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Elementool's Issue Tracking Saves Hundreds of Hours a Month in Software Development Time

File attachmentst	5 hours/month	5 minutes/month
Creating reports	15 hours/month	5 minutes/month
Requesting additional information regarding issues reported	15 hours/month	1 hour/month
Instant project status report		Priceless
Developers fixing issues according to their priority		Priceless

Monthly development time saved for a team of 10 developers:

340hrs — $13,600 worth

Find out how much you you can save by using Elementool:

Please fill-in the number of team members:

Monthly cost saving: hrs, $
Daily cost saving: hrs, $

Accurate communication is the key to the success of the issues tracking process. This communication takes the form of timely information flow between customers, QA and Development. Reducing the time spent on tasks that communicate issue information saves money. Let's explore the tasks completed daily by personnel in software development throughout the development process. We'll compare the time and money spent on the tasks when they have Issue Tracking and when they don't. The average time spent on a task and the costs per hour are based on actual experience at Elementool Inc.

Project Snapshot

To start, with Elementool's Issue Tracking, the user logs in to the account and immediately sees all relevant information. This gives a snapshot or overview of the issues currently in the system. They can see exactly how many issues are assigned to them. The issues are sorted by status, severity, priority or any other criteria the user might choose.

This type of report takes about five minutes to create using in-house software or Excel. Done once an hour that is 40 minutes a day of saved time. That is 15 hours per month or $450 worth of a programmer's time.

File Attachment

Another near constant demand for the QA or development person is the need to attach files to various issues reported to the system. Then, when a user works on fixing a issue, he has access to the files related to the issue. For example, issues related to the UI could be pictured in a screen shot and attached to the issue to aid in quickly describing the problem. There's no need for the user to conduct a tiresome search for the screen shot in the company's files.

Project Control

Knowing how many open issues there are in each stage of the project and how much time it takes for issues to be fixed can provide the project manager better control over their project. Project managers find it difficult to run the project according to schedule if they don't know at any given moment how many open issues there are to fix, what the priority of each issue is, which issues can be postponed until the next release and how long it takes for issues to be fixed. Elementool enables you to run a report that shows you within seconds exactly how many issues are still open, what their priority is and how long it takes for issues to be fixed.

Issue Life Cycle

Tracking the issue lifecycle, important in determining the status and history of the issue, indicates the issue's progress or lack of it. Elementool's Issue Tracking clarifies the picture in seconds for the entire life of the issue, including the date of reporting, status (fixed, open, new, etc). Such precise information is not available visually in e-mail, Excel spreadsheets or in-house tools.

Managing Priorities

Performing development and testing tasks according to their priority can increase efficiency and prevent unnecessary waste of time during the product development process. In many cases developers don't know the priority of each task and often spend more time on low priority tasks than high priority tasks. As a result the project is not completed on time. Elementool enables you to define the priority and severity of individual issues and assign them to the different developers. This way, developers know which issues are assigned to them and what the priority of each issue is.

Clear Information

Elementool's Issue Tracking is designed with customizable fields. Users submit clear and precise information to the issue database using the issue tracking form. One example is the Remark Message Board enabling clear communication between team members. Priority and severity fields, environmental variables such as operating system, browser type and hardware configuration can be placed in customizable fields as well.

Organized and clear information saves communication time for developers when interfacing with the tester who reported the issue. When issues are reported using Excel spreadsheets or e-mail, the developer often needs to contact the tester to get more information.

Save Time

That extra time is costly. It's an average of two minutes of developer time and two minutes of a tester's time. If these actions are performed an average of 10 times a day, it's 40 minutes of wasted time. That is about 15 hours a month or $450.

In short, the savings are significant when a company uses Elementool's Issue Tracking for only $89.99/month. As we've seen, for just one developer you can save over 30 hours and $1,000 per month in costs associated with project development.

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