Targetprocess 2.24.6: More context actions, Finish iteration action, better context

In this release we've completed Context Menu feature, added some improvements and fixed quite many bugs. It will be available for accounts this week.

Context Menu

More actions are available in context menu now:

Change Assignments and Effort

Assign people, change assignments, update effort for any card on a board in few clicks:

Add Sub-entities

Quickly add inner entities. For example, if you have a User Story card on board, you can add Task, Bug, Test Case, Impediment or Time record via context menu:

Convert

Convert action is now available via context menu as well:

Finish Iteration/Team Iteration

This action was replicated from Targetprocess 2 and improved. If you have a board with Iteration/Team Iteration lane, you'll see Finish link (Finish action is also accessible via Iteration/Team Iteration View):

When you click the Finish link, you will see a dialog with Finish Iteration options:

Note, when User Story is split, relation is created between new and old User Stories.

Better Saveable Context

Here was the problem:

Saved context of Any Project switches to all projects except the new project after a project has been added. This should probably remain any project rather than require a new save context for each board to have the extra project.

You will have this problem no more. It will be required to re-save context for boards with Any Team/Any Project contexts, but then with new projects addition you will still have Any Project saved. 

Better Clipboard

Many people had problems with Clear/Delete buttons in clipboard, so we redesigned it. Now it is very hard to accidentally delete cards. 

Range selection works in clipboard as well, so you can quickly select several cards.

Avatars Highlight

Now you can see better who is responsible for the card right now. For example, QA engineers are responsible for User Stories and Bugs in Testing state. On the image below they are highlighted, while other assigned people are less visible:

Embedded Pages Mashup

One more useful mashup appeared in Mashups Library. The Embedded Pages mashup allows to see the pages by links you've provided in a URL and Template URL custom field as an additional tab on an entity view, so that you can work with the external pages and documents straight in TargetProcess.

Other Improvements and Fixes

• Action in error message about teams and project relations. Now if you don't have relation between team and project while trying to create a User Story, you can add this relation with a single click.
• You can add new User via top Add menu now
• FIX: Long Test Case names are not broken into several lines and corrupt the UI
• FIX: When you add a new Iteration it is not clear that you should use calendar days as a duration
• FIX: Endless loader on Release view: Iteration tab when I drag'n'drop entities between Iterations
• FIX (annoying bug): Connection lost message appears every time I go to another board
• FIX: Support non-English custom field values on boards
• FIX: Tasks are not moved to TeamIteration along with parent User Story

Customize Cards (early preview)

We are making progress and Customize Cards feature will appear in production in a month or so (at least in beta). It is already working, but with just limited amount of properties that can be customized and performance is not perfect.

You can customise cards for all zoom levels with various properties like cycle time, creation date, progress, etc.

Here is the early preview

TargetProcess v.2.24.5: New Lookup Fields, Context Menu, Mashup Library

In v.2.24.5 release we made several improvements. This version will be available to all later this week.

New Lookup Field

It was very hard to find required entity when you add a new Relation, link User Story to a Feature, link a Bug to a User Story, etc. With new lookup field this is not a problem anymore!

New lookup shows more relevant information about target entity and helps you to find it using quick or advanced filters.

Continuous scroll helps to navigate long lists.

New lookup field appeared in v.2 and v.3.

Context Menu

If you wanted to quickly change some content on cards in previous versions, you had to open View. Well, it was not so quick. Now we introduced context menu that helps to Delete entities, Rename entities and change tags.

Right click on a card to see actions:

Rename action

Change tags action

More actions are on the way. In the next release it will be possible to update Effort and Assigned users, Convert entities and Add new sub-entities via context menu.

Build Card

Now it is possible to create boards with Build card, add builds, etc:

Automatically Shift Iteration / Team Iteration

When you change start date or duration of current of next iteration you had to change all future iterations manually. Now it happens automatically. All future iterations will be shifted to required amount of days. Note, that this action does not work for past iterations.

Create Feature, User Story, Bug from Request

This action was missed in v.3. Now it is possible to create Features, User Stories and Bugs from request with a single click.

The following fields are copied from Request to a target entity:

• Name
• Description
• Tags
• New Relation (outbound for Request, inbound for target entity) type Relation
• Project
• Team

Mashups Library

Now you can install new mashups with a single click! You may think about Mashups Library as an App Store (but free). Only Admin can install new mashups. Navigate to Settings -> Mashups, find required mashup and click Install button.

Click on a mashup to read more information about it:

Mashups are actually stored on GitHub. If new mashups are added here, they will be automatically available in Mashups Library. 

