jira

We need in our company some kind of project management software. In the past, we used a mixture of Open Office documents and paperwork. We checked yearly for web based open source software solutions but we didn't find the right thing for us.

In the last six months, I had a short relationship with Jira. It is a commercial software which is able to do nearly everything if you have the right plugins.

More than just an issue tracker, JIRA is an extensible platform that you can customise to match to your business processes.

Another interesting project is redmine. My daughter mentioned it yesterday and I had a short look on it.

The problem with these kind of software is always the complexity, the time you have to spend by choosing the right modules, sometimes the money you have to pay, the server space you need etc.

Last year I noticed the STORM project on drupal.org. I played around a few times and yesterday we decided we will use it for our two companies (cocoate.com and eduate.eu). Our "biggest problem" is that we are in the coaching, consulting and teaching business. We don't really need issue- and bug tracking systems. With some clients it is possible, with others not. Our biggest need at the moment is on one hand having the possibility to create companies, people, projects, tickets, tasks and the relationship between them and on the other hand - and that is the most important thing - a time tracking system for our staff.