Customer Reviews

Painless Project Management with FogBUGZ (Books for Professionals by Professionals)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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While this book references a specific defect tracking solution, namely FogBugz, you should read more about the process rather than the specific product. You can apply the same process principles to other defect tracking solutions.

Speaking of FogBugz (I was responsible for selecting it for our software development company), it's NOT the only good defect tracking software out there. It's good, otherwise I wouldn't have chosen it, but it's far from mature. All you have to witness is the bug reports and feature requests on its own support forum:

http://support.fogcreek.com/?fogbugz

In some areas FogBugz does it better than other software. In some other areas it does worse. You will have to do you own research and pick the software that works the best for your own needs.

I really didn't know much about FogBugz prior to reading this book. Once I started reading I was immediately intrigued by the way that FogBugz ties right into your mail server and treats each incoming email as a case within the system. You simply point it to any POP3 mailbox and when an email comes into that account it goes right into the system and you can assign a due date. You can reply directly to the message within the system and FogBugz keeps track of the entire thing. If the user that sent the message replies back, then that message is tracked in the original case as a threaded discussion. Amazing! If a user happens to submit a bug that you want to track, you can just edit the case and assign it to the correct project, mark it as a bug and that's it. As I kept reading, I quickly realized that FogBugz could single-handedly manage my support requests, sales requests, bug tracking and project management for CodeSmith. I bought my copy about a week ago and I could not be more happy with my purchase! FogBugz 4.0 is truly an amazing product.

Painless Project Management with FogBugz

I got this book back in late Feb. or early March, but due to an in-process project, it got relegated to the top of the "read when time is available" pile. Upon reading the book, that was a mistake. As with Mike's other books, I should have "paused" my development, and read the book. There are a number of project management tips/tricks/techniques that would have helped a great deal on the project (especially considering that I was working from a "draft" specification document).

I have now read the book twice, 1 time quickly to get a feel for it, and a 2nd time to go through it thouroughly, and found that although the book is thin, what is there is "meat" with the fat already cut off. I am finding that I really prefer "thin" books that are to the point, rather than the current trend of 1000 tomes that try to cover everything in the known universe (and some things outside of it) regarding a particular subject and anything remotely related to the subject.

I think the title of this book is somewhat misleading. It does indeed provide instructions on using FogBugz to manage a project, but it also provides some very good tips on managing projects in general.

Although the title of the book is "Painless Project Management with FogBugz", don't let the "FogBugz" part of the title keep you from purchasing this book if you are using another bug tracking/project management tool. While it does teach you how to use FogBugz for project management, there is enough "project management" content, that you should be able to take the prinicples and apply them to any bug tracking/project management system.

I have not used FogBugz, but feel that I could easily install, configure and start using it in a few hours due to the information in the book. The book not only covers how to use FogBugz, but also installation, configuration AND integration with the most well-known/popular source control tools. This is NOT a rehash of the online help, or a 'for dummies" book, but rather, as the title states how to do project management using the FogBugz software.

After reading the book, for the next project that I work on that does not have a requirement for specific bug tracking system, I will definately be taking a hard look at FogBugz due to what I have read in this book.

If you are looking for a quick read on how to do software development project management (with or without FogBugz) that can get you started right away, then you definately want to get this book. With the experience Mike has in this area, the tips and techniques he provides are just what I needed to get started. There are books of many pages out there that are all about software development project management, but for the developer wanting to be able to get started with the basics, and not have to worry about various methodologies, theory and discussions of various styles, this is probably the best book. In the past I have looked at books related to project managment, but always found that they contained way more information than I needed or wanted and would take way to much time to get through. This book has just the right amount of information to allow me to start managing my projects.

Later,


Eric

Despite the name, FogBugz isn't just used for tracking bugs. The product covers all the essentials such as streamlined bug submission (if it's not easy people won't do it), accepting and replying to email submissions and dividing your workload into different projects and releases (with the aid of a nifty autosorter). Over time FogBugz has grown to include discussion groups, tracking of tasks via RSS and email on the technical side, and due dates and escalation reports on the management front. This book provides a worthy introduction to all these.

If you are looking for an introduction to FogBugz and its main features, or an easy to follow end user guide you can hand out, then this book is worth 7/10. It's concise, easy to follow, covers the important features and should be included with FogBugz.

The book describes how to setup a basic configuration of FogBugz on your own server. The information is the same as you would get in the online documentation with some added commentary. There are a couple of extra sections on plugins and the book does a good job explaining the structure of the database FogBugz uses.

I consider this book a waste of money as you can get the same information from the online manual which will be more up-to-date.

I was expecting a little more than how to setup and configure FogBugz. But that is mostly what the book covers. You can get all the same information from the help files and online docs. If you like to have a physical book when setting and configuring software then this is perfect. Walks through all the processes and explains them in a clear manner.

It is missing a lot of the WHY behind things though. Why would I want to configure this like this... How are my customers going to use the product? What changes to you need to make in your support staff processes? None of these things are covered. I was expecting more project management using FogBugz, not using FogBugz.

Fogbugz isn't a new name for tech industry; Infamous Joel Spolsky's "Joel on Software forums" is household name in techno babble. You Slashdot it for critique and Joel it for serious results, right? And those who understood this would also get Heisenberg's autobahn amusement.

After a long anticipation of FogBugz 4.0 (Joel tried building a Halo2 style midnight waiting crowd via his blog), on Tue- 22 Feb, 2005, it was finally released on time (Are you listening MSFT fellows? No Object spaces in Whidbey, I'm waiting). Mike's book, "Painless Project Management with Fogbugz" was released before the software release, adding glory to this super tool.

After reading Mike's "Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software", I found his writing style easy to follow, informative and comprehensive without throwing jargon. Mike knows his subject and dexterous at his software. Fogbugz is a complete "project management system" which escorts the design, management, maturity model and design discussions to a practical arena. Mike explains this metamorphosis effectively in his writing; those who have read his "MCAD/MCSD Training Guide (70-310): Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework" would know the level of detail he provides to make the process more like an eye witness.

The book is organized in an easy to follow style, unfolding the software project management to the reader. While discussing software development life cycle and the most important iteration of it "listening to customer feedback", the post deployment process, Mike followed a depth first approach on bug tracking, reporting issues, collaborating test plans, maintenance, use cases and real world development scenarios. This book takes you to an amazing journey of improve-your-product-and-process land. It really makes you think about how important project management is, not just from a managerial perspective but also from a developer/software engineer standpoint. While reading, I found at places where Mike gets very product specific but then again, the book is named "Painless Project Management With Fogbugz" not just project management and therefore one should expect some tangents for sheer product info.

Mike has written a wide array of books, from Exam Cram series to Visual C++ tutorials but this time he is presenting a process and a book and he is good! I don't expect everyone who codes to read this book and adore it, but the souls who have read and enjoyed "Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity" and looking for specifics, are going to love it.

-Adnan Masood
MCP. MCAD.NET. MCSD.NET

Good reference. Helpful background data that wouldn't be obvious to any old user.

I'm glad I bought it -- even though I'm using the FogBugz On Demand service presently instead of hosting my own FogBugz installation

Not much to say here. If you manage your development projects (or any kind of projects) using FogBugz, do yourself a favor and buy this book. Everything is explained here and you'll save tons of time, especially if you're just getting started. Keep in mind that you may want to wait until the book is revised to reflect the new 7.0 release.

By the way, if you are NOT managing your software development projects using FogBugz...you really should look into it.