Bug fixes:

• Auto-apply filters doesn't work if added entity has at least one required Custom Field
• Unnecessary Comet notification comes if entities have states with the same names and we update name for entity NOT selected on the board.
• New Search does not open items in New Tab (right mouse click)
• Unexpected permission error when I try to add time to entity that I'm not having rights to edit
• Cannot convert entity if it has related Request
• CKEditor copy-paste image from in FireFox
• Dates for current iteration and team iteration are not highlighted in green anymore
• Make Tags available for axis when Releases chosen as cards

Timelines for Roadmapping in TargetProcess 3

In my previous post I shared some tips about using timelines in TargetProcess 3 for project portfolio management. Today I'll write how to create project road maps with the timelines.

By roadmapping we understand high-level planning of a project. To be more exact it’s planning of project features. Features in TargetProcess are containers of user stories. Feature cards are marked with the green bars, as on the screen below.

Is there any other way to do a project road map in TargetProcess 3, without the timelines?

The timelines are still in development, and for now you can use a workaround to road map a project. Check the screen below. We've  done the TP3 project road map with the drop-down custom fields: Q1 2013, Q2 2013, etc. 

This approach works but it’s quite limited. Some features can take more time than a quarter (3 months), some features can be started at the end of the quarter. Besides, you can’t see the duration and the forecast completion date for the features in this setup.

Some of these issues can be solved if the roadmapping is done with releases. But in our opinion release and strategic planning should be separated.

The concept: roadmapping a project in TargetProcess 3 with timelines

Simply put, we want to implement roadmapping in TargetProcess 3 as on a whiteboard:

For that,  we're going to add the planned start and end date fields to the features (actually, not only to the features, but to all the assignables: features, user stories, tasks, test plan runs and bugs) and make it possible to change those dates on the timeline. If a feature is selected as a card, the timelines will look as follows:

The cards have dotted borders (which means they are “planned’), "actual" borders (coloured with gray if a feature is done, and with white if it’s in progress; "actual" means cycle time for a feature) and the forecast end date (transparent). See a more detailed description of the cards in my previous post.

Backlog
All the features that have not been planned yet are in the backlog, ranked accordingly.  An unplanned feature can be moved from backlog to timeline by drag-and-drop. Features will retain their default duration when moved to a timeline. It was very tempting to calculate the duration automatically based on the estimates, and a lot of people asked us for that. But this auto-calculated duration would actually be a forecast made when a feature has not yet gone to “work in progress”. Obviously, this auto-calc would be too approximate, and hardly of any use, so we decided to provide some leeway.

Swimlanes
You can group features by a project, team, assigned people, priority, release, state, tag or a drop-down custom field. That’s how features grouped by projects look on the TargetProcess 3 board:

You can see the vertical line on the iOs project swimlane. This is a planned start date for this project. The rule of a thumb is:  if an entity selected as a swimlane has some planned start and end dates, these lines are shown in the background. The borders for releases and teams will be shown in the same fashion.

Conclusion
As you can see, the timeline is quite a flexible framework. You can select which cards to plot on the timeline. You can group the selected cards by swimlanes. You can change the planned start and end dates as you move cards, and compare the actual progress with the forecast - because you can see both. And it works for all the entities.

Next time I will show how to use timelines for tracking the project load, people load and the team load. You’re welcome to share your thoughts and post questions here.

*edited by Olga Kouzina

Timelines for project portfolio management

As you probably know, we are implementing a new feature in TargetProcess 3: the Timelines.

Basically, a timeline is a projection of the cards (Projects, Features, User Stories, etc.) on a time scale. In the screen above only Projects are selected as cards. But it’s possible to show various cards such as Features, User Stories and Bugs on one and the same timeline.

Cards can be grouped by swimlanes, and each card type comes with a predefined set of swimlanes. In the screen above projects are grouped by teams.

Timelines are used in planning mostly for:

• project portfolio management
• people portfolio management
• roadmapping
• tracking project load, people load, team load

I’m going to publish a series of posts on using timelines. For a start, let’s see how they can help in project portfolio management.

You need to select projects as cards to be able to see them in a timeline:

Let’s take a look at how projects appear as cards on the time scale:

1. Project is planned but has not started yet. This card has dotted transparent borders.

You can update the start/end dates by stretching the card with drag-and-drop:

Note: TargetProcess 3 will never freeze the start/end dates for the planned projects, you can change them whenever you need.

2. Project is done. The card will stretch from the start date to the end date (that’s the time when all planned user stories and bugs are done).

Obviously, the planned and actual end dates may be different. We hide the planned end dates by default, but you can show them if the option “Planned in the past”  is on, to compare the planned and the actual end dates.

3. Project is in progress. The card is in progress from the start date till the date when we expect that the last user story will be done (the forecast end date). The actual (white) and the forecast (transparent) dates are split by the current date (the green vertical line).

