Task tracking tool evaluations

From Deep Blue Robotics Wiki
Revision as of 07:02, 9 October 2016 by DBrettle (Talk | contribs) (Started BugGenie evaluation)

Jump to: navigation, search

Features

See below for a description of the features.

Tool Task board Mobile support Cost Task dependencies Task groups Slack integration Open source Other Notes
Kyber.me No Yes Free No Yes. Slack channel > task Notifications and task creation, modification, etc. No + You can easily see tasks you've assigned to others and click a "Follow Up" button to request a status update.

+ Integration with calendars (not evaluated)

+ Automation possibilities with IFTTT (not evaluated)

Taiga.io Yes Yes. Mobile-ready web interface. Dragging cards is a bit slow. Free for public projects No Yes. projects > epics > user stories > tasks. Notifications only and all notifications for a Taiga project (which might contain all of our projects) go to the same channel. There are well documented APIs for both Slack and Taiga, so we could conceivably roll our own better Slack integration. Yes - Nomenclature will be confusing because user stories are what are displayed on the kanban board. Terminology translation:
  • Our year -> Taiga project
  • Our project (led by a misnamed "task team lead") -> Taiga epic
  • Our task -> Taiga user story
  • Our checklist item -> Taiga task
Drupal's PM plugin
PHProjekt No Not tested Free No Yes. Infinite depth No Yes but see notes. + Easy to install from GoDaddy CPanel

- Project is unmaintained since 2013

- Website is unreachable

BugGenie Yes via preview release of addon (not evaluated) Free Notifications only via addon (not evaluated). Notifications for different projects can be sent to different channels. Yes + Easy to install from GoDaddy CPanel
Asana No. Though Asanban supposedly provides one. Yes, via apps for Android and iOS No. Per user pricing. Declined to allow us to use the Asana for Students program. No. Yes. Projects > sections > tasks > subtasks No. + Already being used for many business tasks
Teamweek Would need to investigate non-profit discount
PivotalTracker Free for public projects

Task board

The tool should provide a single view (sometimes called a task board, a WIP board (work in progress board), or a kanban board) for the entire team to visualize the state of all tasks. At a minimum there are columns for tasks in each of the following states: to do, in progress, done. Ideally, the tool provides a way to add columns corresponding to states like "blocked" or "under review".

Mobile Support

It should be easy for a user to use a smart phone to select a task to work on and change the state of task. Ideally the user can also use a smartphone to add/change information associated with the task (e.g. add comments, change the task description, etc).

Cost

Should cost less than $500/year to use. Many task tracking tools are priced on a per-user basis. With over 50 potential users, even a price of $1/user/month is too expensive, and all tools with per-user pricing that I've seen are more expensive than that. Some tools are free for public projects which should work for us. Some tools offer discounts or are free for academic institutions or non-profits. These might be worth investigating, but given the time-critical nature of getting a tool in place, we might not be able to get approved for such treatment soon enough for it to be useful.

Task Dependencies

Ideally, there should be a way to indicated that one task can not start until another one is complete, and such a dependency should be made visible and should prevent users from choosing a task which is blocked for that reason.

Task Groups

The tool should allow tasks to be grouped so that we can distinguish between tasks associated with different projects. The groups might be called projects, epics, or they might go by some other name.

The tool should also allow tasks to at least have basic checklist-style subtasks to assist with implement quality control procedures.

Slack Integration

The tool should have a way to notify relevant users via slack when the state of a task changes or new tasks are created.

Ideally, the tool should also allow the user to use slack to change the state of a task so that they don't have to switch apps as often.

Open Source

The goal here is just to avoid vendor lock-in. If the tool is proprietary the pricing or availability of the tool might change in the future in a way that would prevent us from continuing to use the tool and we might also lose access to any data in it. If it's open source we will at least be able to host it ourselves if necessary and, at least theoretically, recover any critical data in some form.