takes 1 or 2 seconds to refresh each time you enter a new number in a cell to be a bit irritating.
If you want a spreadsheet solution just use Excel (or LibreOffice) to avoid your users dying of boredom.
Good luck chasing that unicorn (Score:2)
I've used Redmine in the past. Web-based, open source, pretty easy to use. Some of my colleagues hate it, so YMMV
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Redmine is great. I use it for all our internal IT projects and also service desk. On desktop computer there is not really a need for native client as web based version works OK. For tablet and phones there are few native clients that use Redmine API and once I checkd them RedminePM worked very well for us.
Task scheduling is not issue tracking (Score:5, Informative)
You don't want issue tracking - you want task scheduling and task completion methodologies. The non-engineer have schedules to fulfill which are usually not associated with a deliverable but a task. If there's no deliverable, there's no bug, no feature, i.e. no ISSUE. So tracking issues loses the focus. Issues aren't always tasks in trackers and that's why those are so tied to code, since they mold issues to whatever a release date/agile software development needs.
Unlike issues, tasks always translate to effective actions to undertake someplace, sometime, with someone, for whatever reason.
Post-its are still used nowadays because they do their job representing tasks, and their physical form, order or the fact it is in the trash can imply its relevance, priority, date/time-frame and status. Tell her to keep using tools she's comfortable with, but customize a variation of KANBAN for her team's specific needs. And then maybe decide if a web platform or a physical board make more sense in her context, and the learning curve is acceptable. Post-its + a board or Trello are a good place to start.
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This ^10 - the OP is trying to force a squa
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yeah, gotta agree. without the methodology, no one will use it. plus, if the users don't even have admin on their machine, good luck installing stuff and keeping it installed when the real IT department finds out.
go for the offline solution like a whiteboard. put it in a location where everyone has to pass at least once a day, or in a meeting room where everyone goes to update it together on a regular basis.
either way, make a point to use it and stick with it, but be flexible enough to make changes to the m
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Todo lists, like Todoist might also work.
Hundreds of todo apps turned up with the smartphone wave, but I believe that's the one that best integrates across platforms (Web, Mobile, and even some specific OS apps and MS/Open Source Office suites. Oh and the cloud, I think there's a Gmail plugin too). The main benefit of Todoist though is, like Trello, that they are very easy to get into, but can evolve if you need the added complexity.
See it like this: you can simplify a code-centric issue tracker like JIRA
Jira and Confluence (Score:1)
We use these at work and they tie in together nicely. Jira= issue tracker, Confluence= wiki
I'm not crazy about them but they get the job done.
Request Tracker (Score:1)
RT is very flexible, though there's a bit of admin overhead to get everything set the way you want it. Email integration works well, and on the user side, it is quite easy to use.
https://www.bestpractical.com/rt/
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Seconded. If the larger scope is for project management and all it entails then redmine et al work fine.
But if one wants a 'trouble-ticket' system that integrates well with email and pagers etc... RT works very well. It does take some time to get it right, but worth in IMO.
OpenAtrium (Score:4, Informative)
OpenAtrium is an open-source intranet-in-a-box, its v2.0 version making use of Responsive Design to support all devices, and includes calendaring, an excellent issue tracker, RSS reader/publisher, and can be customized for all kinds of unique purposes (or not).
www.openatrium.com
It is the issue tracker used by the current White House for its issue tracking and collaboration purposes.
http://www.kavehmoravej.com/bl... [kavehmoravej.com]
https://developmentseed.org/bl... [developmentseed.org]
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Yes, actually. And considering the previous collaborative environment, it has been a big improvement.
Citations:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/1... [salon.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Jira Atlassian (Score:2)
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Jira doesn't seem super-suited to non-software tasks at the moment, though it can be wrangled into it (it'll still display a lot of software dev-specific info). They are, however, planning to create views for it sometime this year (I think - can't find the reference) which could be used to e.g. coordinate a management team or similar. So probably not super useful right now, but maybe in six months take another look and it might just beat the competition.
Tracks (Score:2)
Maybe something like Tracks [getontracks.org]
or any of the other pre-packaged issue trackers from turnkeylinux.org [turnkeylinux.org]
My few cents... (Score:4, Informative)
There are already a lot of suggestions for which particular package to use, so I'll contribute my thoughts.
