[p4] Recommended bug tracking tools

[Shawn Hladky]

>>TeamTrack is complicated and likely will require 1 FTE of care
>>and feeding for any sufficiently complicated use.  But if you really
>>want process to drive your business then it's definitely a tool worth
>>looking at.

I second that.  I can't recommend TeamTrack based on our experience.
However, I don't fault the tool itself, but insufficient investment in
administration.  Our workflows, fields, states, and transitions do not
accurately mirror our processes... and as a result most of our employees
hate the tool.  Our admins are a couple of QA engineers that spend 5% of
their time on TeamTrack admin.  We've had at least 3 different attempts to
revise our workflows over the last 4 years, and none of them have
materialized due to the LOE required.

If I were shopping for a defect tracking system, I would look for something
that's simpler and cheaper than TeamTrack.  I think you'd need to be in a
very process-heavy environment to justify the costs/complexity of TeamTrack.

On 9/24/07, Smith, Jeff <jsmith at medplus.com> wrote:
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
> [mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of Brian Jones
> Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 11:59 PM
> To: Qazwart
> Cc: bskillman at syrres.com; perforce-user at perforce.com
> Subject: Re: [p4] Recommended bug tracking tools
>
> > Looking behind the covers at the work flow model that TeamTrack
> maintains reveals
> > that it is not easy to create a set of work flows for multiple teams
> and have that
> > scales very well, especially when teams may or may not want to share
> issues in
> > the future. I'm not sure there is an easy answer to the problem.
>
> We have been using TeamTrack for about 3 years and this is completely
> counter to our experience.  By allowing projects to share workflows,
> allowing workflows to submit into other workflows and allowing issue
> types to affect allowed states, TeamTrack makes it easy to create the
> situation you describe.  We have not found scalability to be an issue.
> However, TeamTrack is complicated and likely will require 1 FTE of care
> and feeding for any sufficiently complicated use.  But if you really
> want process to drive your business then it's definitely a tool worth
> looking at.
>
> > TeamTrack, for example, is part of Serena's tool chain. Yes, you can
> integrate
> > other SCMs into it, but you will see more and more that Serena will
> promote
> > a "better together" message regarding their products just like IBM
> > Rational and Borland.
>
> Actually, I just attended the user meeting for our region and this is
> definitely not the case.  Serena is pushing ALF 2.0 and web-services
> compliance.  They strongly delivered the message that they believe the
> days of trying to sell products as a proprietary tool-chain are over.
> They seem to understand that companies have to acknowledge that
> integration of tools is a must-have for the consumer.  They've already
> put their money where there mouth is by adding pretty good web services
> integration (both providing and consuming) to TeamTrack.  I wish
> Perforce would do the same!
>
> Jeff
>
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