Assign 4: Evaluating Issue Tracking Software

Due: Monday before class

Goals for Assignment 4

Hands-on experience with issue tracking software
Critical evaluation of software tools

Objective: Evaluating Issue Tracking Software (100 pts)

We have been talking a lot about software tools and their tradeoffs. Let's make this concrete.

You are to evaluate the below tools on the following criteria:

How do you perform each of the following tasks in the tool? How easy is it to perform each of the tasks?
- Browsing bug reports
- Searching for/filtering bug reports (how does the tool enable search?)
- Viewing the details of a bug report (how does the bug report map back to the theory we talked about in class?)
- Submitting a bug report (if you can find that--check documentation too)
What other cool/useful features does the software have?
Overall, what do you like and not like about each user interface?

There is likely other criteria you would use to evaluate the tools (how much support each tool provides; what other software you're using for your project), but we'll just focus on the above criteria (with a bit of a nod toward open-source vs commercial software, see below).

After creating a summary of your evaluation based on the criteria above (can be in paragraph or bulleted form; it just needs to be clear), compare and contrast the tools.

Finally, summarize which tool would you recommend to your team to use for bug tracking under various circumstances.

The Tools to Evaluate, Alphabetically

Open-source, freely available Bugzilla, specifically the instance of Bugzilla for Bugzilla. You can also check out the test server to see how many bugs mybutt has been assigned.
(Pretending Commercially Available) Facebook's Bug Reports
Commercially Available JIRA, specifically the instance of Minecraft's JIRA
Open-source, freely available Trac, specifically the instance of FileZilla's Trac

Finishing up: What to turn in for this assignment

Email me a PDF of your evaluation.

Grading (100 pts)