IT task management is an ongoing challenge for software developers and many turn to online boards to seek advice on best practices. This article addresses the top 5 IT task management software questions frequently asked by developers and provides actionable, consensus-driven answers.

How do you balance urgent bug fixes with new feature development tasks?

Having a well-defined incident response process – including a prioritization process – makes it much easier to weigh incoming bugs against new feature development. The first step is to examine if the bug is truly urgent. Many teams use a combination of impact (how many users does the bug affect and how often) and severity (how bad is the technical malfunction to those users) to make this decision. You can find additional ideas for triaging bugs in the article 12 Tech Leaders’ Top Strategies For Prioritizing Internal Bugs And Feature Requests.

Live site issues are often high impact and high severity, such as when a region of a website goes down, impacting many users and blocking their workflows. These types of urgent bugs must be addressed immediately. Though we all aim for bug-free products, in reality users will always encounter some issues, so time spent on bugs should be factored into planning. This way teams won’t overcommit to new features, and if you happen to have a quiet sprint without urgent bugs you can always pull in an extra feature or use that extra time to focus on technical debt.

How do you track technical debt while managing everyday tasks?

Documenting your technical debt is extremely important. If you know you need to come back and clean up code later, you might open a task and record all the details. Link this new task to a parent technical debt task to make it easier to find later and link it to your code check-in or the current task you’re working on so that you can remember the context. Your team should discuss task and linking best practices and agree on a consistent method for documentation.

On a regular basis the team should come together to look at the backlog and set time aside to discuss technical debt specifically. If your backlog of technical debt is growing out of control you should take steps to formally include it in planning. You could dedicate one sprint a quarter, one week a month, or a certain percentage of your sprint to technical debt work.

What are some strategies to improve task estimation accuracy in Agile?

Tracking your estimates and actuals in your tasks enables you to look back and see how accurate your estimates were. If you see a consistent pattern of over or under estimation over the course of several sprints, then you can adjust your estimates up or down accordingly. Ensure you’re planning for bugs, technical debt, meetings, and any other work that might take your team away from sprint tasks – or find ways to mitigate those distractions so they don’t impact your team’s capacity. Finally, experiment with estimating techniques until you find the best fit for your team. Check out this article to learn more about Agile Estimates: Story Points, Tshirt Sizing and Time.

How to integrate IT task management tools with version control systems?

There are many Benefits of a Merged Project Management and Version Control Environment, including a simplified workflow, enhanced collaboration, better traceability, and improved efficiency. Many IT task management tools integrate with version control systems, so the first step is researching what compatible tools or plug-ins work with your existing toolset. Tools such as Assembla seamlessly integrate with Popular Source Code Management Tools and offer project management tools that will work across Git, SVN, and Perforce. 

Assembla brings tools together across the IT software lifecycle, enabling better communication between disciplines and an end-to-end view for project managers, while still allowing engineers to use the development tools they love. Assembla also makes it easier for engineers to collaborate with each other through features such as code reviews, inline code comments, merge requests and wikis that act as a central location to share team knowledge.

Assembla supports linking from these features to tasks and code commits, ensuring visibility and traceability for the entire team. Engineers can quickly update their status or ask questions without leaving their development environment and project managers can see updates in real time in Assembla’s project management platform.

What is the best IT task management software for Agile development?

Before you choose an IT Agile task management tool, you should decide which Agile framework is the best fit for your team. How to Choose the Best Agile Framework for Your Team gives an overview of Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, XP, and FDD to help you make a decision.

Once you have chosen a framework you’ll want to find a platform that supports your project needs now and in the future. There are several areas to consider when looking for task management software for IT Agile projects, such as collaboration and communication features, flexibility and customization capabilities, integration and interoperability, and support for reports, dashboards, and visualizations. For a deeper look at each of these areas, read What Makes a Good Project Management Tool for Software Development?

Ultimately, choosing a task management software that is flexible enough to evolve with your company and integrate with a variety of industry leading tools will set you up for long term success. With support for Git, SVN, and Perforce and integrations with tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, Slack, Trello, JIRA, and more, Assembla offers a powerful suite of tools across the development lifecycle. To learn more about how to use Assembla to manage your IT Agile software projects check out Getting Started with Agile IT Project Management on Assembla.

Agile IT Project Management with Assembla

If you’re ready to try cloud-based Agile IT Project Management software, start a free 14 day trial of Assembla. Our team would love to talk with you about how Assembla can meet your IT Agile development needs.