A couple of weeks ago, I went to a seminar put on by Fog Creek Software.  They’re doing a “world tour” to show off the newest version of FogBugz, their project tracking and scheduling software.  It’s pretty cool; there are a lot of new features and enhancements that have been added to the current version.  My lab uses FogBugz, but we’re a couple of versions behind.  Time to convince someone to upgrade!

One of the new features they’re very proud of is evidence-based scheduling, a way of predicting completion dates.  If you’re ever dealt with programmers, or the managers of programmers, you know that this is one of the hardest parts of of software development.  They seem to have nailed it pretty well.  Joel Spolsky explains the details in the link above, but briefly, it uses a modified Monte Carlo algorithm to predict the outcome based on past performance.

Another very nice feature is their integrated Wiki.  I’ve installed and used various flavors of Wiki software, and while they’re certainly useful, they do tend to be a bit rough.  There are quite a few free and open-source versions, a few commercial versions, and I find them all lacking on one way or another.  Currently I’m using TikiWiki, and while it does work, the user interface for posting could be better.  (Yes, I know it’s open source, and I should fix it instead of complaining, but I’m lazy and too busy.  So complain I will.)  Anyway, the Fog Creek guys have done a pretty seamless integration of a WYSIWYG Wiki into FogBugz.  I’ve written and asked them to release their Wiki as Open Source, but so far no reply.