Edit
After discussing with Jira Support & lots of tech teams using it, here are a few tricks:
A large amount of Plugins slows down Jira - ex: InVision plugin
Same for "Custom fields": remove all the unnecessary ones
Minimize the amount of info within a card and keep Jira for delivery management only => we had too much info within the description of the cards (including tech specs) and that had a major impact on speed
There are known bugs regarding card editing, descriptions should be kept short
The issue
We encounter a lot of problems with Jira. The main ones being:
- Very slow
- Bugs when we edit a card: lost content
- Hard to configure
Context
We are a team of ~20 (15 devs + 5 product).
We use the SCRUM methodology, but currently moving to KANBAN (similar though).
Questions
Some would like to use Azure DevOps instead of Jira.
I have serious doubts about the fact that it would be a good move. So here are my questions:
Do you encounter the problems mentioned above?
What do you think of Azure DevOps Board compared to Jira?
Is there any problem with Azure DevOps (vs Jira) that we should be aware of?
Thanks a lot!
ps: I could not find any recent discussion on this topic
Do you encounter the problems mentioned above?
Just personal experience, I haven't met such scenario so far: Lost content when editing card.
What do you think of Azure DevOps Board compared to Jira?
Hmm, I'm not familiar with Jira. I just find one document which may help: Azure Boards vs Jira Software
Is there any problem with Azure DevOps that we should be aware of?
This question is too board... Check the related documents for more details.
So I´m looking at the Agile Workflow in Azure DevOps and I´m wondering, what´s the purpose of the Feature work item?
I´ve used Jira a lot and we only used Epics->User Stories->Tasks.
I can´t fine any good explanation to why Microsoft has added this WIT to their default workflow.
See here, Adding Features and Epics
I think of it this way, you would define a feature flag around code for a feature because it's a single shippable unit of testable code, but you wouldn't do the same for an epic because it's a hodgepodge of stories related to a business initiative. Having the two WITs allows you to clearly delineate those two needs and to map the user stories accordingly.
I'm considering moving my open-source project Flyway from Google Code to GitHub.
One of the features I really like in Google Code's Issue Tracker is the ability to vote and sort issues by the number of votes. This has allowed me to get a good feel of where current pain points lie and what the community feels needs attention or further work.
How can I achieve something similar on GitHub? Is there a way to maintain a democratic approach to Issue Tracking?
There is no built-in ability to do so. Technically speaking, you can only manage issues by
assignee
tags (called labels at github)
milestones
While you can define label systems for lots of differentation criteria like
bug/feature request/...
prio high/low/...
status verified/unverified
it is simply not possible to have something that accumulates votes. So typically you will see "+1" postings as in good old mailing lists. I've seen people using external voting systems (like Google moderator) for issues on github, but that doesn't make a good user experience either.
If you're willing to use a third-party system that integrates with GitHub, you can try GitPoll.
We are a small Microsoft shop with 4 developers. We like the idea to have everything integrated and under the same SQL database but not to deal with too many features or a complexity we don't need.
The other option would be to use two distinct third party tools. We also wonder if VS2010 version control and bug/issue tracking capabilities are comparable with the best third party tools on the market.
With TFS 2010, there is a TFS Basic version/configuration options. You can use SQL Server Express as the database, the install is simple and quick and you can install it on a client OS. It includes version system, work items and build system (no sharepoint, reporting...). Price should not be high, the target users for TFS Basic are those used to use SourceSafe. Also if you have MSDN, there is a change that it goes with it, so you would not have to pay extra.
Some thoughts on TFVC in general -- note that I've never used TFVC specifically, but I've been in a similar situation a couple times. My main concern is that it's too little.
TFVC (Team Foundation Version Control) appears to be a client-server version control system. I don't know anybody who hasn't upgraded to DVCS yet. I've never used TFVC but I can't imagine what benefits it'd offer to outweigh the architectural disadvantage. (And before you ask: I only use it from my workstation in the office, where the network has never gone down, but I still use its distributed features every day.)
