CompiledMonkey.com

Equipped with a first class source control management tool and automated build and deployment environment, we were ready to move forward with development. We’re in the early stages of a new project and the planning has been really important to get right the first time. We discovered quickly that we were missing a rather important piece to successfully manage a software project; a project management tool. I have been using Microsoft Project to scope out the major pieces to the project, estimate times, and coordinate efforts across a number of developers. What Project fails to offer is a way to communicate these tasks in a social way. I should be able to easily get very detailed about a task and the developers should be able to see that task and comment on it openly. In addition, we also wanted a way to coordinate releases as we move forward. We’d like to know, graphically, how far along we are to the next release of our project at all times.

The tool we found to do all of this and more is called Trac. Trac is an open source project management tool designed to stay out of the developer’s way. Trac also provides a Wiki for documentation. Trac allows you to create milestones for your project with due dates. You can then create tickets against these milestones and track progress along the way. Tickets are classified as functionality, defects, or enhancements. Tickets give us the detail we need to complete high level components you might typically lay out using Microsoft Project. Each ticket provides a message board style communication medium to discuss the specifics of the ticket. As tickets are resovled, the progress is instantly reflected in your milestones.

A huge plus with Trac is it’s integration with Subversion. Trac provides a web based view of your repository. You can view comments, revision numbers, and even file diffs directly in your browser.