Better Multi-Teams Support Concept

TargetProcess3 has quite powerful multi-teams concept, but early beta release revealed some limitations. The main limitation is that you can't track functional sub-teams in a single project. That may sound like a waterfallish approach, but it is not in fact. There are many viable cases when this is useful (separate UX phase, separate deployment phase, etc.)

Another case is when several teams with different processes work on a single project. Imagine large projects with two development teams: Scrum and Kanban. Work split between these two teams, but we want to easily track progress on a project level.

The proposed solution will enable both cases above, but with a price of the system complication. 

User Story (Bug, Feature, Task, etc) will have two states: Team State and Project State. Team State and Project State will have mapping to each other. Thus a single Team can work on several Projects with different processes:

On the image below in the center you see typical Project states. Left flow (column) is a Kanban team that does development. Right flow is UX team. You see that Project State is linked to Team State. Thus you can easily track high level progress when creating a board with Project State. And can track Team progress when creating a board with Team State.

Project State - Team State mapping allows some automatic transition. For example, if we change Project State from Open to UX Phase, then UX Team State will be set to New. Team Status is something lightweight, it can be setup easily and mapped to statuses in various projects (thus a team with a defined flow can work in several projects with different flows).

The one restriction is that User Story has a single Team Status. Thus only a single Team can work on a user story in any given state. For example, when UX Team is completed User Story design, this User Story should be moved to Development (Kanban) Team. 

History is preserved, so it is known what teams worked on what user stories. However, history reports are complicated.

We don't expect to implement this solution in the next 4-6 months. Maybe more feedback will get us more ideas to improve multi-teams support. If you see any problems with the solution above, please share them.

v.2.23.17: Reports, Performance, Boards Magic

This release makes targetprocess3 significantly better.

Reports Improvements

Reports menu was changed, Lead and Cycle Time Distribution diagram added, Burn Down Chart added into menu.

Reports Menu

Reports menu was changed to include most interesting and new reports. Old TP2 reports are in Other Reports section.

Lead and Cycle Time Distribution 

Lead and Cycle Time Distribution diagram is very handy to forecast a probability when a user story or bug will be completed:

You can apply various filters and have distribution for various cases. For example, you want to extract all user stories with 8 pts effort. Now if you have new user story with 8 pts estimate, you can use cumulate distribution line to forecast how many days it will take to complete it with desired probability.

Views Improvements

Convert action added, People tab in Project View added. 

Convert action

Now it is possible to convert various assignable entities. New convert action preserves as much information as possible (custom fields, comments, attachments, similar properties, etc). Only ID is changed.

People Tab in Project View

Somehow this tab was missed in the initial tp3 launch. Now you can see all people that have access to a particular project. You can add new people or remove existing people as well:

Board Improvements

Automatic properties setting with Quick Add, Board Access tab.

Automagical set properties based on selected board filters

Let's consider a situation when you have a board that shows just user stories and bugs from the current release. Then you add new user story right on the board and... it disappears. Fear no more! With new release it will be automatically assigned to the current release. 

The algorithm is quite clever and it understand filters like 

?Iteration is Current

?AssignedUser.Where(it is me) and Iteration.IsCurrent == True

?Release is Current

EntityState is 'Open'

?Project.Name is ‘Green planet’

?Feature is ‘Save the whales’

If you mix similar filters with AND condition, several rules will be applied. 

NOTE: If you use OR condition in the filter, automatic assignment will NOT work (in this case there is ambiguity we can't resolve)

Board Access

There were two levels for board visibility: Public (everyone can see the board) or Private (only you can see the board). We've added Custom visibility level: you can select Teams and Projects which will see the board.

Let's say, you created a board Design Work and gave access to team Designers. Then only people in Designers team will see Design Work board.

Columns Resize

Now you can set and change columns width. Put mouse cursor near the edge of the column and wait till resize control appear. Click on arrows to increase or decrease column width. Note, that only this column will be affected, all other columns will stay as is. Also note that this changes are for you only, other users can tune boards as they wish.

Performance Improvements

We spent significant effort on performance improvements. In general, you should experience less than 3 seconds open time for any board (except boards with many many cards or teams/projects cards). 

