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Ask HN: How do you manage issues/bugs, track features

7 points by joycew ↗ HN
Hi all, what process do you use to track issues, manage these and keep a list of the most requested features? I'm asking because there are millions of tools out there, all seem to be different versions of a to do list. Does anyone find it really unmotivating to track a list of ever expanding issues? How do you prioritise to stay focused on a few at a time. This adds more complexity when you want to launch new features at the same time.

14 comments

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kfullert
On a side-project I'm working with someone else on at the moment, we're using Asana.

I'm the tech/coding part, whereas he has the domain knowledge, so we have a Workspace setup for the project, then have seperate projects within that - ie, at the moment we have a Front-End project, a Back-End project, a Phase 2 project and a Future project.

If it's a bug or something we want for launch it goes into Front or Back-End, for sometime after launch it's Phase 2 and a nice-to-have goes into Future - tasks get assigned to me when there's an action needed, once done I assign it back and once we're both happy then it's completed - we use the Comments to put notes down regarding ideas for how it should work/look etc. against the tasks.

One thing I like that Asana has recently got is sub-tasks, so you can break a task down into component tasks without cluttering your main Task list up.

Works for us, may not for anyone else though :)

joycew
Sounds like a great flow. We are using trello at the moment. A list each for current focus, bugs and new features for future dev. I can assign issue to someone in trello too but it's not very efficient and seeing lists of issues in a large board can be overwhelming.

We normally get together on Monday to sort these issues. Move urgent ones to the 'focus' list etc. But the main problem is that it's not very motivating to log issues and to solve them. It always looks like there are infinite amounts of work to do.

kfullert
Yes, I've had a quick look at Trello and it seems like I'm using Asana in a similar way - large lists are demotivating, this is why I like the sub-tasks way of working ...

Say we want a new feature to handle processing a file and generating metadata from it after upload - in this case we'd have a high-level task of "Generate metadata asynchronously on upload" then within that I can have sub-tasks like "Create Resque job on upload", "Generate metadata in Resque job", "Update model with metadata", "Mail user on completion" - this way the main task list isn't cluttered with too much detail, and when I'm in the actual task the list of things to concentrate on are fairly small (I like to break a task up into 5 or so discrete parts which seems about right to me)

joycew
I've tried Asana quickly before, seemed very similar to trello. But I really liked the inline ':' type to create a new section of issues, very intuitive and fast. Will have another go to see how well it fits our project.

Including all the sub tasks sounds great, means each time you complete a small task there is a sense of achievement. I'll try it out! Thanks!

mmariani
Great app. Thanks for this tip!
kfullert
Yep, I've had an account since not long after it was released, and I've seen some good updates come through since (sub-tasks being one of them) and the free account does fine for what I need (and if I'm ever in the position to need more then I'd be more than happy to pay for it)
mitchellwfox
We're also using Asana for bug tracking at Endurance. Bugs get assigned into categories based on priority (P1, highest to p4, lowest).

Another great tool to use is Jing or Snagit to take a screenshot or short video of the bug, in action. Then it's a simple click to upload to Screencast and paste the unique URL for the screenshot into the bug. Much faster than taking screenshot, naming image, saving it, and attaching it.

Atomcan
We use Trello, Lighthouse, Zendesk and Pivotal Tracker. We hook them all into one stream with www.hojoki.com. This helps us search between them all and discuss what's going on.
joycew
Hojoki looks great, going to try it out, thanks for the tip! Is it easy to manage what issues to focus on with all these tools combined together?
Atomcan
That can be challenging if you have a lot going on. You can use tags and then sort by tags using the search. You should just use the search where you can to narrow down your results until you find exactly what you want.
joycew
yea I just tried it out by hooking trello to it. It's good that it pulls in all the feeds from most apps. Makes it very easy to see whats going on. Like a live twitter feed! But hard to manage the focus, will try search and tag
antidoh
I'm trying out Trac for a side project. I like it because it's both a tracker and a wiki, and your tickets each have a wiki page.

It has a roadmap feature where you define milestones, and you can assign tickets to a milestone for planning and triage.

One thing I haven't figured out is how to block closing a ticket on the closing of another ticket. That's all I'm missing from it so far. Anyone? Is there a feature or plugin for that, or a practice, that I've missed?

Edit: s/to a roadmap/to a milestone/

shin_lao
We use Fogbugz and Desk, but most importantly, we use verbal communication.
anons2011
We use Jira.

It includes - user time tracking, bug reporting, you can create Epic issues and add sub-tasks under them. All very useful.

You can also get FishEye to integrate SVN info.