I've used RT [bestpractical.com]. It worked.
The main feature that helped me move my (financial services) office from word-of-mouth to proper tracking is that RT supported submitting issues by email. We already used internal email extensively for other workflows, so it was easy for me to convince people to send an email to <project>@tracking.<domain>, and they'd get an emailed response showing the ticket number and a link where they could follow the progress.
RT let me run different projects (which in my case usually meant only 1-3 people) separately, and each project had nice charts showing how many open issues they had to work on. Managers loved that, because they could see who was overloaded and by how much. Each user was also able to create their own dashboard to display when they logged in, so they could get a to-do list first thing in the morning.
For each project, I could modify what information was needed when a ticket was created. Almost the entire ticket form was customizable, so that was adapted to the project needs. For our financial advisors, they had simple forms with a customer name and a description field. Traders had buy and sell forms with security symbols, amounts, account numbers, et cetera.
I haven't been in a position to manage very many trackers, so maybe these features are standard-issue. Maybe something else will work for you, but like it said, RT worked for my needs.
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I agree.
Our organization relies heavily on RT.
At first, I hated it. It's ugly, and written in Perl but have grown to really respect it's capabilities.
It's easy enough for the managers to poke around in and do basic administration, but flexible enough for the engineers to code custom plugins and scripts to extend functionality.
There is a large community and tons of documentation.
Re: My few cents... (Score:1)
We have used it for years. And it is mostly awesome. My only complaint is that attachments, comments, and responses all live in the same column in a single table in the database. Making full text searches a tough nut to crack, especially as the system grows. We have stood up a replicant database with a solr search in front of it. To do full text searches of comments and replies without taking down the rt system (ours currently sits at about 12 gb of data)
Simple Drupal Install (Score:1)
https://www.drupal.org
https://www.drupal.org/project/pm
Used Trello, Switched to Asana (Score:1)
Trello is a nice tool and I used it with a group for a while. For my new projects I use asana. It has mobile apps and a very easy to use web interface. It is essentially lists (goals, evaluations, etc) with discussion attached. I find it easier to work with than trello when you have more than just a few projects for the group. I haven't tried trello in a year or so, maybe the higher level organization is better now. Asana is free for small teams (15?).
Jira (Score:1)
I like Trello (Score:2)
It's not really an issue tracker, but I use it for tracking issues and features during build cycles.
It's *super* easy to set up and add items.
Stack Overflow (Score:2)
There's an interesting analogy in Stack Exchange, the offshoot of Stack Overflow. While many Stack Exchange sites exist for a wide ranging array of topics (physics, electrical engineering, statistics, parenting, etc.), I've found that the others basically don't work. The questions often don't get answered since the community is way smaller than Stack Overflow, and they are often answered in unhelpful ways with opinions rather than expert suggestions. I think non-engineering tickets would linger for too l
Project management and helpdesk (Score:2)
Depending on exactly what the needs are, I'd recommend looking at both project management software and software aimed at helpdesk sorts of things. Google for those, and you'll find an endless list. On the project management side, you'll find things like Trello, Asana, and Basecamp. For helpdesk-related things, you might look at things like Desk.com, Zendesk, or Autotask.
On both of those fronts, there are tons and tons of competing services. There's not really a "best" solution as much as "the one that
Task management and workflow (Score:2)
It varies from organization to organization. As such, solutions need to align with both the workflow and tasks. You've described the tasks, but not the structures of the workflow. It sounds as if both are very broad and ad-hoc.
I'd start by forming an inventory of tasks and who does them, followed by modeling the data inputs and outputs that drive the (currently undefined and unspecified) processes in the organization and then move on to the processes. After you have a handle about the range of these items,
An Intern (Score:2)
Thinking back on it, it was strange. I spent my college internship acting as a manager...
Depending on the volume of issues, this doesn't have to be a full time job. One person just needs to be the point of contact, document, and follow up on the items.
MavenLink (Score:1)
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MavenLink is rather nice. For long-running projects, I think something with Gantt charting is an absolute necessity and most programmer "issue trackers" don't have Gantts. But this is mostly due to their mapping to methodology. Gantts come from waterfall methodologies and that doesn't settle with an agile process.
