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There's a feature that I'd like to see in issue tracking software that just doesn't seem to be all that common, and that is the ability to divide a ticket (bug, feature request, etc) into sub-tasks and view them in a hierarchical fashion, perhaps with some kind of progress bar style report of progress on a particular ticket and its child tickets.

My thinking is that this would be useful for both developers and project managers: project managers like to have a fairly broad overview of what is going on, whereas developers need to drill down to the details, and very often need to divide a task into sub-tasks. This would also come in handy if someone put two issues into one ticket.

Does anyone know of an issue tracker which does this? So far the ones I've looked at (Trac, FogzBugz, and Basecamp) all have a flat organisation of tickets, so they're either useful for the developers or for the project managers but not for both. Assembla does allow a ticket to have child tickets (and multiple parent tickets) but it doesn't do a very good job of usability on this specific feature.

If there is such an issue tracker, has anyone used it for both developers and project managers, and if so, how much success did you have with it? Alternatively, is there a better approach that can be usable by both categories of users?

(Update: This is not a subjective "what is your favourite bug tracking software" question. I am asking about bug trackers with a specific feature for a specific purpose, so please don't post your favourite bug tracker if it doesn't do what I've asked for. The only arguably subjective element is how well it works for this particular purpose.)

jammycakes
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  • Is it me, or did like...TWO people actually read the question before answering? WTF. (As for me, I've never found an issue tracker with that feature, but it sounds nifty.) – Cody Hatch Sep 27 '08 at 00:24
  • It's not just you -- but most of the answers here did appear before I updated the question. There are far too many responses that say little more than "I like it," don't answer the question, and as such are totally unsatisfactory. – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 11:16
  • Of course, you'd rather we write a commercial for them rather than go read their website and check for yourself... – tloach Sep 27 '08 at 16:33
  • No I certainly don't want a commercial, especially not one that lists a whole lot of irrelevant features that are nothing to do with what I'm asking. I just want to know (a) which ones do what I want, (b) how well they do it, and (c) whether or not the approach I'm after works well in practice. – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 23:01
  • The post about Zendesk might as well have been a commercial - and it was just about as useless as the rest. Something short like "Hey, App X does *exactly* what you're asking for!" is really all it takes... – Cody Hatch Sep 27 '08 at 23:20
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    How about changing the title to "Bug Tracker with Sub-Tickets"? – Agnel Kurian Nov 13 '08 at 06:37

15 Answers15

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JIRA

subtasks

Colin Pickard
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dacracot
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You want version 7 of Fogbugz. This support multi-levels of hierachy and shows it in a treeview.

sohail
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  • Thanks -- I saw the FogBugz 7 presentation at the Stack Overflow DevDays and I was pretty impressed. Perhaps someone at Fog Creek read this question and decided it was worth answering? – jammycakes Dec 02 '09 at 15:23
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    I've actually started using it, and the subcase functionality is very well thought out – sohail Sep 29 '10 at 16:07
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JIRA has the ability to break tasks down into arbitrary sub-tasks, like you're after. It's also super-shiny, so project-manager-types should like it.

skaffman
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  • Yes, but how intuitive is it to use? I did mention Assembla, which does something similar, but its user interface is pretty clunky and basic in this respect. – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 00:47
  • JIRA is used by plenty open-source projects (e.g. issues.apache.org and jira.springframework.org), so give it a go yourself. The interface is pretty damn good. – skaffman Sep 27 '08 at 09:03
  • I've up-voted your answer because it's one of only two that made any effort at all to answer my question in any detail. I've downloaded Jira and it does have at least a partial implementation of what I'm looking for, though it's only available in the Proessional and Enterprise versions. – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 12:50
  • One thing to note is Jira has a good user community, a lot of plugins, and is fairly hackable (access to the source code comes with a license. It's entirely possible that even if Jira doesn't do what you want out of the box, it might be possible to MAKE it work. :-) – Cody Hatch Sep 27 '08 at 13:37
  • Jira is terrible at usability. I liked Rally better... that being said... jira ondemand has a ton of cool addins for the technical side (Bamboo, Crucible, Fisheye... etc) so if you're a developer-centric organization I would go with Jira. If you're a "Businessy" focused organization go with Rally. – JDPeckham Jul 24 '12 at 21:12
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There is a lengthy discussion about bug trackers here.

I like Mantis, myself.

