Project Management Systems for Developers

    Properly managing a project means combining science and art! Successfully managing a project means creating a team that will produce the desired commercial or socially important product, and thereby fulfill its mission. An effective manager leads the team, demonstrating the symbiosis of technical solutions and managerial methods in his work.

    Many experts in the field of web programming have long had their own opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of this or that project management system.
    The leaders of the collective web programming technology race will undoubtedly be new system approaches to the process of creating an intelligent product.

    Most of the experts interviewed claim that the choice of an ideal project management system is entirely dependent on the mission that a group of programmers has to complete.
    Specialists have long been discussing the evolution of a new culture of collaborative web programming automation. Among the interesting software products today were the following:

    Redmine - an open server web application for project management and bug tracking. Redmine is written in Ruby and is an application based on the well-known Ruby on Rails web framework.



    Some features of Redmine:
    • Flexible role-based access system;
    • A system for tracking errors and creating error records based on the letters received;
    • Maintaining project news, documents and file management, as well as creating forums and project wikis;
    • Notification of changes via RSS feeds and email;
    • Customizable custom fields for incidents, time costs, projects and users;
    • Easy integration with version control systems (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs);
    • Support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle.

    Disadvantages of Redmine:
    • In Redmine, you cannot manage permissions at the level of individual task fields. For example, at the moment it is impossible to hide from clients estimates of the time spent on the project or information about the time spent.
    • You can manage access rights at the project level, but you cannot assign rights to any version of a project or a specific task. This means that if the user needs access to only one task, then they will have to give access to the entire project.
    • If a Redmine user has gained access to the project, now it is impossible to limit its activity to any separate types of tasks (trackers). For example, you cannot allow viewing or creating tasks of any particular type only.
    • Redmine does not implement task delegation - you cannot transfer a task to another executor, noting that he must complete the task, but leaving himself observing the task.

    Easy Projects .NET is a web-based software project management project application written in .NET by Logic Software.



    System features:
    • Easy Projects .NET allows you to create an unlimited number of projects containing various custom fields. Batch data processing allows you to perform typical operations for several projects simultaneously. Users have access to an interactive Gantt chart, graphs and reports. Individual projects can be grouped into project portfolios.
    • It supports an unlimited number of tasks and subtasks, as well as setting statuses, categories and priorities of tasks. You can create tasks by email. Not only developers, but also customers have the ability to add requests and requirements.
    • The program allows you to make and track paid and unpaid time spent on the project. Personal and corporate schedules are supported, as well as the ability to view the load schedule of resources. Flexible configuration of user access rights is possible.
    • Easy Projects .NET allows you to create invoices, monitor the project budget and create the necessary reports.
    • The program supports data export to MS Project, Excel, PDF and iCal, integration with Vyew, QuickBooks, SmarterTrack, Dbxtra, as well as synchronization with Easy Time Tracking. Developers have access to the API and SDK programs.
    • The appearance of the system can be customized by adding or removing widgets with information about projects. Users can use web conferencing to collaborate. English, German, French and Russian languages ​​are supported.

    Devprom is a software lifecycle management system aimed at building and supporting efficient agile development processes.



    Opportunities:
    • Standardization of development processes in the company - the formation and management of wishes (user stories, use cases), version management, releases, iterations and assemblies, requirements management, technical and testing documentation, the formation of a work plan, accounting for resources used and all the necessary reporting;
    • Granting managers access to the real state of projects - access to a Web application is possible from anywhere in the world, wherever project participants are located;
    • Association of team members for closer interaction;
    • Ensuring transparency of processes and sharing knowledge within the company - the Wiki-toolkit allows you to concentrate all the information about the project in one place, for example, the project knowledge base, requirements and technical specifications, technical and reference documentation, test plans and scripts. All project reporting is available to you: a work plan and reports on completed tasks, test results and changes in the source code, and much more;
    • Agile project development management (Scrum, XP). The main Agile practices are available for work: wish logs (issue backlogs), burndown diagram, iterations of the same duration (time boxing), calculation of team speed (velocity);
    • Management of "classic" projects for the development or implementation of off-the-shelf systems (MSF, RUP);
    • Building ALM / SDLC solutions at the company level.

    Atlassian JIRA is an Australian Atlassian software product for managing the life cycle of any project or workflow. This is a system for collaborative work with tasks within a business process or project. The system allows you to work with several projects, divide them into stages, configure any types of tasks, connect tasks with each other, assign responsibility in various areas, configure the roles of project participants, easily generate reports, and much more.