I also work at a small Microsoft shop with 4 developers and we have never once regretted using Mercurial. It's one of the few decisions we made that everybody seems to have loved. It's one of those moves, like switching to a language with GC, that you never want to even think about reversing.
In terms of support, I hope you found some way to get great support from Microsoft. Things will come up with any VCS and it looks like community support is a couple orders of magnitude worse than Hg or Git.
I can't say much about bug trackers -- I think they're all pretty much the same these days. I've installed a couple open-source ones in an afternoon, even with no experience. The major difference seems to be, if you go with a big-name one, you'll be able to find lots of tools and extensions that work with it. For example, there are a million and one extensions for reporting/testing/etc. for Bugzilla. TFS probably has similar things, for enough money.
Two other things I'd keep in mind:
First, even if you only want these 2 features today, you will want other features in the future, and it will be (sooner or later) something Microsoft doesn't offer. So it's best to make peace with 3rd-party tools ASAP.
Second, unless you miraculously happen to pick the perfect set of tools for your company's future growth for all time, you will at some point want to migrate away from whatever solution you pick today. So make sure it either provides a way to do a full export, or is popular enough that other projects are falling over themselves to write importers for it.
I guess this all sounds kind of negative for TFS. I didn't really mean it that way -- I'm sure it does some things really well. But unless you're rolling in dough already, save your money.
Good luck with whatever you choose!
TFS work ittm tracking is awesome. Whatever your workflow is and the information you want to gather, you can do it easily with TFS.
Most expect TFS to do what they do out of the box as if it were omniscient. Unfortunately, you do things slightly differently than me and I from everyone else. The key is making it easy for the many different roles in your organization to get and input information into whatever your work tracking system is.
There is a plateau you will reach with custom, cobbled together tools that you won't get from cross referencing information along the product development process. TFS removes that barrier. The second barrier is knowing how to consume the information and that takes training and experience in effectively managing projects.
TFS Version control is certainly the low point when compared to the industry right now. DVCS popularity exploded about the time TFS came out. That said, Brian Harry has stated that TFS "fully expect that we will be adding distributed version control to TFS." http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2010/01/27/codeplex-now-supports-mercurial.aspx
Take that as you will.
TFS is a great system but after having deployed and used it for some time I realize that the TCO is just too high to justify for a small team.
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Closed 10 years ago.
We use Trac as our bug tracking / development / wiki system and I was wondering if anyone has experience and uses some of the Trac Agile/Scrum plugins or functionalities? Anything you'd recommend?
Or would it be better to duplicate Trac tickets as dead-tree user story index cards and a hand-drawn burndown chart?
Note that I found a similar question here. Though it's specifically about Scrum. They recommend Agilo. Has anyone tried Agilo yet?
With a collocated team, I'd always duplicate user stories on index cards. A wall of cards is much more collaborative and simple to use than any software tool. And what's most important, it's in your face.
The same is true for a burn chart. In my experience, a software chart gets online looked at by a small number of people, and typically is a pull medium. A big, handdrawn poster (that changes regularly) gets noticed by everyone, and serves as an incubator for ad hoc discussions.
It's also quite valueable to be able to point at them during your daily scrum meeting.
This is how we use Trac for our scrum like sprints:
We use the milestones in Trac to identify sprints.
There is a default Backlog milestone where we gather all new tickets.
Before each sprint we move tickets from the backlog the current release.
On the milestone page, we can add retrospectives and other info about the sprint using wiki syntax.
So just the default Trac functionality without any plugins for now to keep it lightweight. As we get better we may add features like burndown charts or maybe switch to another tool, but we want to get the proces in place first.
Answering late, but this more of sharing my experience with Trac+Agilo so far.
To quickly answer your question, perhaps Agilo is the best option available for Agile development with Trac.
Now comes to install and usining install was just very easy. We used their latest release 0.7.3.3. It installs flawless on Trac 0.11 and Python 2.5. Don't forget to install libjpeg and python imaging library. It would be useful to note that we used virtualenv which took a made things easier.
