Comments for Developer Project Management Services Growing Increasingly Sophisticated

Developer Project Management Services Growing Increasingly Sophisticated

2007-12-14T22:00:25Z

Two popular project management tools for software developers, Assembla and Unfuddle, both made major releases of new services this week.

Unfuddle announced an extensive API yesterday, as well as a Mac Dashboard Widget based on that API. The widget will let users monitor project activity, create tickets, time entries and more from their desktop.

]]> Assembla, a developers' project management service that reports 30k registered users, has announced that it will release a new premium subscription service that includes recruiting and staffing, portfolio management and 2 hours per month of consulting time. The first 30 days of the premium service are free. The company offers an extensive free service already and has put up a page comparing its offerings to competitors.

That page alone is a good read - while some competitors are described in warm and generous terms, that's not always the case. oDesk, for example, is described as a primitive, intrusive and nasty piece of spyware. (I'll add creepy to that list, myself.) Assembla says it regularly sees oDesk customers do their software dev management using Assembla instead.

Comment from Noah Everett on 2007-12-14

2007-12-14T23:00:23Z

I've used unfuddle, its a great product. In my opinion its like Basecamp, but geared towards developers.

Comment from Mike Griggs on 2007-12-14

2007-12-15T00:27:56Z

Unfuddle is a nice, easy to use app which keeps our development projects on track and our code clean. THANK YOU FOR THE API! Now we can create Vista Unfuddle Widgets ;)

Comment from Nick on 2007-12-14

2007-12-15T00:58:04Z

yes, we're very happy with unfuddle too. Its certainly been very welcome by the team

Comment from Brian Goler on 2007-12-14

2007-12-15T01:43:49Z

Puhleeze. Marshall, if we provide an unsubstantiated smear of Assembla on our site, would you post it?

Describing oDesk Team as "a nasty piece of spyware" is just plain wrong and clearly self-serving, marketing spin from Assembla. oDesk Team is not surreptitiously installed and our 30,000+ providers most definitely provide consent.

By giving service buyers visibility into the desktops of service providers, oDesk Team facilitates trust that is hard to establish with remote work relationships. Plus, we guarantee payment for hourly work when a provider runs oDesk Team.

If you want to know how oDesk professionals feel about oDesk Team, check out http://geekninja.blogspot.com/2007/12/odesk-team-software-vs-privacy-concerns.html.

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2007-12-14

2007-12-15T02:13:57Z

Brian, fair enough - when you've got that smear up let me know and I'll give it a look.

Comment from BR on 2007-12-14

2007-12-15T07:48:45Z

Unfuddle rocks.

My team sits on 3 continents and we now use Unfuddle to manage ALL of our active software projects.

Assembla has been touting itself as superior to Unfuddle for several months now using Alexa "numbers" and now catty phrases like "claustrophobic free version, no network".

My suggestion is that everyone should go and open a free Unfuddle account and then download the free MacOS widget.

Then everyone can decide for themselves if Unfuddle is claustrophobic. For my money, the Unfuddle $24 account is primo and offers one beautiful vista.

Comment from Andy Singleton on 2007-12-15

2007-12-15T18:38:26Z

I wasn't intending to publicize my private notes on the competition, but since they were linked here, I stand by my analysis. Unfuddle is pretty good for what it does. oDesk is not suitable for serious projects with serious professionals.

Since these notes are now public, I will try make them more accurate. It's true that oDesk software isn't "a nasty piece of spyware". People install it voluntarily, or because their bosses told them to. So I have changed the description to "intrusive software." Even the guy who provided the testimonial above moved it to it's own machine. That's an extreme measure to take.

So if you want to exploit some guy in a little cube in Chennai, and if all you want is code, then spy on him. If you want to work with top creative professionals, in Chennai and elsewhere, you need a different approach. Trust comes from establishing real relationships.

Comment from WG on 2007-12-15

2007-12-16T02:40:26Z

We have been an Assembla user for almost two years now to coordinate a globally dispersed work team of approx. 6 people and are completely satisified. I can't imagine ever going back to the error-prone and hard to coordinate ways of working that we muddled along with before.

I would highly recommend it to anyone. I haven't checked out the other services mentioned in this article, but based on how happy I am with Assembla, I don't see a need to.

Comment from Ryan Williams on 2007-12-18

2007-12-18T08:14:27Z

Always interesting to compare del.icio.us counts when looking at services. Unfuddle (over 900) is significantly ahead of Assembla (short of 700). They both look good though, I'll have to take them for a spin.

Comment from Per-Olof Hermansson on 2007-12-18

2007-12-18T20:00:54Z

I have free accounts on both Unfuddle and Assembla. Both are neat looking, but Assembla wins the race.

Assembla offers free accounts, and very few restrictions (you can have more than one project, and more than one person registered on the free account).

Assembla also offers many more features, and auxiliary tools, like Subversion, Trac, Ticketing, Mephisto, Chat, Scrum, Staffing, File and Image uploading, Forum (to come). All are seamlessly integrated, and set up with the click of a button! The Wiki is also a great place to store all the notes and data you need while working on a project.

We use Assembla all the time, as a small team of distributed consultants and software developers. All our code is stored on Assembla, and all the work we do to customers also.

So we have it within reach of our "fingertips", where ever we are.

I recommend Assembla highly!