Issue/Task Management in a development project

Diaverum (iv)

Lightweight” and “Agile” are often used as reasons to remove most, if not all, project administration.
Diaverum gave us the assignment to provide them with:

a tool that would support an agile kanban project setup with a multi-site development team
the ability to link between different issues to create traceability from user requirement down to code lines
full integration with source control/CM
a common place to document risks, decisions, tasks, issues and releases, which would also function as a place for gathering knowledge.

Challenge

“Lightweight” and “Agile” are often used as reasons to remove most, if not all, project administration. This may work in a small and tight development group with short sprints and limited disturbances. However, it may also spiral out of control very fast if the focus is lost.

Solution

We implemented a very lightweight issue/task tracking tool named Redmine. Redmine has an impressive heritage from Trac but with focus on being a very generic out-of-the-box product. Standard functionality includes customizable workflow, role-based access, custom fields, rss-feed, email for notification and a multitude of other useful things. 
See more at https://www.redmine.org.

Redmine is open-source and was in this project considered a good base for an issue management system. We had every intention to adjust Redmine with configuration or code changes to make it optimal for our need.

We created trackers, roles, work flow and custom fields very early in the project and changed almost all of them based on experience from usage. First changes came the very next day but we continued to refine usage even after a year.

Result

The highest ranking “Things we will bring to our next project” from the project kick-out workshop was Redmine. Even the developers and testers ranked it as a critical success factor that created a well-functioning environment where very few things where lost/dropped.

We all agreed that Redmine has saved a lot more time than was invested in implementation/training and follow-up.
A very good payoff even for a smaller project.