Looking for an issue tracker / project management software that automatically manages start/completion dates based on priority/relationships [closed]

Question

So, a little background. We are a small company with a half-dozen developers. We have been evaluating many project management / issue tracking software packages (TRAC, Redmine, FogBugz, etc) and trying to create a decent process/workflow for managing projects, adding features, fixing bugs, etc. I'd like to think our requirements are similar to most other companies our size.

Essentially, what this comes down to is 1) An easy way for the PM and developers to track projects, issues, bugs, etc 2) An easy way for the PM and admin/executives to get a birds-eye view of progress and easily manage timelines, schedules, and priorities.

After trying TRAC, we moved to Redmine. We found Redmine to be easier than track to administer and the ability to have sub-projects and sub-tickets is great.

However, the big problem we ran into is the fact that it is very difficult to manage schedules and timelines. It seems like it would be incredibly time-intensive to manage because you have to manually enter a start date, estimated time, and end date for each ticket, project, etc.

So if you setup a month's schedule based on priorities, what are you supposed to do when a particular ticket/issue/subproject takes up more time than was estimated. Right now, it appears I would have to go back in and MANUALLY change the start/end date of every single item.

What would be ideal is to be able to set priorities/dependencies and estimated time on tickets/milestones, and have the software automatically manage the start/end dates. Does anyone know how to get Redmine to do this, or recommend a different software package that can do something like this!

Answer 1

From what I understand you need more than a issue tracking system. More exactly you need to also have a task scheduling mechanism. I do not know a issue tracker with task scheduling engine. I guess that with this feature you are entering somehow in the project management area so I would recommend a project management tool.

I think MS Project (as Kalven said) is too much for you. Try a simpler alternative like RationalPlan first.