Painless Project Management with FogBugz (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

by Mike Gunderloy (Author)
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
...a very well put together manual about how and why things work the way they do within FogBugz 4.0.</a></p> </blockquote> <p id="quoteAuthor">&#8212; Matt Hawley, eWorld. This book is an almost perfect introduction and end user manual for FogBugz version 4.</a></p> </blockquote> <p id="quoteAuthor">&#8212; Dean Wilson, London. I recommend this book if you do plan to use FogBugz. …well written and easy to get through…</a></p> </blockquote> <p id="quoteAuthor">&#8212; . 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! </a></p> </blockquote> <p id="quoteAuthor">&#8212; Eric J. Smith's Weblog</p></div>

<p>Many programs purport to help a development team manage a project&emdash;but most of them aren't very good. Enter FogBugz. This dynamic tool is based on keeping track of a database of cases. At any given time, cases are assigned to one person, who must resolve or forward them to someone else. With FogBugz, cases can be prioritized, documented, sorted, discussed, edited, assigned, estimated, searched, and tracked.</p>

<p>And because FogBugz is web-based, everyone on a development team has access to the whole picture, at any given moment. That picture may include everything from customer feature requests, to high-level design discussions, to tiny bug fix details. This book (written under the guidance of the entire FogBugz team) completely describes the ins and outs of the latest version of FogBugz.</p>

About the Author
Mike Gunderloy is a software consultant, writer, and trainer. He has written more than 30 books, including the recent best-seller, <i>Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software</i>.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (February 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159059486X
• ISBN-13: 978-1590594865
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #532,589 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's about the process, not the product, May 5, 2005

By	The Finance Buff "TheFinanceBuff.com" (USA) - See all my reviews

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FogBugz 4.0 Rocks!, April 12, 2005

By	Eric J. Smith (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, should be required reading for anyone in the software development field, July 31, 2005

By	Wm Eric Brunsen (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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