Community
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itsmatt
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  • This does not answer my question. Does Mantis do what I am asking about? – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 00:38
  • Did you take a look at the discussion I linked to? There was a post in there about Trac plug-ins and one of them mentioned subtasks (BigMadKev posted it). I think your question is a good one, just wanted to make sure you saw that one. We don't do subtasks, so I'm not sure. All the best! – itsmatt Sep 27 '08 at 14:17
  • I did look at the other discussion, but I didn't notice the post you mentioned -- it's way down the list. The question you linked to is actually much more general than this one. I got the impression people thought I was asking the same thing, but I'm not -- I'm after something rather more specific. – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 18:28
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Mantis does have relationships between issues, like parent, child, related etc.

It does not exactly have a tree view, but it does show the related/parent/child issues ina list when you are viewing an issue.

Having tried trac and Mantis, Its my personal fav

Midhat
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  • I've up-voted your answer because it's one of only two that made any effort at all to answer my question in any detail. I've downloaded Jira and had a look at it -- I'll also take a look at Mantis and see how well it compares with Jira and Assembla in this respect. – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 12:52
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Well, we've used TestTrack for years now, which supports hierarchical linking between items. It's project management UI is nothing to write home about however.

It seems as though you're looking for something more like @Task, where you create a project plan using a system similar to Microsoft Project, with future tasks depending on previous tasks, etc. The UI is pretty slick, but when you get to the bug tracker you're pretty much back in "glorified spreadsheet" mode - i don't get the impression this was really designed by or for programmers. Still, might be worth a look if you're really serious about needing this.

IMHO, the problem with adding a hierarchy to your tracking system is that issues do not naturally have a hierarchy when they're added; someone in QA finds a regression, or a user calls in from the field, and an issue gets created. Until at least some research is done into the root cause of the problem, the issue is stand-alone, and chances are, it'll be stand-alone until it's fixed unless it's identified as dependent on some larger project... for which there is likely already some sort of a project management system in place.

Shog9
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  • "issues do not naturally have a hierarchy when they're added" indeed, but our problem here is that an original 15 minute task is re-used for all subsequent peripheral tasks and the initial time estimate is useless for the tasks performed. Also, we can't separate Diagnosis and Fix time estimates – Kristen Feb 26 '09 at 09:17
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    There is a JIRA plugin from Almworks that provides a nice hierarchical view on your tickets, so that it becomes easy to keep track of subtickets. https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure – MovGP0 Dec 06 '14 at 18:19
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redmine and chilliproject support subtasks without any extra plugins.

messedup
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1

Based on one of the other answers I've had a look at Jira, which goes part of the way towards doing what I'm looking for and seems to work reasonably well, though it isn't quite as slick as I'd hoped. However, it only allows sub-tasks in the Professional and Enterprise versions; this feature is disabled by default; and you only get a single level of sub-tasks. The default reports also list top level tasks as well as sub-tasks together in a flat view, so you have to specifically create a custom report if you want to view just the top level ones.

Another feature that I intend to investigate when I get a chance is Mantis, which apparently has similar functionality. I will update here once I've tried it.

jammycakes
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Rally supports both dev and project management views

http://www.rallydev.com/

Lou Franco
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  • Could you go into more detail please? – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 12:55
  • Rally Portfolio manager and Rally ALM together give you a hierarchy from Portfolio all the way down to the technical task. You can 'split' user stories in the story hierarchy and move tasks to the new story expanding your hierarchy. This allows Portfoiio Managers to focus on strategy ("Epics", "Initiatives", "Features") while Project managers focus on User Stories, and teams focus on their tasks. There are basically 3 different views (Portfolio view for Portfolio items, Backlog View for user stories/bugs, then Iteration Status for tasks) – JDPeckham Jul 24 '12 at 21:10
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Tele-Support HelpDesk has a very good and easy to use bug tracking system that also has the benefit of exposing it to the support department to link customers to the issues and then notify the customers when the issues are complete. I live in it daily, and have found the workflow to be extremely productive. Management always knows whats currently in progress, what was just fixed, and what issues are hot (and even how long something should take to get fixed).

It has a very good customizable priority system. Each issue can have a category and product assigned to it and at a button click will be organized to that list. There is a quick filter option, and the ability to do even finer filtering. With estimated time to completion it auto calcs total completion on the fly based on what is currently visible in the list.

our Typical Workflow: Bugs are entered into the system by the support staff/QA Staff. Management reviews the list of "new" bugs and sets the priority they would want them done in. Development staff looks at priority list and sets estimated effort levels. Management reviews and adjusts priority. Development completes issues. QA verifies completed issues and notifies customer upon successful update posting.

