A colleague asked me if I knew of any “free, cheap, or open source” project management systems that are “as simple as twiki (which is about decentralized sharing and coordinating of documents), but is focused on tracking / sharing events and tasks.” (We use twiki heavily at Yahoo!) He had already found a few possibilities (none of which I was familiar with, except Basecamp):
Anyone have any favorites? Frankly, I’ve always found that when web projects get difficult enough that you’re tempted to whip out something like MS Project, it’s time to simplify — but I’ll admit that though I have run many projects large and small, I have never been able to really wrap my brain around Gannt charts and such for any sustained periods in my career.
I absolutely love Trac. It’s more than just an issue tracking system (it has Subversion repository browsing and an excellent wiki as well) but the issue tracking fits my brain really well. We use it for Django: http://code.djangoproject.com/
My favourite feature is the timeline, which shows recent checkins, ticket changes and wiki edits all in one place: http://code.djangoproject.com/timeline
Central Desktop has a free version.
http://www.centraldesktop.com
DreamTeam is free for individual use or $10 per user month for the Professional Version, and $35 per user month for the Enterprise Version
http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?NavCode__c=MF2h&id=a0330000000GI9YAAW
Then again, you’ll need a $1,500/year Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition license to install it.
-c
If you’re looking for something specifically focused on QA management, take a look at Byrne Reese’s Test Run (http://testrun.majordojo.com).
I’m a core member of dotProject, so I’m horribly biased, but I’ve been working and poking at the community to find areas to make improvements.
One of the most important – and written by my company – was the MS Project Importer. It allows you to do all your project planning in the style you want and then the import keeps all the task assignments (matched by username, then First/Last name), the deadlines, milestones, etc.
Chad! It’s Sumana, who arrived at Salon after you left! I saw a link to your site from Scott Rosenberg’s weblog; thanks for explaining some things about Duke for me.
I work at Fog Creek now and spend a lot of my time selling FogBugz, which ships with source and is focused on being incredibly easy to install & use. You can do a free trial to see if you might like the workflow & featureset.
Have fun in Bangalore! Kannada for “a little” is “sulpa” – if you are trying to gracefully decline third servings of food, try “sulpa sulpa.”
My thumbs up for trac too. We sued it in our previous startup (before I joined yahoo) and it’s really good.