Question

I know there is a LOT of information available through simple Google searches and/or searching StackOverflow. I'd be interested in what you found worked for you.

Personally, I've got a pretty strong bias towards simplicity unless I absolutely need a feature. See, e.g., Joel Spolsky's article: "Choices = Headaches"

I found a nice simple bug tracking app that works beautifully to track bugs we're finding in our Hexawise app, but I'd be interested in what you have found works well for you and - equally importantly - what your criteria / value system in selecting a bug tracking tool is. Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences.

Answer 1

I typically work in the larger corporate settings and simple often does not cut it there. One tool that I have been using quite extensively and that I like is Seapine's testtrack pro. It is not simple, but it is highly customizable and allows you for some simple automation and enforcement. It is relatively cheap.

Another tool that I have been deploying in smaller set ups (with no money and needing something now), is Mantis Bugtracker. Mantis is open source, is easy to deploy and highly customizable. I deployed this often with XAMPP (a LAMP stack for Windows, Linux, MacOS and Solaris) and have this up and running (before customization) within 30 minutes. With XAMPP providing Apache and MySql, this set up runs fine for medium size work groups on very basic hardware (workstation, or a little old forgotten server). Mantis also offers integration with SCM, LDAP etc. The only draw back is that the user interface is extremely utilitarian (no fancy Ajax, tabs, animations, nice colors etc.)

Answer 2

My favorite is probably the one I whipped up in Lotus Notes many years ago. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, and didn't do anything else. I agree - simple is better.

When I moved on to another company, I re-whipped-up the same basic Notes setup with a few minor tweaks. Again, it did exactly what I needed and no more. When I later needed an additional field, it was an easy addition.

But I've used lots of different bug tracking tools and I don't think there's much to recommend one over another.

We are currently using Bugzilla, and it works well enough that I don't see a need to spend time and/or money to change, at least for now.

Still, if we had Lotus Notes, I know what I'd do...

Answer 3

Bugzilla's fine -- I was on a project that used it for a while, and people keep putting it up when they want to escape corporate control ;-)

But the simpler the better, while also avoiding the cost of do-it-yourself. For that, I'd agree with the Mantis suggestion. Up and running quickly, supports very light process, focuses people on the work at hand, and not the tracking system. Has a one-click to an "advanced" GUI that looks more like corporate defect tracking, but I've never felt a need to use it.

What matters, beyond multi-user, handling the load, and not losing data, is the users and the process. Train people to do defect tracking right, and almost any infrastructure will work.

Answer 4

I vote for JIRA; it's become my issue tracker of choice in the last three companies I've worked at (all relatively small startups, with a team size between 3 and 20). Here are a few justifications:

• Quick and easy to set up; the standalone version with built-in Tomcat server takes me about 15 minutes to install or upgrade
• Clean, intuitive interface - I get very few "how do I do xxxx in JIRA ?" questions
• Lots of flexibility and functionality if you need it, e.g. a built-in query language and custom workflows, but the complexity gets out of the way if you don't need it
• Easy to repurpose for tracking IT tickets, support calls, etc. - that's particularly handy for startups where money and staff are short
• Easy to reconfigure and extend via plugin architecture (much easier than Bugzilla in my experience, for example, although I haven't used Bugzilla since 2003)
• Great documentation and customer support

JIRA is a commercial tool, but IMO it's well worth the money; especially so for teams of 10 or less, for whom Atlassian is currently offering a $10 USD license.

Answer 5

After having used dozens its JIRA by far, for too many reasons to mention. Mantris is the best OSS product, but very clunky as noted. Unfuddle or Assembla the best hosted solutions. FIXX (new kid on the block) has best UI (if only it was on JIRA) and show longer term promise, but as yet to simple for Enterprise/Large teams. FogBugz is an old favorite and compares well with the rest, is quite powerful and works well out of the box, but has limited custizations (unlike JIRA which is endless) and the UI is also clunky.

Answer 6

I've used Bugzilla in a few places, it worked well, gave us the control we wanted and allowed us to deal with multiple products (including Change Management in Production) with one tool. Still you need to customize it if you really want to get some worth out of it, I had one up and running with a simple project within a day, but if you aren't used to its components it can take longer.

I'll also second the MOSS List, we set one up at where I am now within about 10 minutes, I migrated over the data from an older version of the tracking list that was done, we wanted the data but I had newer fields and removed ones that were no longer useful.

I've looked at Jira and Mantis in the past but never really got much into them.

Answer 7

I have used many different bug tracking systems: Pivotal Tracker, Basecamp, Fogbugz, Mantis, ActiveCollab.. At the moment we use Lighthouse and I find it to work best for us.

Answer 8

I like Joe's answer, and am not afraid to say that a good collaborative system usually has all the features needed for good bug tracking, without headaches :). If you have access to a MOSS 2007 server, a custom list to track bugs can provide version history of bugs, tracking and reports, personalized notifications of changes and events, strict (or not) workflow, attachments, export to excel etc. It can scale quite well too.
It is not the perfect solution, but it can fit some companies or situations.

At my current workplace, for most products we use an in-house web-based solution that is very versatil, robust and scalable.
(But I don't recommend, to most contexts, building a bug tracking solution in-house. I guess ours is a specific situation that justified doing so.)

Other than that, I've used Bugzilla when contributing to open source software, and was very satisfied. Its search and queries usually work great and are useful.

Some of the parameters to tak into account when chosing a tracker are Company size, Quantity of bugs and Variety of types of products and/or versions. The requirements in terms od User management and Costs are important too. :)

Answer 9

I've used Bugzilla, PVCS, Quality Center, and TFS. I like TFS best because its relatively easy to keep the bugs connected directly to the code. However, I consider a bug management systems to be a solution to the wrong problem. You have too many bugs. The solution isn't a way to manage them better - the solution is to create less bugs. These days, I don't track bugs, but rather put them back into the list of features which are then prioritized by the customers and business analysts. The number of bugs is very small since features don't get released if they have bugs.

If you already have a large amount of bugs, some sort of system is necessary, granted. Work to ensure that new features don't have known bugs that you introduce into the system and allot some time to knocking down the existing bugs.

Answer 10

I tried Quality Center, testtrack pro and couple of in house solutions. All of them did the job, none of them excelled in it. I think that the main issue is usability to the end-user. slow, cumbersome and confusing interfaces and flows make the users hate the system and try to avoid using them.

Answer 11

I'll get things started. My favorite bug-tracking tool is Tails. I liked it so much (and appreciated the design choices the creators of Tails made) that I wrote a blog post about it here: http://hexawise.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/great-bug-tracking-tool-tails/

I’ve recently tried out Tails as a bug tracking tool. I like it and I’d recommend you check it out if you’re looking for a straightforward bug-tracking tool without a lot of extra bells and whistles. This is a quick review of what I have found to be the best defect tracking tool for my purposes.... more

While it might not work for everyone, it's working nicely for us.

What has worked well for you?

Answer 12

If you would like to try out a free simple online bug tracking application you might like Fault Logger

Answer 13

Another good source of information is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems#Bug_tracking_systems