Software works well for agile processes but there are a lot of tasks and projects out there that are much more tuned to waterfall methods. Long-running projects, for example, can have tons of depen
It is never about the tool (Score:3)
That said - most engineering organizations have documented a process and adapted one of many tools to support this process. Sounds like in this case they don't even know what the process is - heck, everyone probably does their own thing so there is likely to not even be a process.
Try this
Step 1: Determine how you want issue tracking to work
Step 2: Get everyone to follow this process without bringing in a tool, your process will change during this step
Step 3: Document the final process from Step 2
Step 4: Bring in any tool that can be lightly customized to support the documented process
Note the hopefully lightly customized part above... Yes there is probably work to do here, regardless of what tool you choose. Most likely you want to pay for the tool that will require the easiest/lightest customization - it will be cheaper than trying to get a tool for free and using a small team to massively customize it.
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There's another way to approach this (Score:2)
Something that also incorporates a wiki might be nice.
Jira and Confluence integrate well, and have the support of a company and large installed base behind them for future development.
There will be resistance if it's not really easy to use.
Joel Spolsky also made a point about formal issue tracker adoption, in that it doesn't have to be all or nothing (Strategy 2) [joelonsoftware.com] from the get-go.
Trac Project, integrated scm & project managem (Score:2)
Instal
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Trac (Score:1)
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Fossil? (Score:1)
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I will add that Fossil is a single executable. Just download the executable and copy to a convenient folder/directory. No installation needed.
QuickBase (Score:2)
mouth-to-mouth (Score:1)
mouth-to-mouth?
With tongue? With good-looking females? Can I work there?
Ticketing through emails only (Score:2)
I was at Cisco when a group of coworkers tried to implement an email-based ticketing system where the resulting email thread becomes the ticket. A full-featured ticketing system would take up too much time from what little time they had. They never got it to work properly and went back to regular emails to track issues..
When I mentioned this incident to recruiters, they couldn't wrap their minds around the idea that an email-based ticketing system could save more time than using a full-featured ticketing sy
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OS ticket (Score:1)
LiquidPlanner (Score:1)
don't like (Score:2)
Well, why not? If you want to cover that kind of diversity in platforms, you are going to be using a web tool...
Github + huboard (Score:2)
Github's issue tracking system is damn good, and you can give it a fairly simple, configurable interface via Huboard [huboard.com]. Set up an empty private github repo (private repos are not free but they're very affordable) for your issues, get a huboard (also not free, also cheap-as-chips) account, and away you go.
I know, I know, you said 'non engineers', and you think I'm mocking you, but that's not the case. While it's true that I'm using this solution to track issues for a technical project (and git repo), I've had
Request Tracker (Score:2)
https://www.bestpractical.com/... [bestpractical.com]
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I second the Request Tracker recommendation. You need to be a geek to set it up, but not to use it.
At my company, we started out using it for the tech support staff. Since then, I've expanded it to include requests from salespeople to finance for invoice generation, etc. and it works beautifully.
RoundUp or OneAndZero (Score:1)
Roundup is probably the best today - not too complicated, only a couple concepts to remember - handles Web, Email, Command line submissions and searching. http://roundup-tracker.org/docs/features.html (very customizable, python based)
OneAndZero in the golden GPL days, best web user interface - but like all things "they had to improve and commercialize it" the new versions are awful. Most people run screaming with their hair on fire from it now.. and the people prying version 1.8 from their cooling almost de
Taskboard, Taiga, PinItToMe, TeamBins, Loomio, ... (Score:2)
TaskBoard [matthewross.me]
Taiga [taiga.io] (leaning towards lightweight project management/"scrummish" stuff)
PinItToMe [pinitto.me]
TeamBins [teambins.com]
Loomio [loomio.org] (decision making tool)
There are a few more, but these are the ones that come to mind.
Mouth to Mouth? (Score:1)
Youtrack (Score:1)
Atlassian Wiki and Jira (Score:1)
"mouth-to-mouth" in TFS (Score:2)
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Because his wife is involved and anything making more productive and less stressed is good for him. Plus, there the chance of more sex if that is achieved. So quit hating and help a brother get laid.
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Happy spouse, happy house?
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If they don't feel the need, then why do they do it anyway?