In prevision of upcomming contracts, we decided to take a step back, compare available Project Management Software and see if we could find one that better fits our needs. This entry is a small wrap up of our observations, thoughts and conclusions on the solutions we have considered.

Testing the Project Management Software

While there is an enormous amount of Project Management Software out there, we could only afford to evaluate a few of them. Considering the current size of the company, we decided to stick with the smaller players in order to reduce the cost. We also tried to focus on hosted solutions to avoid having to deal with server setup and maintenance. For these two reasons, Axosoft OnTime and Atlassian Jira were discarded.

Take note that the Project Management Software are listed in order of preference, starting with the one we preferred.

Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker - Free Lightweight Agile Project Management & Team Collaboration

Pivotal Tracker is missing a some of the “new” features we were looking for. Nevertheless, it has been a strong asset in our software development process, is completely free and it has a great user interface.

It is interesting to note that Pivotal Labs just released the Pivotal Tracker API v3.  This new API allows the use of source control post commit hooks making it possible to link SVN commits to tickets.  The low score in that category comes from the fact that you have to implement it yourself for now.

FogBugz

FogBugz - Bring Your Project Into Focus

FogBugz turned out to be a strong contestant during our searches. Its smooth interface, strong time tracking features and good support for multiple simultaneous projects through global milestones really shinned. Their “Evidence-Based Scheduling” reports were also an interesting addition.

Agile development integration was minimal with only a poorly integrated Kanban board available through a plugin. The lack of SVN hosting is disappointing considering the price scheme they use but they were nice enough to offer hook scripts that you can add to your own repository for easy integration and they also offer the possibility to enfore this feature through Tortoise SVN.

Code Spaces

Code Spaces - Project Management and Source Code Hosting for Professional Development Teams

Code Spaces looks great but it was lacking some basic features we came to expect from project management software after reviewing the other options (namely SVN commit cannot link automatically and work items cannot be modified in batch). In addition, Code Spaces offers time tracking features for individual work items but, as far as I know, you don’t have any way to use that information to generate reports or charts.

On the plus side, its card wall was nicely integrated and pleasant to use. It could be improved through the addition of more information on the “cards” (I could use visible information about “Assigned To”, “Work Item Type” and “Work Item Status”) and a velocity system but it was still the second best option we’ve seen after Pivotal Tracker.

I feel it’s also important to mention the Code Spaces “Portal” included with your account that easily allow Clients to submit issues or track projects from a nice customizable web page linked directly to your Code Spaces account.

Unfuddle

Unfuddle - Software Project Management Git and Subversion Hosting

Unfuddle was the Project Management Solution we spent the less time in. The main reason for that is the complete lack of agile development tools in it. Their trial version also limited the amount of active projects to one (which is why we could not test support for multiple projects) and did not have the time tracking module.

Despite all that, I can say unfuddle seemed to be a strong option for non-agile oriented groups with a well organised and good looking UI, good SVN integration and a versatile User Permissions control (useful to give a limited access to client for example).

Assembla

Assembla was a strong contestant feature-wise and we considered it for a while but in the end I just couldn’t get along with its bland and unintuitive interface. It has an easy to use SVN Commit hook system through special commands integrated in the commit comment (i.e. “close #3″ to close a ticket).

Their Agile Planner suffered from the UI problem and was somewhat unintuitive to me (No backlog?). I’m not even sure we would have used it had we chosen Assembla as our Project Management Software.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, none of the Project Management Solutions we looked at were completely satisfying to us. Like we mentioned earlier, FogBugz ended up being our top contender but the lack of Hosted SVN, poor agile development integration and potentially high price in the long term turned us down.

For now, we feel we are better off sticking with Pivotal Tracker (adding functionalities through their new API v3 if needed). It is our tried and true approach and it has given us great results in the past.

Useful links

Wikipedia Chart comparing popular Project Management Software

Comparison of project management software on Wikipedia

Project Management Software we have heard of but not evaluated

Axosoft OnTime

Atlassian Jira

Microsoft Project

TargetProcess