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This issue tracking software is for used for project development and allows participants to collaborate on a variety of projects, such as tracking fixes waiting for QA or urgent issues, ideally suited to software developers through a customer support application. [1] The simple user interface allows large and small groups to quickly create efficient workflows and automatically organize specific tasks by creating, assigning, tagging and resolving project issues. The insertion of milestones helps to plan features and establish release dates and agreed deadlines and the ability to share documents and images directly to tickets, so anyone within the project team can find them. As a customer relationship management tool, Lighthouse is efficient at managing a company's interactions with its clients and involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes, which are essential within sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support by creating time-saving functionality.[2] As a case study Croogo [3] is a free, open source, content management system powered by CakePHP framework, and distributed under the MIT License. And uses lighthouse to create and reply to tickets and review the status of all projects in a simple overview that can be followed along with feeds, creating exceptional user support , as participants can create new Lighthouse tickets directly from Tender [4], Lighthouses specialized customer support service. To reduce the costs of planning and implementing software initiatives and increase the support from user base, enterprises are required to automate processes according to best practices. Using Lighthouse's email integration team members can utilize email to reply to tickets directly from inbox and as it is a web based application, it means that support can access critical information on the move, such as using the iPhone optimized interface, manage tickets through the email system, or subscribe to pro

References: [1] Lighthouse http://lighthouseapp.com/ [2] Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management [3] Croogo PHP http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/introducing-croogo-cms [4] Tender http://tenderapp.com/ [5]Neath, K. (2007) "Lighthouse: The bug tracker you've been looking for" retrieved on 11th April 2010 from: http://warpspire.com/tipsresources/web-publishing/lighthouse-the-bug-tracker-youve-been-looking-for/

"Communication, Collaboration, and Bugs: The Social Nature of Issue Tracking in Software Engineering" (Bertram, Voida, Greenberg, & Walker, 2010) This article, written by the Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, is a qualitative study of a group of software development teams that make use of one or more formal issue tracking systems and examines the social aspects that reside within the software engineering and bug tracking process. They argue that an issue tracker is not just a system for tracking bugs but becomes a focal point for all stakeholders of the program including engineers, users, designers and owners. The collaborative knowledge and shared journey of tracking bugs and designing software is a social process as much as it is a design process and the tracking system should be able to facilitate and archive the exchange of information and ideas. From the study of up to 15 participants spread across 4 North American software teams they were able to articulate various real world practices for examining issue and bug tracking software. The paper enunciates the main features of an issue tracking system and what the main considerations should be when designing or implementing one. References Bertram, D., Voida, A., Greenberg, S., & Walker, R. (2010). Communication, Collaboration, and Bugs: The. Retrieved April 16, 2010, from DSpace: http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/47309/3/2009-IssueTracking.Report2009-933-12.pdf

GitHub is a source code management repository host, wiki and issue tracker (GitHub Inc., 2010) that enables software developers to collaborate in the development of web and application software as primary focus but it is useful for collaborating on books and other activities of a text-based nature. GitHub is built around the Git source code management tool which is a distributed version control system developed by Linus Torvalds and hundreds of other developers (Chacon, 2010). The software allows developers to track changes between versions and other milestones. The changes are shown in the form a 'diff' that can be created between any two revisions (Git Diff, 2010). Projects hosted on GitHub can be public or private. Public and open source projects are free while commercial users and those not willing to share source code need to pay a monthly fee. In a public project, the source code stored in the repository is available to the public who can easily fork or submit patches to the project. Private projects are completely hidden from the public and can only be accessed by specifically nominated collaborators. The private project is ideal for organisations, which wish to exploit the power of GitHub but do not or cannot release their source code to the public for various reasons.

GitHub includes an issue tracker which can be used to track bugs, assign tasks and generally keep track of what needs to be done to get the software to a state as desired by the developers and other stake holders in a project (GitHub Inc., 2010). Issues can be tagged with labels to indicate what they contain (bug, enhancement, tasks, etcetera) and to specify which version they are relevant to (Preston-Werner, 2009). For example, whether or not they need to be completed before it is possible to release version 8.9.2 or need to be ready for the 9.0 release. These same labels can be used to assign an issue to a specific person (Preston-Werner, 2009) so that they are made aware that they have been delegated the task of dealing with the issue. GitHub also includes a wiki that can be used to collaborate with other members of a project and provide documentation for the project and its output.