At all stages, any one in the staff can look at the list and see what the current status is, and even add notes or attach another customer to the problem. There are fields for release version, which we use with a custom filter / report to auto generate our release notes. (screen shot of open known issue: which is the bug tracking portion of the product).

skamradt
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  • Could you go into more detail please, specifically about how well it works for the purpose I've actually asked in the original question? – jammycakes Sep 27 '08 at 12:55
  • It has a very good customizable priority system. Each issue can have a category and product assigned to it and at a button click will be organized to that list. There is a quick filter option, and the ability to do even finer filtering. With estimated time to completion it auto calcs on the fly. – skamradt Sep 28 '08 at 15:08
  • Yes but you haven't said anything about whether it has the feature I'm asking about (sub-tasks) or how well it implements it. – jammycakes Sep 29 '08 at 00:35
  • Sub tasks can easily be added multiple ways depending on the need. One method is to use the product as the "master" task. The advantage of this method is that the individual tasks can then be prioritized independently. – skamradt Sep 29 '08 at 13:16
  • Another option would be to create linked inquiries for each sub task (assigned to an internal "customer") The advantage of this approach would be the timelog system would then allow time-keeping for each task, and each inquiry has an additonal linked task system. – skamradt Sep 29 '08 at 13:18
  • tasks, inquiries, and known issues can all be assigned to a specific person or a department. Inquiries can be set to auto-escalate in priority if so desired. – skamradt Sep 29 '08 at 13:20
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FogBugz is the issue tracker made by Joel Spolsky's company FogCreek. Its not free, but there's a hosted version that is pretty nice. From my own personal experience it has some excellent features and it's easy to use. It certainly looks nicer and has better usability than mantis or bugzilla, but it's not open, and it makes some tradeoffs for a simpler interface.

Russell Leggett
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TUTOS.

It even does Project Management activities at the top.

Workflow, Wiki, it is pretty good.

www.tutos.org

Tim Williscroft
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    After three months we replaced Tutos with Mantis because people didn't like using it. The issues seemed to be with usability navigating your way around as well as appearance. – Andy Dent Feb 26 '09 at 07:55
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I've used Mantis in many organistions and particularly because of the sub-issue feature which is one of my key points I look for in an issue-tracker. They have Freemind export in Mantis now but I'm sure I've seen parent-child diagrams drawn at one site, maybe because they installed JpGraph.

I'm also using the free single-user install of Axosoft's OnTime system which has very flexible sub-issue entry although the UI is a little clunky - you have to search for issues rather than being able to specify a given issue number directly as the target of the relationship. OTOH it allows you to configure a bunch of relationships in one hit in the dialog so is quicker in that scenario.

Andy Dent
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Bugzilla has the notion of dependent bugs, which isn't exactly the sub-task paradigm you are looking for, but can be viewed as close. Unfortunately, the interface for this is quite clunky, as is the rest of the Bugzilla interface, but it does get the job done.

On the positive side, the relationships among bugs can be presented as a graph as well as a fairly easy-to-traverse tree structure to allow for exploring related issues. Additionally, as sub-issues are completed or change, those changes get percolated up the dependency tree so that those responsible for the higher-level tasks are easily notified that things they may have been waiting on are completed.

cdeszaq
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-1

JIRA integrated with Pivotal Tracker.

JIRA allows for tickets. It gives JQL filter ability for search. Gives ability to share tickets between groups. Gives ability for workflow diagrams, history, transitions, comments, etc. Gives ability to view reporters, assignees, implementers. For each ticket there's ability to add Comments, Attachments, Attach Screenshots, Link, Clone, Resolve Issue. JIRA provides a very nice layout of the current ticket state.

Pivotal Tracker allows "velocity" management of project for Agile Development. Useful for PMs and developers. Provides graphs, charts. Provides ability to integrate JIRA's tickets into its project. Provides a dashboard with projects. Provides real-time velocity graphs. Provides a number of views within each project including Current, Ice Box, My Work. Each JIRA ticket can be a "Story" in PT. Each story goes through Start, Finish, Deliver, Accept/Reject, and Rejected stages for SDLC. Each story gives ability to Add Task, Comments, Attachments, and Upload Files.

JIRA workflow enter image description here

Pivotal Tracker workflow

enter image description here

Peter Arandorenko
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