Out of curiousity, what do you dislike about spreadsheets/google docs? This has been my primary means of tracking progress historically. I've tended to find that all other mechanisms just add unecessary overhead.
Collaborative/online spreadsheets can work. Carefully designed, with appropriate field constraints and filters and sort templates... especially for smaller lists or smaller groups, they can be OK.
A few areas where they break down though:
- No attachments to stories (test cases, screenshots, etc)
- No comments/history view or threaded discussions
- Poor usability of notifications on @mention
- Inflexible UI/data formatting (cells instead of layout)
I'll often start a project using a spreadsheet, because one big advantage is that you can edit several "stories" at once. So it's a good rough draft. Inevitably, the missing features become more important and I move the data over to a more appropriate tool.
Sometimes I keep the spreadsheet for internal stakeholder issue reporting. It's a business-familiar tool for gathering input, which then gets synced to the more purpose-built tool for action.