Git Diff. (2010). Retrieved April 18, 2010, from learn.github: http://learn.github.com/p/diff.html Chacon, S. (2010). About Git. Retrieved April 16, 2010, from Git - Fast Version Control System: http://git-scm.com/about GitHub Inc. (2010). Secure source code hosting and collaborative development - GitHub. Retrieved April 18, 2010, from GitHub: http://github.com Preston-Werner, T. (2009, April 15). GitHub Issue Tracker! Retrieved April 18, 2010, from GitHub Blog: http://github.com/blog/411-github-issue-tracker Wesley, R. (1998). Version Control and the Single Developer. Retrieved April 18, 2010, from MacTech: http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.14/14.06/VersionControlAndTheDeveloper/index.html

Comindwork software is a versatile online project management and implementation tool that allows organisations to record, maintain and share project information from a single location. It is fully customisable and integrates all of the features and capabilities necessary to manage and execute diverse project tasks, such as schedules, milestones, Gantt charts and project risks along with the management of tasks and issues. Comindwork's Project and Team Dashboards support effective communication through its collaboration and blog facility, regular Email Notifications and RSS, [2] Twitter integration ( http://twitter.com/comindwork ) plus comprehensive reporting and chart display for visualisation of a project's status.[1] Assistance for project managers is provided by the centralised storage that stores all the project artefacts in an organised way, making an overview available at any time. It is easy to link tasks, pages, discussions, people and results for a more effective view of the task organization and to allocate tasks efficiently within the team. Team members and clients can communicate informally, share ideas and useful tips through the project blog or discuss project requirements via the Wiki feature. [2] Clients have the ability to track project tasks and project progress status at anytime. They can see the next milestone and know what progress to expect. They are able to review and comment on the project and comments are tracked until they are purposely closed. Clients have full access to the features set up by the original organisation's account with Comindwork. However, if a client wants to add their own projects, they can upgrade their account and add their own customers, projects and users independent of the original company that opened the account with Comindwork. [3] ....................continued in comment

Comindwork is an online application that can be utilized by business for online collaboration. It offers a free service for smaller projects, with a pricing structure that then varies on your enterprises needs and demands. As such its flexibility can be fit in with any organizations growth. The interaction that can be achieved through Comindwork with clients is also a feature of this product. Allowing client's access gives you the ability to communicate effectively and quickly with them in a professional manner. Jay (2010) at Smashing Apps states that "It's simple and clear time tracker interface provides project managers with a quick overview on time management issues." Beckman (2010) states that "Comindwork combines over 250 project management related capabilities under one roof, yet does it with a web interface that is, by and large, a breeze to use. Some of the strengths of the service include traditional project management tools, knowledge management, collaboration tools, information sharing and versioning, and both agile and traditional waterfall management tools (e.g.: think Gantt)." Gunderloy, (2008) of WebWorkerDaily states "Comindwork includes bits of functionality that you might ordinarily find spread across multiple sites and services. As with just about any other project management software, it will track projects, tasks, team members, and deadlines, as well as the connections between them. But in addition, it includes time-tracking, issue-tracking, internal blogs, and svn-versioned file storage." Komssi et al (2009) states that "Software as a Service (SaaS) is accepted as one of the most important models in the service-oriented software business today". As a management tool using software as a service (SaaS), Comindwork is a good way of implementing employee and client integration.

References: Beckman, Z. (2010, February 4). Not a panacea, but trying: Comindwork is attractive | Rational Scrum. Rational Scrum. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from http://www.rational-scrum.com/2010/02/easy-to-use-project-management-tools/ Gunderloy, M. (2008, February 18). Comindwork Piles on Project Management Features . WebWorkerDaily . Retrieved April 16, 2010, from http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/02/18/comindwork-project-management-features/ Jay, A. (2010, January 8). Comindwork, The Most Customizable Suit Of Flexible To-Dos, Wiki, Emails - With Gantt Charts, MS Project And Workflows @ SmashingApps. Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers @ SmashingApps. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from http://www.smashingapps.com/2010/01/08/comindwork-the-most-customizable-suit-of-flexible-to-dos-wiki-emails-with-gantt-charts-ms-project-and-workflows.html Komssi, M., Kauppinen, M., Heiskari, J., & Ropponen, M. (2009). Transforming a Software Product Company into a Service Business: Case Study at F-Secure. Computer Software and Applications Conference, 2009. COMPSAC '09. 33rd Annual IEEE International, 1, 61-66. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from the IEEE Xplore database.