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So, my company has finally decided that we need some type of project management solution for the entire operations team (~10 people).

I have personally been using Basecamp to track new feature/enhancements requests and bugs. However, it doesn't have the reporting components my boss would like.

Thus, I've begun searching for a solution that can offer the following:

  • It must be incredibly easy to use & intuitive
  • It should have basic reporting capabilities so we can see how long a bug has been in the queue, etc

The closest solution I've come across is Zoho Projects, but my boss views it as being clunky.

Also tried Asana, Teambox, Flow, GoPlan, and Trello... but was disappointed in their reporting capabilities (or lack thereof).

I tried AxoSoft OnTime but thought it wasn't very intuitive.

The closest solution I found was JIRA, but it seems like it focuses much more on development.

As a developer, I'm willing to use whatever is easiest to use for the rest of the company so it will be adopted quickly. So far, though, it seems like it's become impossible to find a solution that's very simple for anyone to start using but also have a nice admin side for reporting.

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While there are advantages to having a company-wide project management solution, there are also disadvantages. As you've mentioned, JIRA is a good choice for bug tracking or for project management but may not be optimal for other areas. Conversely, Trello may be great for managing really small customer service oriented projects, it may not be great for a large development project. In short, everyone may feel that the solution falls short in one area or another.

My suggestion is to find out what works best for each department and let each area innovate independently. Not only will each group's shoes fit their feet, but also you'll have several experiments running that will increase the likelihood of finding the most optimal solutions.

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  • Very valid point. I think that's the point I really need to sell to my boss. – ajtatum Feb 9 '12 at 19:14
  • It's a hard sell, but it's possible. Perhaps you can convince your boss to consider the benefits of letting people have a say in what they use as a solution. When people feel in control, they're more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. I'd use this as well as the "experiment" argument. Good luck! – jmort253 Feb 11 '12 at 2:04
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I very strongly recommend Pivotal Tracker!

I've used Jira, Trello and many others and they were all kinda 'yeah, kinda'

But Pivotal Tracker I really love. When I started using it for my own personal projects and my life I knew it had met the acid test! For fans of others tools - do you use it personally and love it?

It's very modern, many activites are drag and drop rather than clunky old forms. It handles bugs, features and chores really well.

Bets of all, as time passes, it reports your 'velocity' for completing stuff, so in the future you can base estimates on how long things REALLY take, not just how long you wish they would take !!!

As your requirements are for an incredibly easy to use tool, reporting capabilities and a nice admin area, I think Pivotal Tracker would meet your needs nicely.

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  • Never heard of Pivotal Tracker... but holy crap! I'm going to start using it for personal use if anything else. I do think it's a bit more complicated than I'd like for non-technical people, though. – ajtatum Feb 9 '12 at 19:15
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While JIRA is (as you say) focused on development, I do not think it is so much so that it cannot be used for non-development projects. It's integration with Confluence is simply brilliant, as it allows you to tie whatever tasks you are tracking in JIRA to collaborative documents.

I'd recommend trying a pilot with it, at any rate.

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Jira is a great tool, but in cases where the team is small it oftens becomes too much and too clunky to be effective. I think a good option would be Eylean Board. It is an agile project management software that offers task and time tracking, team management and automated reports. The board itself is drag & drop thus really easy to use and to get started.

As we have a mixed team of developer and non-developer team members, we especially enjoy the possibility to integrate TFS tasks and have the whole team working in the same environment at all times.

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