Hi everyone,
Sorry for the email length here. Here's my quick summary: * Trying to figure out how to do good project management on Bugzilla, working with the Bugzilla community to juice it up * Failing that, we'd like to migrate off of it. Leading candidate: Redmine * Wiki page: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Tracker/PM_tool
And now, the (much) longer version:
As you probably recall, Priyanka has been investigating our use of Bugzilla, and investigating whether or not it makes sense to keep using it, or migrate to something else. I'm helping her out with that evaluation now, and here's where we're at.
We really want to have well-integrated issue management (both feature requests and bugs) along with project management.
We've informally narrowed the choices down to 1) staying with Bugzilla, or 2) migrating to Redmine. I say "informally" because it's not as though there's been any formal consensus gathering process of any sort, and we know we need to really need to involve everyone in this process.
Staying on Bugzilla would obviously be the least disruptive choice, and we'd prefer to stay with the devil we know rather than find out what Redmine or some other tracker doesn't have after a migration.
However, looking at Bugzilla, as currently configured, from the point of view of a project manager, it really doesn't work very well. It's very difficult to provide a birds-eye view of how a project is progressing without building a separate manually-maintained wiki page with a project plan on it. While it seems possible to *cope* as a project manager with Bugzilla, it doesn't seem like the kind of tool that a project manager could grow to love, at least not how it exists now.
Redmine has time management built in, and is pretty clearly designed as a project management tool generally. By way of example, here's the roadmap for the Redmine project itself: http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/roadmap
It seems to favor old-school time management (with Gantt charts having better support than Burndown charts), but it looks like a versatile enough tool to adapt to many different project management styles. Most importantly, it has sensible defaults that we can count on others also building upon.
Now, as I've alluded to, the problem may just be with our configuration of Bugzilla, which is pretty narrowly focused on just tracking bugs. We reached out to the Bugzilla developers on IRC, and I'm planning to follow up on the Bugzilla newsgroup: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.support.bugzilla/
As with pretty much any mature piece of infrastructure software, it is possible to extend it. For example, Max Kanat-Alexander pointed out the new extension interface in the latest version of Bugzilla, and believes it would be reasonably simple now to create a roadmap plugin. That's not the only thing Bugzilla is lacking to be a really good project management tool, so we'll need a little more than "add roadmaps" to get us where we ultimately want to be, but having that functionality is a good start.
In order for Bugzilla to be a viable option for project management, the Bugzilla team would need to demonstrate that they're serious about creating something competitive in this area. Redmine isn't the only competition that appears to do better; JIRA is also better in this regard. While we may be the ones asking most directly right now, I've gotta believe that many other Bugzilla users are either hitting the same wall we are, or know something that we don't.
Here's what we're planning to do: 1. Engage the Bugzilla community much more seriously about project management. Engage the Firefox developers to find out how they're making it work for them, as well as other large projects (e.g. perhaps GNOME). 2. Simultaneously engage the Redmine community and generally evaluate Redmine. Make sure we understand a lot better the good and the bad with it. For example, it appears on the surface that the query abilities aren't as sophisticated. We'll need to understand if that's going to be a problem for us. 3. If it looks like Bugzilla is on a rapid enough trajectory to becoming a great project management tool (with or without our help), then we figure out how to make that process go as quickly as possible. 4. If it looks like Bugzilla is not going to get there without an all-too-heroic effort on our part, or it looks like one of the alternatives is SO compelling that we really should make a switch, then we'll be floating a migration plan with you all.
Here's the web page that discusses this: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Tracker/PM_tool
On that page, we get into some more detail about the pros and cons of each of the tools.
I realize that most of the readers on this list probably are not project management tool connoisseurs, and you're probably more interested in Bugzilla for its bug tracking ability. That said, there's probably a significant number of you that want to be more in-the-loop about what WMF staff developers are up to. Having access to the tool we use for scheduling/planning will give you more visibility.
So, here's what I'm hoping you all can help out with:
1. Take a really good look at Redmine, and see if you'd love/hate/be indifferent to a migration to that tool 2. Help with the process of fleshing out requirements/nice-to-haves on the wiki page above. 3. Help engage both the Bugzilla and Redmine communities if you've got an interest in this topic.
Does this all seem reasonable to everyone? Let us know what you think.
Thanks! Rob