Here’s a test: Can you list all the issues your software team is working on now? Can you sort them by severity, priority, features affected, and other criteria such as whether the issue is a bug, customer request, or product enhancement? Can you show the histories of all related comments and actions? Can you distribute this information easily to concerned individuals — showing only the information relevant to them?
Elementool Bug Tracking Keeps Software Fixes On Course Web-based tool helps ensure issues get resolved, not lost. Here's a test: Can you list all the issues your software team is working on now? Can you sort them by severity, priority, features affected, and other criteria such as whether the issue is a bug, customer request, or product enhancement? Can you show the histories of all related comments and actions? Can you distribute this information easily to concerned individuals - showing only the information relevant to them? You can - if you manage software development at HP, Warner Bros., Unisys, Sony, McGraw-Hill, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Walt Disney Co., or at any other Elementool Bug Tracking customer. Elementool Bug Tracking (Elementool, www.elementool.com) is a feature-rich, easy-to-use, web-based tool for documenting, tracking, and reporting software issues throughout their lifecycle. The tool comes in four packages - Basic, Advanced, Pro, and Premium - depending on features. Many users find the feature-rich Basic version - a free, ad banner-supported package - more than sufficient. If they choose, however, they can always upgrade to one of the subscription-based packages, ranging from $19.99 to $79.99 per month, which offer even more features. Much of Elementool Bug Tracking appeal, in Software Management Best Practices fact, is just how easily and inexpensively A Leak-Free Process organizations can now adopt software manage- ment best practices. Software errors cost $59.9 Modern-day software best practices prescribe a consistent "leak free" billion each year according to the National process that keeps management Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). focused on outstanding issues until Quality standards like Sarbanes-Oxley and ISO they're resolved, as outlined here: 9000 also make formal issues tracking a 1. The testing team or product manager priority. And then there are market forces - submits new bugs, enhancements in particular today's greater emphasis on prod- and features to the bug-tracking tool. uct quality and user experience - both of which are driving companies toward better 2. The product manager or team leader ways to bring software issues under sets priority and severity to each new issue and assigns the issue to a management's control. specific programmer. With Elementool Bug Tracking, many of the 3. The programmers fix the issues that barriers that previously stood in the way no have been assigned to them. The issues' status is changed to "fixed" in longer do. There's no expensive software the bug-tracking tool. system to install, integrate, maintain, upgrade, or protect. There's no heavy-duty procurement 4. R&D releases a new internal version process to go through. It takes less than 30 with the new features and fixed seconds to open an account. Most customers issues. pay by credit card if they do decide to purchase 5. The testing team checks whether all a subscription. And if a customer wants to issues that have been marked as close the account, they can, at any time for any fixed are really fixed. reason without obligation. 6. The testing team closes the fixed issues in the bug-tracking tool. New bugs are submitted -- return to Step-1. Weston Morris, a Unisys systems architect, says that by first trying the free version, his team quickly satisfied any concerns about the solution's value or reliability and later switched to a subscription. "For Unisys, Elementool has paid for itself in savings of time and expense - without even counting the additional benefits." Morris says. In particular he likes how easy Elementool Bug Tracking 4.0 was to adopt within the organization. "It lets us work the way we want to work rather than the way the people who invented the tool want you to work." For example, Unisys added its own fields to reports, such as the estimated and actual time spent on an issue, to reflect the company's business rules. Unisys also likes how it's now possible in a single solution to both track issues and distribute information about them to a geographically dispersed group. Another plus is the fact that internal developers and external customers can both share the same repository of comments and histories - while respecting everyone's need to keep sensitive information private. Robust Feature Set Because Elementool Bug Tracking is web based, users are always assured they're getting the most... [download for more]
