FogBugz and I are having a falling out

I used to really like FogBugz but the latest version got all glitzy and went AJAX on me and now while it does some cool stuff it's gotten a lot slower. My only other complaint is that it's built to be cross-platform (PHP or ASP), which is admirable but it means that the application has to live somewhere in land of feature mediocrity on both platforms -- I bet FogBugz would fly on ASP.NET.

We're not using FogBugz for feature defect tracking. We're using it as a customer management tool. For example, when you email sales@telligent.com you get into a FogBugz queue. While it was great about 2 years ago we're quickly out-growing this solution.

I don't really fault FogBugz for this. When we were working with a small amount of data it was perfect, maybe we've just outgrown it?

This summer we're bringing in our army of interns (email us if you're interested) and I think we're going to build a replacement for how we use FogBugz (focused on the CRM side).

Published Tuesday, April 17, 2007 9:24 PM by Rob Howard
Filed under: , , ,

Comments

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 11:33 PM by Kevin Dente

Maybe you should make a documentary about the process. ;)

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Wednesday, April 18, 2007 2:03 AM by Marko Rangel

Sounds like a good market for Telligent to tap into.  This wouldn't be the first time that Telligent complains about FogBugz.  Both the crm side and the issue tracking system seem to fall short of Telligent's needs.

To quote the Sopranos "I'm just sayin'"

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Wednesday, April 18, 2007 10:43 AM by blah

Why build.  I'm sure you could find a system to buy that does what you want.  Or an open source project that is relatively close.

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Wednesday, April 18, 2007 1:50 PM by Sumana Harihareswara from Fog Creek

Thanks for the note!  Please do tell us more about what you'd like out of a customer tracking tool.  And have you already seen this article?  It talks about how we use FogBugz for customer service.

http://blog.fogbugz.com/Articles/2006/10/12.html

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Wednesday, April 18, 2007 5:31 PM by Jesse Ezell

FogBugz is a POS. All hype and fails to deliver. I lost respect for just about everything Joel has to say after I used the product for 6 months. It is mediocre at best. The state of defect tracking software is sad though, so you don't have to be good at all to be near the top.

In any case, in my spare time I'm working on a WPF/WCF defect tracking package that doesn't suck balls. Here's a screen shot of one part of the UI:

http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/5904/defectgc4.jpg

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Wednesday, April 18, 2007 8:24 PM by Kyralessa

I'm not a FogBugz user, Jesse, but I notice you didn't mention any concrete points of criticism against FogBugz; you just threw out a bunch of negative adjectives.

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Thursday, April 19, 2007 8:01 AM by Will Ballard

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone like a bug tracking system, but I can't tell if it is for features, or that going to the bug tracking system reminds everyone that it isn't just the 'business folks' that make mistakes :)

Besides not having the bugs to begin with, what do folks really want feature wise from bug tracking?

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Thursday, April 19, 2007 1:14 PM by marko rangel

I think that for systems such as bug tracking or feature tracking, simple is perfect.  Having it do more than what it was designed to do is where the bugs come in.  I like systems such as bugzilla or Trac, both of which are open source, because they are simple.  They are not perfect and do not match feature sets with paid products, but then again they do what they are designed to do and that is track bugs and features.

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 8:08 AM by Robert Finlayson

Didn't someone once write "One of the biggest lessons we've learned is one we didn't really anticipate: a shift from caring less about the underlying technology to how our software solves the user's problem."

Your primary complaint *seems* to be the PHP/ASP implementation and how AJAX has been introduced into the product.

What would be more interesting to know is: How is FogBugz no longer solving your problems? Specially, how are you out-growing FogBugz?

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Monday, May 14, 2007 2:13 PM by Ted Jardine

Re Robert Finlayson's comment, Rob's point was not a problem with the ASP/PHP and AJAX per se, but rather "while it does some cool stuff it's gotten a lot slower."

# re: FogBugz and I are having a falling out

Wednesday, June 06, 2007 5:52 PM by Kevin Sikes

One would think that with AJAX, the product would actually be faster since roundtrips to the server are minimized.

My main beef with FogBugz is that the search features aren't very robust - I can't search for cases a particular user has closed, for example.  Other than the search facility, I'm happy with the product.