The chart below shows Board Open Time day by day. As you see, large boards with many cards loads on average in 4 seconds. Smaller boards usually below 3 seconds. 

We will continue to work on better performance, we believe that subsecond performance is what will make the real difference and make you happy.

What's New in v.2.23.16: Clone Board, Templates, Custom Fields Filters

v.2.23.16 has several major changes in tp3. It will be available for download early next week.

Clone Boards

Sometimes you can't change board settings. Clone board is a good workaround. You will have a new private board with exactly the same settings in a single click

Board Templates

You can quickly create a new board from predefined template. 

If you are not satisfied with the results, just try other templates

Admin can create new templates and delete existing templates. To do that, admin can just create required board configuration and save it as a template:

We believe templates simplify board creation process. With custom templates this can be a company wide repository of useful boards easily searchable and filterable. 

Custom Fields Filters

Now you can filter cards (and swimlanes) on boards by almost any custom fields. Not implemented custom fields filters are: URL, TargetProcess Entity Type.

Release Lane Displays Effort and Quick Burn Down Access

See assigned and completed total effort on every release. Click on small icon to see Release Burn Down Chart. The same icon is displayed for Iteration and Team Iteration lanes as well.

Team Iteration Burn Down Chart 

This report is accessible via TP3 Reports link now and you can select Release, Iteration or Team Iteration.

Process Control Chart: Control Limits

Now you can see lines that shows warning and control limits. Thus you can easily identify stories, bugs, features that had some problems.

Board Access

Board Access management moved into the new tab. Soon it will be extended with per-Team and per-Project access level (we are already working on it).

Some minor changes

• Board colors are changed to improve contrast.
• Quick Add [+] sign moved to the right corner. It partially resolves a problem with cards overlap.
• 6th zoom level expands as much as possible, so it takes all free space now.
• View and Report popups expands to take more space.
• No more than 43 small cards are visible in collapsed cell. This improves data density problem for boards with many rows.
• Performance improved (and we are still working on it).
• Entity View popup: assigned user in active state is highlighted
• Entity View popup: If you put a link into Description field, it will be automatically converted into actual link on save

Design Concept: Customize Cards on Boards

We are finalising cards customization on boards.

On the left you see various zoom levels, so it will be possible to customize cards for all zoom levels. In the center you see card template and a list of all available properties on the right. 

You can quickly search for properties and use drag and drop to customize card. Rearrange properties easily:

Most sizes are fixed, so you can't put more than several properties on small sizes.

However, large sizes are unlimited, so you can put as many properties as you want (but card will be quite large in this case).

Your feedback is welcome!

New Navigation for Boards and Reports

We are working on Custom Graphical Reports concept now and are thinking about navigation changes. The main idea is to allow reports creation very similar to boards creation.

So left menu will break down to 2 sections: Boards and Reports. If you click on a section title, it will open Overview page with all Boards (or Reports) thumbnails. These thumbnails will be actually real snapshots (they can be captured every 30 minutes for example). So Overview will show many boards/reports with almost live content.

In the future we are going to add Dashboards, so there will be 3 sections: Boards, Reports, Dashboards.  

What do you think about this idea?

What's new in v.2.23.15: WIP Limits, Unlimited Assignments, Tags Improvements

Assign as many users as you want to an entity

Now you can assign many developers, many testers, etc. There are no restrictions.

On a board you will see several first asignments:

WIP Limits

WIP Limits are per board. It means each board have its own limits. When you create a board with State lane, you will find Limits tab in Settings area.

When you set limits and there are too many cards in this state, column will be highlighted.

Card Sorting

Now you can sort cards on board:

Clever Past and Future Filter

Limit how many past of future releases or iteration you want to see. For example, if you want to see just 

two future iterations, type a filter

?Iteration is Future(2)

If you want to see 3 past releases:

?Release is Past(3)

Fast Editing of Team and Project Relations

On User Story, Bug, Feature and other views you can quickly set or change Project or Team.

Process Control Chart

This chart shows Cycle or Lead Time distribution. You see when User Stories and Bugs were completed and how long it took to complete them.

Click on entity to open its view.

