Redmine: Blend's Project Management Tool

Project management tools can be the key to success or the single point of failure for your organization or agency. You can have a top-notch strategy, driving a committed team toward attainable goals, but without the right tool to help you manage the ins and outs, you’re wasting time and money — as well as missing out on opportunities to maximize your productivity.

Why Redmine?

At Blend, we use a tool called Redmine to track issues, communicate with clients, and manage our internal processes. Redmine is an open-source, web-based project management tool, which means it’s free to use and can be customized according to specific project and workflow needs. Our development team has been able to utilize its customizability to fit the needs both internally and for our clients. This level of customization makes it accessible to a wide range of users, including small businesses and startups with a limited budget.

Redmine supports various project management methodologies including Agile, Waterfall, and Scrum. It has a robust offering of features including Gantt charts, calendars, time tracking, and document management. Whatever your team’s preferences, Redmine enables you to manage your project according to your preferred methodology.

How does it benefit our clients?

For clients, project management software is about two big things: transparency and communication. Can they see what’s happening, and what’s left to happen — and can they communicate their needs along the way?

Blend uses Redmine to provide clients with that transparency, whether it’s regarding project progress, tasks, issues, or timelines. Clients can access the platform to track the status of their projects, view updates, and communicate with the development team. Redmine’s robust issue-tracking capabilities allow clients and internal teams to create, assign, prioritize, and track issues throughout the project lifecycle and the individual ticket’s lifestyle.

Meanwhile, clients communicate openly by providing feedback and discussing project requirements directly within the platform. Clients can also see precisely where their issue is living at any given point in the project cycle – development, code review, testing, or ready for review. This helps both parties identify and resolve problems efficiently.

Redmine also comprehensively records project activities, including task updates, comments, and file attachments. This documentation provides clients with a complete history of project developments, decisions, and discussions which can be valuable for future reference and learning lessons for future projects.

How does it benefit our developers?

Developers also need transparency and communication, but they need it in a way that complements and assists their ongoing workflow.

Because Redmine is open-source, Blend is able to define custom statuses and fields to reflect our unique workflow requirements. This enables us to ensure the tool we use, and ask our clients to use, seamlessly integrates with our existing development practices. Redmine also integrates with popular version control systems like Git and Mercurial. This enables our developers to link code commits, branches, and revisions directly to related issues and track code changes within the context of the overall project.

The built-in time tracking functionality prevents developers from needing to change platforms to provide the project managers and client teams with the hours spent on various issues and the estimated hours remaining until completion. This helps both the client and the PM accurately estimate timelines, monitor progress, and generate reports to provide project transparency and ensure the project is on-time and on budget.

Finally, Redmine has a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions that extend its functionality and customization options. Developers can leverage these plugins to add new features, integrate with third-party tools, and tailor Redmine to meet their specific requirements.

A culture of transparency.

Project management software is a valuable tool for businesses seeking to enhance collaboration, streamline processes, and achieve project success in an increasingly competitive landscape. By harnessing the power of Redmine and fostering a culture of transparency, communication, and accountability, Blend has found efficiency, innovation, and growth in our project initiatives.

Do you have suggestions for how to improve our Redmine process? Let us know at hello@blendinteractive.com.