I was wondering whether anyone has tried using bug tracking tools (such as mantisBT or Jia) as lightweight requirements gathering tools? If so, do you have any do's and don'ts to pass on? Saving Changes...
Mauro Chiado' CaponetIT project manager| HP Enterprise ServicesCorio Canavese, Torino (Italy), Italy
Hello Chris,
I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to contribute a bit with my experience.
I worked on a project where we used MantisBT as a ticketing service to plan and monitor IT work services required by customers, it started quite well but after a while we discontinued it due to poor and sporadic usage.
I certainly do have a few suggestions:
Do:
- Free
- Easy install
- Extensive customizations are possible, provided the required effort is available
Don't:
- Do not use this solution if the usage will be limited to the team from one side, that is, if the customer side (in my example) is never going to use it, due to privacy/separation fo concerns issue
- Do not use this solution if you are not prepared to educate the team about its usage
- Do not start customizing straight away, use it plain vanilla first for a while, then customize with a more complete vision
- These are collaboration and communication tools. Do not use them if not everyone involved has been educated to provide documentation (which could mean a couple of lines of explanation) and the whole thing becomes a state1 -> state2 -> state3 without any insight in reason why state changed. Saving Changes...
