reviews/ppmf.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page title="Painless Project Management with FogBugz" keywords="">
<item>
<p>Author: Mike Gunderloy</p>
<p><a href="http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=436">ISBN: 159059486X</a></p>
<p>Publisher: Apress</p>
<p>Reviewed by: <a href="http://www.unixdaemon.net">Dean Wilson</a></p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Despite the name, FogBugz isn't just used for tracking bugs. The product
covers all the essentials such as streamlined bug submission
(if it's not easy people won't do it), accepting and replying to
email submissions and dividing your workload into different projects
and releases (with the aid of a nifty autosorter). Over time FogBugz
has grown to include discussion groups, tracking of tasks via RSS
and email on the technical side, and due dates and escalation reports
on the management front. This book provides a worthy introduction to
all these.</p>
<p>This book is an almost perfect introduction and end user manual for
FogBugz version 4. It covers all the main features in enough detail for
the casual user to understand their purpose while keeping a brisk enough
pace that people might actually read it. It starts off with an
introduction to the basic principles of FogBugz and how to use it for
simple tasks. These include adding cases, searching and creating custom
filters to narrow down the selection and breaking your tasks up into
projects and releases.</p>
<p>After covering basic use, the book briefly shifts focus to
project and task management features. It shows how to set estimates,
define due dates (based upon your actual defined working hours!) and
launches into a seriously short digression on escalation reports.</p>
<p>The closing chapters show how FogBugz fits into the wider world with
'power-
user' oriented features. Whether you want to create custom reports from
the FogBugz database, automatically generating basic release notes from
your bug and feature requests, creating discussion groups and linking
them to cases right up to integrating FogBugz with your version control
system, allowing you to tie cases (bugs) to code commits.</p>
<p>
The book itself is easy to follow. It adequately covers all the features
someone new to FogBugz should know about and explains all the topics in
a clear, concise way--effectively using screen-grabs to help the reader
follow along. As for the ideal target audience, I don't seem to be it.
This book is, in my opinion, focused on less technical end users. The
people most likely to get the best return from this book are those
looking for an end user manual to provide an overview of what FogBugz
can do, while also delving a little deeper into basic usage.</p>
<p>This is a short review for a short book. If you are looking for an
introduction to FogBugz and its main features, or an easy to follow end
user guide you can hand out, then this book is worth 7/10. It's concise,
easy to follow, covers the important features and should be included with
FogBugz.</p>
</item>
</page>
reviews/ppmf.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page title="Painless Project Management with FogBugz" keywords="">
<item>
<p>Author: Mike Gunderloy</p>
<p><a href="http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=436">ISBN: 159059486X</a></p>
<p>Publisher: Apress</p>
<p>Reviewed by: <a href="http://www.unixdaemon.net">Dean Wilson</a></p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Despite the name, FogBugz isn't just used for tracking bugs. The product
covers all the essentials such as streamlined bug submission
(if it's not easy people won't do it), accepting and replying to
email submissions and dividing your workload into different projects
and releases (with the aid of a nifty autosorter). Over time FogBugz
has grown to include discussion groups, tracking of tasks via RSS
and email on the technical side, and due dates and escalation reports
on the management front. This book provides a worthy introduction to
all these.</p>
<p>This book is an almost perfect introduction and end user manual for
FogBugz version 4. It covers all the main features in enough detail for
the casual user to understand their purpose while keeping a brisk enough
pace that people might actually read it. It starts off with an
introduction to the basic principles of FogBugz and how to use it for
simple tasks. These include adding cases, searching and creating custom
filters to narrow down the selection and breaking your tasks up into
projects and releases.</p>
<p>After covering basic use, the book briefly shifts focus to
project and task management features. It shows how to set estimates,
define due dates (based upon your actual defined working hours!) and
launches into a seriously short digression on escalation reports.</p>
<p>The closing chapters show how FogBugz fits into the wider world with
'power-
user' oriented features. Whether you want to create custom reports from
the FogBugz database, automatically generating basic release notes from
your bug and feature requests, creating discussion groups and linking
them to cases right up to integrating FogBugz with your version control
system, allowing you to tie cases (bugs) to code commits.</p>
<p>
The book itself is easy to follow. It adequately covers all the features
someone new to FogBugz should know about and explains all the topics in
a clear, concise way--effectively using screen-grabs to help the reader
follow along. As for the ideal target audience, I don't seem to be it.
This book is, in my opinion, focused on less technical end users. The
people most likely to get the best return from this book are those
looking for an end user manual to provide an overview of what FogBugz
can do, while also delving a little deeper into basic usage.</p>
<p>This is a short review for a short book. If you are looking for an
introduction to FogBugz and its main features, or an easy to follow end
user guide you can hand out, then this book is worth 7/10. It's concise,
easy to follow, covers the important features and should be included with
FogBugz.</p>
</item>
</page>