Tags Autocompletion and Tags Cloud

It was hard to know what tags are there and whats are missing. Now you will see list of matched tags in   add tag field.

Also you can click Tags Cloud and see all popular tags.

Better Rows Titles Formatting for Features and Stories

If you have Features or User Stories in rows, there is more information visible: State, full Name, Project, Effort, Assigned People.

Sparklines on Project View and Team View

When you have many teams working on a project, it is interesting what teams are active and what are not. Project View shows teams activity nicely.

More great things are coming :)

Team/Project Boards

Here is a solution for Team/Project level board access. Access tab is added where Board Owner ca specify visibility. If he selected some Teams, then only people from selected Teams will see the board in left menu.

When you select Private or Public - Teams and Project selection is disabled.

Board Templates

Next week we are starting Boards Templates implementation. When a person clicks Add Board, he will see a list of available templates.

When a person selects a template, board is created. Then templates popup shrinkes and a person can try other templates and see result immediately.

It will be possible to save current board as a template, thus forming templates library.

What's new in targetprocess3 (build 2.23.14)

Sorting in axes

Capability of custom sorting is added.
Now you can change sorting order (ascending/descending) or even change the token of arranging the values if you need. For example, show the persons ordered by e-mails or roles instead of default ordering by Last Name.

Once the order changed it's remembered and next time you'll see the data on that board in the order you've set last time

Sparklines on Project & Team cards

For the present sparklines work for Project and Team displayed as cards of 5th and 6th zoom levels.

Sparklines provide a progress overview over the last 16 weeks. The numbers shown are: a maximum of user stories (blue)/bugs (red)  done/added at any given week out of the last 16.

Full counts in rows and columns

Now the overall number of entities in a whole row or a column appears on the right of a header.

The tooltip shows also the exact quantity of each entity type in the line: user stories, bugs, teams, users etc.

Quick Add Improvements

New capability for quick add: general quick add at the top.
Now new board could be added via new button 'Add Board' at the bottom of the boards list

Concerning the quick add it's possible now to add any entity if you double-click within the required cell. After entity is added you'll see the message at the top. That should help to find it in a flash, open it in pop-up if you want to update or add more details at the same moment.

Team / Project selector is slightly improved and has new options

• Process selection for the new projects

• Change the context with one click. Select a team and a context will change like a flash for that team and all available projects. The same option works for project - select the project and context will be updated for that project and all the team 
• Open team (or project) in a pop-up viewer

Bug Fixes

#51303 Done entities should have grey background always

#55809 [Performance] Fix plugin memory leaks

#56203 Exception "Tp.Notifications.BusinessObjects.Workflow.EntityWorkflowEventSource - Creating workflow events " on each action on Views

#54008 Internal Server error if UserStory with tasks is deleted

#56036 Restrict context of board for Person in accordance with selected Teams & Projects

#56033 Internal server error for board with Project as cards and custom field as axis

#51435 [Internet Explorer] keyword is replaced incorrectly if select new query from suggestions list with mouse

#51446 Missing 'Creation Date' for Request and Impediment cards

#54415 Non-admin user without rights to edit team,project shouldn't be allowed to add team to project and v.v.

#56011 Simple filter fails for Project/Team axis if User or Team/Project cards selected

#54617 Added project/team don't appear in user assignments list if Assign button was double-clicked

#56101 Priorities change after batch drag-n-drop

#55927 More intuitive erroe messages

#51399 Filter should apply on 'Enter' key press

#51387 Filter doesn't apply to entities in consolidated columns / rows (ToDo (Open)/Done states)

#51047 Incorrect prioritization for batch move in Board mode

#49393 Inactive Users and Projects are not shown in axises (refers to Project or Person axis)

#48354 Impediments privacy supported

#55163 Comet notifications on changing Assigned Users and Effort

#55627 Task should inherit Team Iteration from its user story upon creation (not on move in board)

Process Control Chart

While we are working on fully customizable graphical reports, we will add some predefined reports into targetprocess3. The first one will be Process Control Chart that shows entities distribution by Cycle Time. It will help to identify entities that are unique and do not fit existing process. So you may pay attention to these abnormal stories, features, bugs and requests.