Use bug tracker to get things done and manage personal tasks? [closed]

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This is slightly off-topic, but can only be answered by programmers and is useful to many programmers:

Do you think it is useful to use a bug tracking system to keep track of personal todo items and to Get Things Done? I have not tried that; in fact, I don't have much experience with bug tracking systems. For my todo lists, I have played around with Google Tasks and Remember The Milk, but both of them have shortcomings:

Google Tasks: I like that you can create todo lists easily, can reorder items in the list and easily create hierarchies. But it is way too simplistic and does not allow to tag tasks or move tasks from one list to another.

Remember The Milk: It is nice and sleek, but you cannot create hierarchies of tasks, cannot arbitrarily reorder tasks and cannot set dependencies of tasks.

That's where a bug tracking system should come in:

Since I think (maybe too much?) like a programmer, my tasks have a natural hierarchy and a tree of dependencies, like in a Makefile. Here are two examples:

• The task of writing my thesis is done when several milestones are done. Some of these milestones can run in parallel (writing background chapter, running experiments A, running experiments B), others depend on each other (writing main chapter depends on first getting results from experiments A).

• The same is true for more personal goals: I want to host a dinner party, which requires finding a good date, finishing the guest list, making invitations, finding nice recipes, cooking, ...

For me, all these tasks involve hierarchical dependencies and milestones that bug tracking systems should be able to handle?

Here is an article that explains how to do advanced GTD with Remember The Milk, but he has to use several workarounds: (1) add a general tag 'wait' to tasks that are waiting for others to be completed but you cannot enter the IDs of the tasks that they are waiting for, (2) starting some special tasks with "." so that they are at the top of the alphabetically sorted list and signal that others are 'below' it as subgoals. Bug tracking systems should be able to handle these things much more naturally?

Does anyone have experience and can recommend a lightweight bug tracking system that might be good for this? Other requirements: Should run as web app, should allow me to tag a task with several tags (like 'work', 'fun', 'short-task', 'errands', ...).

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I have used quite a few bug/issue tracking systems and also task management and project management systems so far for professional purposes. Personally I am big fan of Getting Things Done, time and task management. For Getting Things Done, I also had my time with Google Tasks and Remember The Milk. Although they simply do the work, they have several shortcomings, as you mentioned before.

I have tried several things and within the scope of this question I will try to breakdown my experience with this tools based on your requirement.

Bugzilla

Bugzilla is a mature product which has several features, it is a great bug tracking software. You can easily create a demo instance if you want to give it a try. But based on your requirements, I don't think it is the best fit.

Redmine

I have played with Redmine, it is OK as an issue tracking system but I was not very satisfied with its usage. You can have a look at the demo page.

MantisBT

I also happen to play with MantisBT and in my opinion MantisBT is a barely OK bug tracking system and I don't think it will be the best fit.

Team Foundation Server

I use TFS on a daily basis, but mostly for version control and it is many things besides version control. Work items can be used as bug tracking and it a great tool for team management but it is not lightweight and I also don't think it is the best fit.

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is a great tool for GTD. It is very simple and list based. You can create several lists, you can create reminders etc. For personal use, this is my favorite choice for GTD, up to now. Although pro version has a few more features, it won't solve your problems based on your requirements.

Basecamp

I have used Basecamp, mainly for project management, task and issue management. You can create projects, and create tasks for each project. It is very easy to use and if you want to collaborate it is very easy. But it has its shortcomings.

In my humble opinion conventional issue tracking systems are no good for Getting Things Done. From what I understand, you need a simple yet powerful project management tool. Which brings us to our winner.

Trello

Trello is a web-based project management application developed by Fog Creek Software

Some of the features are:

• You can create projects. Projects are shown as lists.
• Create tasks. Tasks are shown as cards. You can also assign tasks to other individuals.
• You can move cards easily from one project to another, i.e. from Doing to Done.
• You can use tags, attach files and create checklists and etc.

It is very well explained in this short video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWiunIolf4s

Also @JoelSpolsky explains it in detail here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaDf1RqeLfo

In my opinion Trello would cover exactly what you need, most probably even more.

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FogBugz is a nice for GTD

I keep my (mostly work-related) GTD tasks in my FogBugz database and am quite happy with it. You can try the hosted version for free:

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBUGZ/IntrotoOnDemand.html

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I'm very happy using https://www.pivotaltracker.com for this purpose. Pivotal tracker is an agile project management tool. It lets you estimate and track the effort (on a scale of 1-5, not real time estimates.) It then lets you track your velocity on each specific project.

Within a project stories can be in different panes such as 'active', 'backlog', 'icebox', etc. It's easy to see at a glance what is in progress and what is coming up. Simply drag and drop to rearrange your queue of stories.

I have a number of projects such as my boat, homestead, etc. Stories can have tags and also subitems.

Pivotal Tracker doesn't have any scheduling or reminders. The idea is that you'll be looking at it daily and reorganizing stories as you go.

It also has an open API and quite a few supporting apps have been built for it. I personally use PivotalBooster on my mac, especially during my internet blackout from 7-9PM daily.

One thing I wish I could do easily is print out the stories for a project. It shouldn't be hard to do with their API, I just haven't taken the initiative.

Before this I tried Trello and found it to be bit more work than Pivotal Tracker. I also spent a fair amount of time with org-mode in emacs, and while it is pretty amazing I found it cumbersome.

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I've had alot of success using the Agile Software Project Management Software JIRA. It has user stories, estimation, customizable formats, export to excel, and many other great features. There is a free version, and the commercial version for up to 10 developers is $10 a month. It has many plug ins available including ones that connect to github and svn repositories. You can easily attach images and files to each issue/bug. You can easily use it for new projects as well as bug tracking.

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Redmine, pretty awesome, free, opensauce etc.

http://www.redmine.org/

Edit:

There is a fork of Redmine that looks promising, ChiliProject, https://www.chiliproject.org/

Demo is here.

Not sure why they forked Redmine, but i believe they wanted faster release cycles and more open to community changes.

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I suggest http://www.abstractspoon.com/tdl_resources.html I have used it for many years and find it quite sufficient for my needs. I believe it also fits what you are looking for.

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Look at the comparison of existing issue trackers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems

I think you can easy make your choice.

Regards.

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I've used dozens of application lifecycle management tools, from basecamp to jira to wunderlist, assemblr and many more, but the one I keep coming back to is the simple issue / milestone managment tool set built into github.

I like github mostly because it's got all the source code version control stuff a project needs, (Git is really nice to use) plus zillions of hooks for notifying other systems upon commits. It's got simple collaboration setup and management, allows you to publish pages to promote and describe your project, allows multiple projects, accounts range from free to cheap to corporate depending on your needs (I've found the cheap option works very well for me as a freelance developer), and the task / issue / milestone management system is simple but excellent. It also throws in a very good wiki system for collaborative documentation, and allows hooks for a range of continuous integration / build and test on commit tools, meaning you can control all aspects of a project lifecycle easily from one dashboard. It's also much more lightweight than many others such as trello which rely on a lot of client-side fancy stuff and often feel sluggish when all you want to do is quickly pop in and tick off a task. There are also good apps for iPhone and Android that interface well with GitHub, meaning you can use it as a mobile task manager with ease.

So, based on the requirements you specified in your question I'd suggest GitHub would satisfy you completely.

Note I am not affiliated with GitHub in any way, this is a recommendation based on my years of actual experience with many such systems.