JIRA is a fantastic tool if management know how to use it, and how to limit themselves. Having used 2 other horrible alternatives I really miss JIRA
For projects where there's possibly only a dev or two and the project/client, we had success with producteev. It's much less complicated than e.g. JIRA.
If you set up rules for tags and priorities you can manage delivery quite well with it.
Highest priority is reserved for blockers.
Sample of our tags: affects customer, bug, feature, change, production, technical debt