Best regards,
Oliver

What we were looking for

At the moment, we are a group of six with more people probably soon to follow. We are split up into three different teams for frontend, backend and application development with different tasks each. Therefore, we were not only looking for a single task list with a message board glued to it but a whole suite, including:

• a scalable, scrum-like task management system,
• a message board and a calendar,
• a wiki for notes and knowledge transfer,
• a document section,
• a sophisticated bug tracker,
• and a capable access controls management.

Stuff like a status update service as well as a repository integration were optional. Because we’re a little bit paranoid and want to stay in control of our data (and eventually pull backups), the application had to run on our server. And, last but not least, everything had to work with a single login.

What we were not looking for was something in the range of an enterprise scaled communication suite like Zoho Office, which simply would have been to much (and cost too much time setting up). And although we mostly looked at open source solutions, money (up to 50€ per month or even more within a single spending) was not an issue.

A nice list but nothing extraordinary or special you might think? Think again. Finding a application which eventually would fulfill 85% of our needs ended up being everything but a simple task. Here is a round up of the applications we looked at with the advantages and disadvantages listed beside.

If you’d like to skip to the good part and learn which solution we finally came up with, just scroll down to the end of this post.

What we looked at

Basecamp, GoPlan, Apollo
http://basecamphq.com, http://goplanapp.com, http://www.apollohq.com

• Advantages: The classics. Have nearly everything which was on our list and come with a nice ecosystem of extensions (especially Basecamp).
• Disadvantages: Can’t be hosted on a server and (in case you are looking for a free application) cost in their most basic form between 10 $ and 24$ per month.

Freedcamp
http://freedcamp.com

• Advantages: Completely free alternative to Basecamp with a nice interface and a powerful task-list.
• Disadvantages: No Wiki, no calendar, can’t be hosted on a server. The fact, that Freedcamp is completely free in every aspect raises the questions, what kind of business model Freedcamp is based on and if the users might be more part of the product than they’d like to be.

Teambox
http://teambox.com

• Advantages: Project management application with a clean layout and a nice task-list. There is a rails based community edition available for download in the community section.
• Disadvantages: No calendar, partly confusing structure, discussions can’t be categorized.

Teamlab
http://teamlab.com

• Advantages: On the first look exactly what we were looking for. Open source, powerful features, got no Wiki but documents can be edited collaboratively.
• Disadvantages (in our case): Based on .NET and can only be hosted on a compatible server.

CynIn
http://www.cynapse.com/cynin

• Advantages: The community edition comes packed with a whole server for easy setup. Has a nice, status-update focused desktop client.
• Disadvantages: More of a collaboration and communication solution, poor task management. Although capable of plug-ins, there seems to be no plug-in-section available at http://www.cynapse.com/cynin.

Collabtive
http://collabtive.o-dyn.de

• Advantages: PHP based, can be downloaded and hosted on a server.
• Disadvantages: No Wiki. The interface requires a certain kind of taste and, due to its structure, does not seem to support longer and intensive board-discussions.

This round up was written with our list of necessary features in mind and only offers a brief overview. Especially if hosting your own application is not one of your top priorities, I recommend taking a close look at the first three or four applications.

What we finally came up with

In the end, we narrowed down our search to two applications – OpenAtrium and, believe it or not, Redmine. Here is why:

OpenAtrium
http://openatrium.com

• Advantages: Based on Drupal (PHP), OpenAtrium comes with a exceptionally well designed interface and a powerful set of features including a status update service. It just recently made its step to version 1.0 (still beta 10 though) and seems to have a very active community.
• Disadvantages: Although OpenAtrium seems to be the perfect solution for smaller teams, the task-list still needs some improvement. Especially a agile, scrum-like project-management style may be difficult to implement using the current set of features. But hope remains that the community will take a closer look at those disadvantages within the next few months.

Redmine (our final choice)
http://www.redmine.org

• Why? Although our basic intention was to find a application NOT being Redmine, several blog posts mentioning Redmine as a serious alternative to Basecamp made us listen. Did we miss something? After doing a bit of research, especially within the Redmine plug-in section, we realized, that we may have misjudged the project management application after all. Yes, the basic interface is more than outdated and yes, there are things which are not really thought through (the dashboard for example). But still – the core system includes nearly everything we wished for and even more.
• How: Being capable of writing several lines of CSS code, we made ourselves a new theme and installed a set of plug-ins, including a a scrum-like task management application. After carefully thinking everything through, me managed to find a setup a little more closer to our style of work than the previous one. It’s definitely not perfect but apart from writing our own application (no time), we think it’s one of the best solutions possible, at least for us. I’ll publish the theme as well as a list of the used plugins as soon as possible.

What we did not look at

I have to admit – there are still a few more applications out there which might be worth taking a shot at. In case you’d like to do some research, here is a list of links that might be of interest to you:

Applications

• http://retrospectiva.org
• http://www.getontracks.org
• http://trac.edgewall.org
• http://www.projectpier.org

Lists

• http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Project_Management/Hosted
• http://www.dreamcss.com/2009/07/ruby-on-rails-applications.html
• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/open-source-project-management-software.html

What do you think?

Is there any other application we overlooked and definitely should know off? Which application or combination of tools are you using within your projects? Did we seriously misjudge one of the mentioned applications? I’d be happy to read about it in the comment section!

How does this website work?

The backend is powered by WordPress, the frontend is being displayed via an AJAX Wrapper I wrote taking heavy use of the javascript library jQuery. I’ll publish a tutorial on how to do this sort of thing within the next two months. If you encounter any bugs or problems, please don’t hesitate to send me an email.

You’re form Austria. Why are you writing in English?

First of all, for training purposes. Consuming English movies and reading English texts just won’t do the job of improving language skills. Second, I’m thinking of leaving Austria for a while. Maybe in context of the startup we’re currently working on, maybe in context of a term abroad, maybe with something totally different in mind. This most certainly won’t happen within the next year but having an English web presence surely will come in handy when the time is right. In case I’ll write about something related to Austria, I might switch to German anyway.

What’s left to say? Enjoy!