schof

What I'm managing (context is important): We develop a hardware appliance running Linux (we buy the hardware and write the software); this involves config changes to open source stuff and a number of our proprietary programs that must work together. We have six developers, and a number of artists, writers, etc. whose work mostly isn't but sometimes is a dependency for the stuff I'm managing.

What I'm doing: Currently, we use FogBugz to track features and bugs, and I have a wall of color-coded post-it notes (each one represents a FogBugz case or milestone). The post-its are organized by week, and every Monday I get rid of closed tickets, move everything up by a week, and reprioritize what's left.

Because a wall in my office is a poor communications medium, I also capture the "wall of post-its" in an Excel spreadsheet, which I save to an internal Wiki page. (PDF and Excel versions.)

Frankly, I'm finding all this a bit clunky. I like having the physical post-its, because it makes it easier to rearrange stuff without over or under-scheduling people, and -- there's just something tangible about the post-its that I like. Still, transferring that to the spreadsheet is a pain, and I'm not convinced I'm doing all this in the most efficient, effective way. Among other possible problems, dependencies between cases are currently tracked largely in my mind, although I've just added a dependency column to the spreadsheet. (I'm thinking that something like Microsoft Project or Omniplan is probably more than I need, but am I right on that? I've never used either for a real project.)

What do you think of my system? What are YOU using to track this sort of information?