It suppose it is important to note the distinction between bug and
feature tracking (software dev) and change management tracking
(incident, problem, change) for production systems. I think of those as
pretty different activities.
Bug and feature tracking is closely tied to development work. Things
like TRAC and Redmine give you a nice integration with your code
repository and help with grouping tickets into schedules and software
components.
Change management systems, as I understand it, are mostly about managing
configurations, i.e. a change might be a set of hardware upgrades or the
deploy of a new software release. This is mostly about tracking known
good configurations and coordinating change across an infrastructure. I
don't have any great examples of software for it. In many places I
think CM consists of strong procedures and a wiki or documentation system.
Greg
____
Greg Jansen
Digital Repository Developer
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
On 02/11/2010 09:03 AM, Rick Johnson wrote:
To follow-up Pascal's note. I look at the combination of dotproject and Mantis
as the ability to cover wider spectrum of work in one interface. We were
looking to have a user dashboard that covers most of their tasks. We were able
to get this by integrating dotproject and mantis. Now we login to dotproject
and see everything. dotproject covers project specific efforts, but it is
always a challenge to capture day-to-day tasks for systems already in
Production that need maintenance. We enter maintenance tasks into Mantis.
Then by integrating the two, we are now able to have maintenance tasks
(enhancements, fixes, etc) along with project efforts in the same interface
making it easier to track and plan for future efforts.
Mantis is OSS that is written originally for bug tracking for software, but it can be
much more than that. We are using a customizable field called Category that defines the
type of issue (I think of it more generically as a request). You can also have different
lists per "Projects" in Mantis (I am treating a project in Mantis as just a
resource/system we support). So you can have a list such as enhancement request, bug,
data change, etc. for software and for other things like system adminstration you could
have os patch, data change, network configuration, etc.
You can also define release bundles for each project by tying issues to
releases. You mentioned also approving changes to systems. Within Mantis
there are a few queues:
-new
-feedback
-acknowledged
-confirmed
-assigned
-resolved
-closed
The confirmed state is intended to mean that the person assigned confirms they
need any information necessary to implement the change. So this can be an
indication that something is approved. There is another field called
Resolution that could be used as documentation for rejecting something.
Basically, something always goes to resolved when complete and it could be
either:
fixed,
unable to reproduce
not fixable
duplicate
no change required
suspended
won't fix
I have not tried editing that list, but I am sure it could be done if something
is missing.
One other dividend I see of using a system like Mantis is once you being
tracking everything there you now have an inventory of all the services/systems
that your group supports.
Thanks,
Rick
--
----------------------------------------------------------
Rick Johnson
Systems Analyst Manager, Digital Library Applications and Local Programming Unit
Library Information Systems
University of Notre Dame
Michiana Academic Library Consortium
Notre Dame, IN USA 46556
http://www.library.nd.edu
574-631-1086
------------------------------------------------------------
________________________________________
From: Code for Libraries [code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Pascal Calarco
[pcala...@nd.edu]
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 8:50 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] change management system
Hi David --
We've recently started using Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/) amd have
integrated this with dotProject (http://www.dotproject.net/). The nice
thing about this is that you can use it to open up a new ticket and then
promote it eventually to be its own new project.
Mantis is pretty focused on providing a bug tracking/change management
for software development, but the templates can be edited so that one
could use this as a more general trouble ticket system.
- pascal
------------------------------------
Pascal Calarco
Head, Library Information Systems
Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame /
Michiana Academic Library Consortium
Notre Dame, IN USA
http://www.library.nd.edu/
-------------------------------------
On 02/10/2010 06:59 PM, Walker, David wrote:
Can anyone here recommend an open source system for "change management"?
Not version control, per se. But the process of requesting, reviewing, and
approving changes to production systems.
Does Trac fit into this category?
--Dave
==================
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu
