Issue Tracking Tools - issuetracking

Sean B. Palmer
2005-02-03T03:14:38Z

Guest wikiblogger Christopher Schmidt muses about issue tracking. I'd like to develop this into a more generic overview of issue tracking approaches and solutions.

Issue Tracking Tools

I'm part of a number of projects that use a variety of methods for issue tracking. I've seen a lot of things I like, and some I don't. I was just reading edd's issue tracker list, and it looked pretty comprehensive, but I don't really have the ability to install all of them.

In addition to what's mentioned there, the most common method I've seen for dealing with bugs/issue tracking is mailing lists. And although mailing lists work great, as does email (as Morbus points out) it has the flaw that it's too easy to forget about things.

Here at work, we have a custom built "Job Tracker" - for tracking time, primarily. It has the flaw that there's no way to outline specific subtasks associated with a job. This has become a major stumbling block for me, because 90% of what I get is "oh, this person mentioned something on the phone", but I tend to forget the little things, and then clients get pissed off that it's not done. I know I never keep files up to date when I open them, as I've tried it a lot of times before.

I really think I want something like bugzilla, only without all the cruft that a web based system doesn't need. For example, "OS" doesn't mean much, or even if it does, it can be mentioned in a ticket. I want to be able to open via email, and I want to be able to list tickets that are assigned to me, or to someone else. I want notifications if someone else assigns a bug to me, and all the fun tracking that Bugzilla offers, only without the overly geeky interface that no one else understands, so that other people in the office might actually use it. However, like all my methods, I really think that anything I try to do ends up failing, because I just don't have the neccesary organizational skills to keep myself organized. This is a real problem when I work in an office which is almost entirely self organizing.

--by crschmidt on #d8uv.com

Sean B. Palmer