The planned end date is also shown. If the planned end date is earlier than the forecast end date, the project will be delayed. Even more, if a project is delayed, and another project should kick off right after the delayed project was supposed to have ended,  this card for this project will be pushed to the lower line:

If projects are planned across teams, timelines can be used as an overview of the team’s projects. You need to select Teams as swimlanes:

You can move projects from one team to another by drag&drop.

There’s a field called “Owner” for Projects.  You can identify a Product Owner, Project or Product manager, CEO, etc.  as an Owner, and group projects by owners:

Projects can be also grouped by tags. For example, you can mark some projects with the “risky” tag just to make a note that a special attention should be paid to them,  or the “background”  - for the projects that people can work on if they have any gaps in their higher priority work. You need to select tags as swimlanes in the board config, and the timeline will look as follows:

The tags are not mutually exclusive. You can assign several tags to a project, and it will appear in several swimlanes.

If you still need mutually exclusive tags, you can create a drop down custom field as a workaround. This can be the case if there are several projects for Targetprocess and several projects for the fifteen puzzle.

In my next post I will show how to use timelines for roadmapping.

TargetProcess 3 iPhone/iPad App

Hi,

Today TargetProcess 3 App is officially released. You can download it from the App Store.
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=593808012

Features:

• Access all boards you've created in TargetProcess 3
• Add new work (User Stories, Features, Bugs, etc.)
• Drag and drop cards to change properties (states, assignments, etc.)
• Prioritize cards
• See card details e.g. comments, assignments, related assignments

Some screenshots:

   

   

This is an initial release and it will be improved with your feedback. Please vote and post your ideas here http://tp3.uservoice.com/forums/197967-targetprocess-ios

TargetProcess v.2.24.1 (pre 3.0)

Hi folks,

Last two months we worked on v.3 stability and added many many small features and improvements. New build will be available in a week (or so).

Here is the list of changes:

New Cards: Test Plans and Test Runs

More helpful boards can be created for QA now. Board below shows Test Runs by Test Plans. You can create new Test Runs quickly here.

New Cards: Releases, Iterations and Team Iterations Cards

List of Releases by Projects, List of Iterations by Projects or Team Iterations by Teams — all that can be created. Such boards help to overview releases and change them quickly.

New Lanes: Create Date, Start Date, End Date

Create boards with simplistic dates columns to see what was created, started or completed day by day. Use filters to restrict how many days you see in date axis, like ?It >= today - 10(days)

This board shows added user stories, features and bugs by dates and by projects.

Prioritization with Shift by Default

When you create a new board, it will have Prioritize using Shift setting by default. It prevents sudden and unintended prioritizations.

When you start dragging, you will see a help message to hold Shift key to prioritize.

Easier Team/Project Relation Assignments

When you create a team, you can quickly assign several projects to this team. When you create a new project, you can quickly assign some teams:

Views Improvements

Now you can send links to Views quickly. Also there is a short link that is available in a format http://targetprocess/entity/87443.

Quick Add section added into View as well:

Editor was improved and restyled. Now you can add pictures via drag and drop

Tabs are now collapsed into More button if there is not enough space:

Board States Setup

Direct link to States modification is added into board setup. Now it is much easier to access entities Workflow:

New Top Menu

Top menu was re-designed to match tp3 style

Getting Started and Help

Maybe it is not that important to existing users, but new users will be grateful for the getting started scenarios built-in into TargetProcess:

Updated User Guide can be found at http://guide.targetprocess.com 

Search Improvements

• It is possible to search inside custom fields
• Search by numbers works (finally!)
• Search indexing works several times faster.

Performance Improvements

• Board loads with less requests to server
• Board requests are run in parallel when possible to reduce total time
• Batch operations take significantly less time
• View popup opens faster now with lazy loading

v.2.24: Global search, prioritize restrictions, network diagram

New tp3 features appeared in v.2.24 release. Some accounts are already upgraded, On-Site customers will have an access to the download in 2-3 days.

Global Search

We spent a lot of time creating and really fast search. This new global search usually returns results in a second.

Prioritize Restrictions

Many people complain that it is too easy to change priorities on boards. Indeed, it is true. We've implemented a setting that makes it harder:

Now you can completely disable prioritization or demand a special gesture (pressed Shift key and mouse cursor) to change priority. It will make boards safer and Product Owner will sleep well.

Network Diagram

Relation network diagram shows all dependencies for selected stories, bugs, features and other entities. 

Click Reports tab and find this new report here:

You can filter entities easily to focus on interesting data.

Quick Add in Views

Minor improvement that helps you to add things faster from Views:

Other Improvements

• It is possible to add up to 60 custom fields for every entity in every process now
• REST API gives you an access to state changes history
• Performance improvements
• Better confirmation messages