An interesting read came across my twitterstream the other day.
A Survey of Web-Based Software Project Portals
web project management - by foxypar4 via Flickr
It’s a survey of web-based tools specifically in the realm of software development. They included the following as their final list of portals:
- Acunote
- Assembla
- BaseCamp
- DotProject
- Google Code
- IBM Jazz
- Mingle
- Rally
- SourceForge
- Trac
- VersionOne
Note this was done July-Sept 2008 and things move quickly in this realm. If nothing else, this gives you some guidance as to options available if you are looking for something like this.
I’d like to point this out:
“…possible research directions derived from this work could focus on understanding how these portals are really used.”
This would be excellent. The configuration of the tool and how it is used seems to me the best measure of utility. Key features will not be used if they are burdensome. Undocumented features that emerge through application can sometimes be very powerful properties of any software package. I would like to know more about these things.
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Thanks Josh for referencing our work. Regarding the research direction you mention, we tried to convince the tool vendors to have anonymous access to their customers’ data (in fact, we did not even need the real project data just information about how each company had configured the project management tool, e.g. which modules they were using, what fields the team members filled in when creating tickets,…). Unfortunately, we were unable to do so and had to cancel this research line. It is a pity becuase I believe the own tool vendors could have benefitted from the findings
You’re welcome! You are certainly correct about the vendors (and their customers) potential benefit from analysis of that kind of usage data.
They may have some features that have never been used by anyone, or a very small group. How would they know unless they collect some kind of usage data? They don’t.
Unless you are saying they have this data but declined to share a subset of it. Their loss I suppose.
Thanks Josh for referencing our work. Regarding the research direction you mention, we tried to convince the tool vendors to have anonymous access to their customers’ data (in fact, we did not even need the real project data just information about how each company had configured the project management tool, e.g. which modules they were using, what fields the team members filled in when creating tickets,…). Unfortunately, we were unable to do so and had to cancel this research line. It is a pity becuase I believe the own tool vendors could have benefitted from the findings
You’re welcome! You are certainly correct about the vendors (and their customers) potential benefit from analysis of that kind of usage data.
They may have some features that have never been used by anyone, or a very small group. How would they know unless they collect some kind of usage data? They don’t.
Unless you are saying they have this data but declined to share a subset of it. Their loss I suppose.
Excellent post here. I utilize Google Code myself, but really need to branch out and use other programs/applications.
Excellent post here. I utilize Google Code myself, but really need to branch out and use other programs/applications.
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