Ok, I’m going do a series of this posts on “How do you interact with your clients?”, I’ll share what I do, what I like about it, and what I dont, and maybe some new tools to try.

In any project issue tracking becomes needed. You might be working alone on a project for a client, and they find things in the demo that they would like changed, those are issues.  You might be working on a large project with a team, and have QA personal when they find bugs, those are issues.  When the team or person working on the UX doesnt like the interaction, that is an issue.  Or maybe you just find an issue all on your own (maybe a few issues) track those!  Notes about resolutions can be useful, even more so when you are working on 5+ projects.

Where to track?  

Bugzilla – Open source, the de-facto bug tracking for open source projects, well at least at mozilla the creators of bugzilla as well as many other open source projects. Though I have seen less and less projects using Bugzilla lately.   Pros:  it can do just about anything, a million features, easy enough to add anything else you need / want.  Cons: you have to setup, you have to host it, too complex for most clients to use, too clicky. Update: look like there is a new version of bugzilla, 3.2.  I havent tried this one yet, but it does promise a greatly improved UI.  I hope so.

Email – I have done this.  And it can work with limited success.  It is better then nothing, but at the same time has a lot more time involved.  At least you get a history, though it might be in a less query-able format.  This seems like the place many projects start.  But as the spreadsheets that you start emailing back a forth get larger, this becomes far to hard to keep up to date.  Pros: easy to setup, everyone already knows how to use it. Cons: data will be out of sync quickly, it is harder to search and query, i.e.  what are my current open issues?

Basecamp – This is a nice project management tool.  Great interface, excellent workflow, and a simple set of features that is everything you need.  Issue track is missing a couple of things here though.  Mostly because Basecamp tracks todos.  You lose source control integration, issue states / statuses.  But I find that for many clients this is the simplest and easiest to use.  This is often the best choice for client interaction,  It sure beats email.  Pros: easy to learn, most people will understand right away.  Cons:  it might not have every feature you are looking for in issue tracking.

Lighthouseapp.com – These guys are newish, but have created issue tracking that makes sense.  It doesnt get cluttered by a million features that are never used, but it still has the features that count.  I’m using this for my startup.  We can track milestones, issues that need to be completed for each milestone, general issues, and even create some wiki like pages for easy information / idea sharing.  Their interface has a very good feel, easy to use even for your first time, and you are never left guessing how to do something, it is obvious.  Pros: great interface / UX for issue tracking.  easy to learn.  Cons: Might be more than a client wants to deal with.

Which method of issue tracking to use?

That depends on you and your client or team.  For a development team I heartily recommend lighthouseapp.com.  If you have a lot of client interaction in your issue tracking, it might be better to use basecamp.

Anyone like something else?  I know there are a lot of companies in this area and some really great services, so what else I’m I missing?