[BBLISA] Project management software

[Tom Metro]

stephen g. wadlow wrote:
> What projects/products do people currently like for conventional
> project management?

We've been using Agilefant (http://agilefant.com/). (It's not a
"conventional" project management tool. It is specifically for
implementing agile project management, but it looked like some of the
others you listed are in that same camp.)

It leaves a lot to be desired, but it was the most usable open source
agile project management tool we tried. The commercial tools have been
disappointing as well. Most feel like weak issue management tools (far
inferior to Bugzilla) with some agile terminology bolted-on. (Rally, for
example.) Most tools tend to be dogmatic in their interpretation of
Agile methodology, and lack the flexibly needed to make the tool work
for you, instead of forcing you to mold your process to fit the tool.

Agilefant has a tiny development team. They seem to be an outgrowth of a
student project, but are attempting to offer a commercial quality
service. They've been fairly responsive to product suggestions. Several
things we've suggested have been implement in the 6 months we've been
using it.

Agilefant uniquely offers a hierarchical view of stories, which is neat,
but this view has an impedance mismatch with with other typical scrum
views, like the backlog, which wants to be a linear, prioritized list.
Consequently, we rarely make use of the hierarchical features. There's a
kernel of a good idea in there, but it needs some UI work.


> OSX-friendly tools are what I'm looking for...

Agilefant offers a free hosted version to try out, which you can migrate
to a paid subscription if you need more users.

Being an open source project, there is also a version that you can run
locally. As far as I know, there shouldn't be a problem installing it
and a web server locally on OS X, if you were the only person using it.
But it is meant to be installed on a server, and used as a collaborative
tool among multiple people.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/