    Work in JIRA takes place through a web browser, in addition, the installation of JIRA in the workplace is not required.
    JIRA features:
    • The system is scalable and suitable both for organizations with a small number of employees (less than 10 people), and for larger enterprises (up to 200 people).
    • Ability to track project problems and progress;
    • Support and maintenance of the project;
    • Management of the progress of each task;
    • Management of requirements for projects and tasks;
    • Workflows / Process Management.

    We asked experts from various companies about which project management systems they work with, the advantages and disadvantages of these systems, and also what systems they used to work with before.

    Igor Sychev, developer, Sravni.Ru, Microsoft Student Partner:
    We have one project in the broad sense of the word. This is the site http://sravni.ru it has its parts: insurance, money, as well as internal development.
    I don’t know if there is a global plan of changes for the next 100 years somewhere in Excel or something expensive, but for the next six months or a year there is a plan in the heads of leaders and development.
    For the next 2 months, everything in Team Foundation Server.
    In fact, our SOUP is TFS. Programmers see all tasks in TFS. Each task is added there as a backlog first. Then it is divided into subtasks and added to the list for execution by programmers. All bugs get there and are again sorted out by programmers.
    There are tasks that do not get there when urgently people who are the developers of the development (the department of content, insurance, and so on) are asked to do quickly and work there for 5 minutes.
    In terms of the development process, they say that we have Kanban, with our internal features, due to the fact that we make a service and deploy almost daily to fix small errors, but which cannot be tested without publishing on a live site.
    Pros:
    • only for programmers. The rest there can only add bugs;
    • simply;
    • understandably;
    • there is enough functionality for the work of programmers.

    Minuses:
    • lack of clarity, for this we use the add-on - telerik tfs work item manager. It is more convenient for us.

    Previously, I worked on other projects in 2 different companies and a bit freelanced. Everywhere it was the Head of driven development. By the principle - they told you what you are doing. Sometimes there were deadlines for some parts. TFS was also used, but only as a code version control system.
    In this regard, in Sravni.Ru we just have an excellent project management system.

    Ilya Kosmodemyansky, Intelotech Group consultant, Oracle database specialist, DB2, PostgreSQL:
    I don’t work in the same company, I have many clients, everyone uses different systems - from "fat" to self-written. In my experience, it doesn't really matter which system to use - any one works only if there is a good project manager. And vice versa - in the absence of a good PM, nothing helps.

    Alexander Batsuev, Lead Developer at AnyChart.Com:
    We use Atlassian JIRA (as well as confluence and bamboo) in our projects.
    Pluses of the system: integration with their other products, flexibility
    Cons of the system: price, exactingness to servers
    Used for almost all
    JIRA projects we use about 5 already years

    Narek Mkrtchyan, head of design bureau Indentium:
    Now we use the Asana system. Among the advantages of the system are support for iOS devices, a pleasant and “usable” interface, many functions, and free use. EMS is used for various tasks, regardless of the number of participants and iterations.
    The main advantage of any project management system is competent time planning.
    We used to use Megaplan. They stopped because the system is overloaded with unnecessary functionality, and the interface is far from perfect.

    Mikhail Vavilov, Project Management Director, LiveJournal:
    All SUP Media projects use Atlassian products such as JIRA and Confluence, as well as Basecamp. These tools for project management are indispensable for the work of distributed teams and allow you to control the progress of tasks by any contractor at any time interval, as well as compare completed tasks with previously set by the leader.

    Olga Grinevskaya, GLAVSTART:
    In fact, when the project is small and the team does not have a lot of people, the management system is not fundamental.
    We used to use MS Project, but we realized that it takes much more time and energy to train new projects for it than it could later save.
    So we work individually with each team, as it will be more convenient for them and us.

    Askar Rakhimberdiev, head of the Russian SaaS service MoySklad:
    We use JIRA and Zendesk (both on demand), since they best solve the tasks of the development and support departments, respectively.

    PS It would be interesting to know what project management systems are used by the Habrachians.

    UPD.
    Oleg Vakhromeev, Development Director of REDMADROBOT:
    The REDMADROBOT team loves everything simple and functional, therefore it works on the simplest Basecamp service, which is so versatile that it is suitable for both conducting complex IT projects and managing a family pastry shop. And of course we are very inspired by the creators of the 37signals service, a dream team that consists of only 14 people, but at the same time works with millions of customers around the world. Well, actually created the Ruby on Rails framework, so you can trust them. Honestly, we, as a team, are somewhat equal to them in our work.

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