Answering a Problem? Or Contributing To One…
I have spent the past couple of days beating my head against the brick wall of software development tracking tools that exists, only to come up empty handed. There is one thing that all of the applications out there have in common, and that is that they all do the same thing. They are comodoties, with nothing fundamentally separating them from each other. I have been using Axosoft’s OnTime for several years now as a one-man development team and have been happy with it. It is a perfect example of simplicity, usability and flexibility, in my opinion. However, as with every last tool I have come across not just this week, but on countless other occasions as well, there is always a catch…
Here are the requirements for my situation:
- Free version for up to at least 5 people
- Has a Windows desktop client
- Uses SQL Server as its database
- Windows OS
- Clean and well-designed UI
The most important of these being the free version (not that I am unwilling to pay for it, it’s just that my company is not so willing), while the second 2 can be overlooked given the right mix of simplicity and usability. What I found, though, was that the majority of these systems were incredibly complex, obviously built and/or designed by programmers and lacking a compelling story for the non-technical users on my team to buy in on, which is guaranteed that they won’t.
So, throwing up my hands and caving into the roll-your-own option, I decided to do go down the open source path and set up a project here. I figure I spent more time that I should have only to not find what I was looking for, and that if it ain’t out there, then someone should build it. I am pretty sure I am not the only one looking for what I have been looking for, so there will be some value in it. This also gives me an opportunity to get involoved in the open source experience. The only question that is floating around my head is if I am making the problem worse by going home-grown and adding yet another tool that functionally does the same thing as the rest, or am I actually creating a solution to a problem? Will it actually fill the gap that I am experiencing? That will remain to be seen…
What do all think? Any thoughts?
