Joel quoted Eric J. Smith who wrote that “FogBugz could single-handedly manage my support requests, sales requests, bug tracking and project management for CodeSmith.” I have been testing FogBugz on a new product development effort and it has not been a great fit for me outside of tracking issues.
I usually work directly with business owners, delivering vision briefs, high level goals, and the requirement documents for use by the development teams. In general, the vision statement and high level goals are transformed into product features and the features are broken down into specific requirements: UI, business process, interface to other applications, etc. The benefit I was looking for is the ability to track items from thought to completion while providing structure collaboration in ways email and MS Word cannot. The drawback is when using any tool you accept the necessary evil that you need to record the information to fit the way the tool works.
In the end, the vision statement, high level goals, and features were in MS Word and the resulting requirements in FogBugz. So, no online collaboration during the requirements phase. Also, the development team when reading specific requirements need to go somewhere else to understand the full feature, high level goal, or vision. At a minimum, I needed the ability to breakout a single case into sub cases, where each sub case could be assigned and managed. I thought of creating separate projects or areas for each feature, but did not like the idea of forcing the tool that much to meet my needs. The ability to modify the resolve status listings was high on my wish list too.
Hopefully, Joel’s new summer project will tackle the needs for new product development and requirements gathering.