Further usage is very simple. For wiki I kind of prefer Trac's old clean look over Agilo's customization. Other than that all things just works.
On thier mailing list I have noticed that they are planning to offer multi-project support in future. In all I recommend Agilo plugin for Trac.
Yep, I installed Agilo on our Trac installation.
Seems very cool, includes nice burndown charts.
Unfortunately I left the company where I installed it before I could get any serious usage out of it.
Installation was a pain (Ubuntu Ibex) - I documented precise steps on the Agilo Google Group.
The problem (as always) is integration into the business end of things that PMs and CEOs like to see (e.g. estimated vs actual hours). There are (as has been mentioned) other products out there that cover this off (FogBugz covers this off I believe), but I (and the team) love Trac so we worked around this.
Oh, one more thing; it looks like it introduces quite a lot of overhead (i.e. you have to spend more time in trac to get the most out of it), but like I say I didn't have an opportunity to really use it in anger.
We used Trac before with a burndown plugin then went to Redmine. We've found Redmine to be miserable for repository viewing and the issue interface. We're actually looking to move back to Trac again.
Bitten is a Trac plugin for continuous integration that can be harnessed to do automatic builds on check-in, which provides a critical part of the Agile process (rapid feedback). I haven't used any other plugins for Trac personally, so I can't comment on them. However, the native Trac functionality of milestones could be leveraged fairly easily, I suspect, to be used as iteration markers (where each milestone represents the end of an iteration). Since milestones can be used to mark a 'due date' for features already, you shouldn't need much in the way of modification to use them as such.
From there, using tickets as user stories, and tying them to milestones (I'm sure this can be done manually at worst) would give you a basic method of tracking velocity and keeping the team aware of progress (and changes that need to be made as well).
We use the Trac wiki for:
List of requirements for each feature
List of technical specs (if any) for the features
List of Releases and their features
Deployed environments, with links to all instances
There's a macro for making web requests, so we can list which version, etc. each env have
(there's a GraphViz plugin which is quite helpful for simple drawings)
There's also a ticket in the ticketing system for each "feature", for keeping a gross backlog and the current/next sprint planned.
Then we write a bunch of cards during sprint planning for each feature.
There's also a more operational side to things. We keep one person each sprint on Ops, so we have one person who's dedicated to be interrupted by people outside the team. The rest of the team can focus on delivering features.
Each bug/ops task gets a ticket, but as soon as we start working on it, it gets a card and starts moving across the board. That way it gets visibility and we don't forget to involve the testers, etc.
Scrum is pretty tactile, so I don't think it would work great to put too much stuff outside of the physical working environment. But in the end your team needs to find a balance that works.
For something completely different, the best way to do Agile Development with Trac may be to simply migrate everything to Redmine. It supports Trac's core features with some extras including multiple projects, Gantt charts, forums, DCVS, etc. though it looks like it's not completely there yet. Some good things in the pipeline.
Daniel Srb (in the comments) has a redmind agile plugin he's been working on that looks promising. You may be able to contact and see if he's planning to release it (was a long time ago).
We've had success using two products in concert in the past, Trac for tickets, xplanner for planning.
Agilo for Scrum rocks, the latest versions are using client side generated charts, so there is no dependency anymore, much easier to install :-) agile42 just release a Pro version that enriches the Agilo experience with a nice and intuitive Planning Board, very cool screencast :-)
We recently started using Scrumban.
Basically a Kanban board, with the daily stand-up meetings covering the classic Agile Scrum questions - what did you work on the previous day? what do you plan to work on today? do you have any blockers?
We do this around a physical Kanban board, it is great for visualizing the work flow and for team synergy, but we also wanted a digital form of our Kanban board to be able to double check trac usage vs. the physical board.
In search for something that would work, I found this clever post on re-creating a digital version of the Kanban board in trac.
It is very straight forward and simple, I was able to easily manipulate this approach for our work flow, and you could probably tailor it to your Agile Scrum iterative approach (or if your able to ditch the time boxed approach, give Scrumban a try).