Ask YC: What do you use for Project Management?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=124253

by Flemlord • 18 years ago

22 35 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been fighting with Microsoft Project all day and I'm getting fed up. What does everybody use for project management? We do Agile development.

gnaritas• 18 years ago

Basecamp from 37signals, love it.

dkokelley• 18 years ago

I use "Project Management" or "Planner" available in Ubuntu's repositories.

Their site's at http://live.gnome.org/Planner if you like, but I don't think it's available for windows.

mixmax• 18 years ago

For the last year I have been thinking about how to do a proper project management app on the web - and once you start thinking about it you realise that it is a lot harder than you think. Basically the problem is that if you have 100 project managers they will manage in 100 different ways. Which makes it extremely hard to do something that will have exactly the features each manager need.

As it is now you can basically choose between project (great with gannt charts and dependencies, but you can't do much else and have to spend loads of time updating it), excel (lots of lists but nothing else, and no interaction with other people), or something like basecamp, which is pretty simple and really just an extended to-do list.

Whatever project you do, and whatever you choose it never quite fits, there's always something missing.

The real killer, of course, is that even though you need a gazillion features for all the different sorts of projects and managers it still needs to be simple to use.

So this is what I spend my time developing - who knows it might even work...

thorax• 18 years ago

This feels a lot like the other posts I've responded to in the past 4 days. Sorry if I'm getting redundant.

We use a scrum-like backlog methodology based on ROI: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122203

At some jobs, I've used very complicated spreadsheets for this method (to track dependency costs, etc), but lately Google spreadsheet works pretty well for individual assignments and status. There are some Scrum-based software solutions out there that somewhat support this approach. (e.g. http://www.acunote.com ) There's also a scrum plugin somewhere for Microsoft Project, but I haven't used that either.

It depends on the size of your group, probably, what will work for you. Also it depends on the size of the upward corporate group that needs reporting.

DarrenStuart• 18 years ago

I am a one man band so I just use http://backpackit.com not going to be that useful for teams. basecamp is pretty cool.

have you looked at liquid planner that was showcased at demo 08? that looks pretty tidy.

redorb• 18 years ago

backpackIT.com is nice -

cpinto• 18 years ago

Mingle http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence

hsuresh• 18 years ago

same here. and its free for less than 5 users

joseakle• 18 years ago

i´m trying fogbugz, after getting nowhere with msproject or basecamp. i´ll report to you when i have more data

mdemare2• 18 years ago

I'm using fogbugz, like it a lot!

jgrahamc• 18 years ago

Another vote for FogBugz. I'm using it at one of my clients where there was resistance to doing anything other than keeping a list of TODOs on a bit of paper on someone's desk. FogBugz is _very_ easy to use for almost everyone and it has replaced the bit of paper, and (surprise, surprise) the team has suddenly discovered that they have better visibility into what they are doing.

spif• 18 years ago

How have you integrated it with your SCM?

That was the major stopper for us in using FogBugz. We're using git and trac now, but would love something that tracks burndown.

ovi256• 18 years ago

On a tangent here guys. I am currently cloning the EBS (Evidence Based Scheduling) part of FogBugz 6. Do you think it would be a good idea to open source this? How would you feel about it as a Trac plugin? What do you think about EBS?

wamboldt• 18 years ago

"I use "Project Management" or "Planner" available in Ubuntu's repositories."

Same as me. Free, and easy.

mtoledo• 18 years ago

We use unfuddle (http://unfuddle.com/home)

It's a bit basecamp like, but it has a better support for tickets and reports. We moved from basecamp to unfuddle 4 months ago.

And it has an svn repo built in it also which updates your tickets based on your commit comments:

A commit with a message "Closed #44, #45, assign #54 to Joe" does all that in the tickets repository, which helps developers who don't like visiting the management application too much.

terpua• 18 years ago

Ditto to mtoledo's comments. Handy for virtual teams as well. We moved from basecamp to unfuddle a few months ago as well.

nostrademons• 18 years ago

Trac.

If you're a small enough team, you can also get by with a notebook or stickie notes. At my last job I just used a 5x8" spiral notebook, wrote down tasks when my boss asked, and checked them off when I was done.

It's kinda ironic that I've got a more formal process with my one-developer startup than at my last job, but I found that I needed to write lots of little design notes on each feature and cross-reference them as I was implementing. Flipping through pages is a real pain. Plus, it's really satisfying to just say "fixes #11" in a commit message and have the ticket automatically closed.

ktheory• 18 years ago

We've had a lot of success with Trac. Over the past 18 months, we've tweaked our milestones/iteration process several times, and each time we've found Trac suited to our style.

TFrancis• 18 years ago

Here's another vote for Trac.

pkaler• 18 years ago

Index cards and a Moleskin. But that's because I'm a one person team right now.

I'll move to FogBugz eventually.

mattculbreth• 18 years ago

You need to use Rally. There's a free version--go try it now for an iteration. You can trust me on this.

http://www.rallydev.com/

henning• 18 years ago

Backpack - http://www.backpackit.com

zemariamm• 18 years ago

We're using redmine, http://www.redmine.org/

jamesbritt• 18 years ago

Same with me.

gibsonf1• 18 years ago

StreamFocus.com (Integrated Project/Workflow/Action Management with workflow organized files, Critical Path management, Collaborative GTD, etc.) Private beta launching in March :) (First 30 days free, then Personal version starts at $20/month, Business version starts at $40/month)

walter_b_marvin• 18 years ago

I've always wanted to charge Bill Gates for third party testing services. MS project is all right for simple gant charts I guess...

nreece• 18 years ago

For smaller projects: ΤΙΜΙΟΣ Gantt Designer @ http://timios.net/Gantt/

For bigger projects: MS Project

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

Bunch of cool stuff out there -- Basecamp seems to be a fave.

I'm writing an Agile PM tool as a side project right now. Let me know if you'd like to beta it.

edu• 18 years ago

I don´t know what everybody uses. I survive with a Moleskine, a pencil, a rubber and a set of pens of different colors.

edw519• 18 years ago

So do I.

Also, I want to stay so focused on the top 2 or 3 items that I never need anything more complex.

sgoraya• 18 years ago

I love my moleskines and 3x5 index cards! Though I mainly use it for my todo items, notes and basically any idea that I would like to capture (tech and non-tech alike).

That said, I have been using MS Project for quite a while - At the game development company I worked for prior to my startup, MS Project was used by everyone. From the Devs, to the Producers and platform account managers (SONY, NOA, MS) - So I learned how to use it and have been using it ever since - Granted it is bloated with a ton of features that I never use, but IMO, it gets the job done and is used by a lot of people - I can shoot over an *.mpp file to to any of my colleagues to keep tabs on all aspects of our projects; --

webwright• 18 years ago

For a team, I recommend adding "sticky notes on posterboard", to your low tech regime. Best issue tracking system I've used to date.

jeffw• 18 years ago

We're using Target Process (targetprocess.com). They are basically a Rally competitor, but we found their product much simpler to use and much cheaper. We love it.

slim• 18 years ago

we use dokuwiki with SQL plugin in conjunction with flyspray and webcalendar.

since both webcalendar and flyspray use a database. it's very easy to make dashboards.

Ask YC: What do you use for Project Management?

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