Selecting Project Management Software

These days I'm starting to take on more consulting projects so in addition to the generated sites which typically only take a few man hours, I can get to play with some more interesting/custom projects which typically run 100-300 man hours (if you have any fun ones you might want some help with next year, feel free to comment and I'll email you offline!). It is great because I can still use the SPL to create well architected apps more quickly than hand coding, but I also get to write some more custom functionality and to spend the time to create a really great solution. However, I need some project management software to help, so I did a quick review of some of the alternatives - from Trac and LightHouse to Mingle and Rally Software. Here's how it turned out . . .

What Do I Want?
So, the starting point was to define my requirements. My objectives were to provide a visually appealing site where clients could easily see the state of play, the work performed, the hours spent, any notes related to the work and could log any bugs or feature requests. I needed a system that allowed me to see my tasks (ideally within Eclipse), where I could document time spent on each task and could upload documentation related to things like APIs that I'd researched. I also needed some concept of stories (this was for development - not just bug tracking) and some way of relating tasks to stories so we could see estimated vs actual effort. And because the clients are paying by the hour, I needed to put billable hours into the estimated and actual field - ideally rolled up from smaller level tasks that I created (so I'd have a story, start by listing 15 tasks required, put time one each task and be able to see the rolled up time for each task). So my requirements are (in no particular order):

• Visually Pleasing, Simple, Intuitive Client Interface - As one of the few things my (remote) clients will ever see about me, the UI needs to be elegant, usable and well thought out. It needs to be focused on providing clients with just the information they want to see and should be intuitive to use.
• SVN Integration - I wanted it to capture notes from svn commits so I didn't have to double enter when I made a commit that fixed a bug or implemented a story. I also wanted a system where svn would be hosted on the same server so I didn't have to create two different environments and then write the commit hooks into the svn install - I want to spend my time programming - not doing sys admin tasks.
• IDE Integration or Desktop Widget - I'd really prefer to minimize context shifting by having either IDE integration or at least a desktop widget for my Mac for checking off tasks done, adding new tasks and tracking time. Ideally it'd work offline so I can code on the Ferry or at Starbucks (where in Oz the Internet access is prohibitively expensive). I'd love an AIR app, but didn't find the one I was looking for in the timeframe required for this project!
• Stories Metaphor - This is primarily to track development - not just bugs. As such I want the idea of stories which are comprised of tasks, with hours roll up from tasks to stories and burn down charts so we can all see how well the project is progressing.
• Bug tracker - That said, I also need the ability for the client to log bugs - ideally against stories so I'll be able to report at the end on the estimated vs actual effort for each story including the time taken to fix related bugs and to implement related enhancements. In the ideal world I'd see "build", "bugs" and "enhancements" numbers under each story with % figures as well as a total so I could give the client really good feedback on where the time was being spent and whether we should spend more time on tests to avoid bugs or less on adding new features until the other stories were done.
• Workflow - Ideally I'd love a workflow which would allow me to set things like "requested features" and with the ability to add stages for prioritizing, estimating, approving estimates and then "to implement" lists as there is a long workflow between a client thinking of a feature, me estimating it, them prioritizing it and me actually putting it into the hopper to start working on.
• Time Tracking - I want a simple widget where I can either click "start" and "stop" to get the clock running on a task (needs to allow returning to a task as there are often task interruptions) or can at least type in hours spent on it. This needs to be assigned to the task.
• Hosted Solution - I'll install software if necessary, but I'd rather just pay a monthly fee and let someone take care of the hosting - especially while I'm just trying this out. Last thing I need is to waste a half day getting a server configured just to try something out for a project or two.
• Email Interface - For both clients and myself, I really want a solution that allows replies to automated emails to be logged as comments against a ticket to keep the overhead of using the tool as low as possible.
• Content Management - There needs to be some kind of baseline content management or wiki features so I can upload documentation to the site and make that available to clients.

The Candidates
There are LOTS of pieces of software out there. I decided to look at the following ones. Trac, LightHouse, Unfuddle, activeCollab, Mingle, Fogbuz, Rally, Retrospectiva and TargetProcess.

The Bug Trackers
Unfortunately, some of the contenders dropped out pretty quickly. I really need the story metaphor (or at very least support for hierarchical tasks with roll up - I don't care whether they are called stories). I also need integrated time logging and reporting with each task. As such, Trac and LightHouse fell at the first hurdle. Unfuddle has time tracking and while it didn't have stories or hierarchical tasks, it has time roll up per milestone so at a push it might work. Mingle wasn't really designed to implement hourly estimates, but it allows for estimated and actual effort for each card, so it could work.

Narrowing the Field
I really wanted to play with Mingle, but I've got a business to run and while I would like to give Buildix a try (Mingle + svn + Trac + CC), I just don't have the time to play with that on this project. Maybe next time! Similarly activeCollab requires an install.

Also, Retrospectiva seemed just a little early stage for us - even though it is nominally a 1.1.

I was really looking to minimizing context shifting for managing tasks as that would be the biggest time sink, so I checked for that in all of the remaining contenders. Unfuddle has a widget, Fogbugz has EclipseBugz (although I'd prefer if the IDE integration was part of the commercial offering and hence supported), Rally appears to have Eclipse integration, although I have no idea why I need to send an email to request information about this - it should be part of the download and I need this up and running today. Also it appears I need to speak to their sales team to get going with this. Fair enough for most cases, but I need up and running fast, so Rally is out of the running for this project. Anyone who has jumped through their sales hoops, please let me know how it worked out as the software looks cool. TargetProcess doesn't seem to have IDE integration or widgets, so that leaves me with an initial shortlist for this project of Unfuddle and Fogbugz.

I also just saw that (not surprisingly) FogBugz doesn't have svn as part of their hosted solution. Of course they support svn integration, so I could set up (or rent) a svn install, customize it, customize Fogbugz and get them playing nicely together, but it the best of all possible worlds that's a half day of unbillable wasted effort and it could easily be a day or two of messing around. For now I'm going to try Unfuddle, and if it's good enough that'll work for today. If not, I'll review my criteria and see if it's worth checking out Mingle or activeCollab instead.