The Unfuddle Tutorial

Unfuddle is the tool we use for our non open source development. I have found it to be the best tool for Software Project management, in particular I think it is superior to Basecamp and Assembla.

When you start using Unfuddle, the number of things can seem overwhelming. This tutorial should help you Unfuddle the Unfuddle.

##The Unfuddle Glossary

Unfuddle has,

• Projects: Top level Things which need to be done.
• User: People who are working on a given project.
• Ticket: What a User works on.
• Milestone: A timed list of tickets which should be completed before this given time.
• Messages: A broadcast for all users.
• Notebook: A wiki for storing documentation.
• Repository: Git or SVN for storing the code.
• Ticket Report: Reports about the

The tips

Work from a list.

All action item items should be a ticket for somebody. Everything which a user needs to work should be in his work queue.

Make it easy to see everyone’s work items.

When we start a project we create project reports with every user ticket queue.

Manage cognitive overload

People should have less than 10 tickets in their queue. More than this leads to a paradox of choice, with making it hard to decide to work on. 5 is a good number of open tickets per person, with proving choices on what to work on next, without being overwhelming.

Prefer Unfuddle messages to email.

Unfuddle message threads are easier to refer to in conversation in tickets and other places, having a meaningful url.

Commit all your code.

All code should be in a central repo, which can be refered to from tickets and messages.

Commit messages should be meaningful.

This is a good commit message.

Makes the color of visited links on Buy now page to Cyan
Anonymous users can do a checkout using Paypal
Refs #441, fixes #372

This will automatically attach this commit to the given tickets, making it easier to track why a change was introduced, and how did a bug get fixed.

Get all stakeholders on board.

Your project probably has many people who are acuustomed to keeping things on email. For them using a tool like Unfuddle would be a big change. You need to get them on board to use Unfuddle.

This was first in a series of tutorials we would be publishing for using Unfuddle. Stay tuned.

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