TargetProcess. Agile Project Management Software

All the features described below appeared in TargetProcess v.2.6 (11 Oct 2007)

• Inline Editing in Lists
• New Iteration Plan Concept
• Visual Source Safe Integration
• New Dashboard Components
• Customizable Inner Lists
• New Charts / Bugs Dynamic Chart
• Other Improvements

Inline Editing in Lists

Problem: It's time consuming to edit entities in lists. For example, common actions for user stories list are assign several user stories to current iteration, change some priorities, change efforts.

Solution: Allow people to change entities in Excel-like style.

Just double-click table row to enable inline editing. All changes saved without page reloads, so you are feeling like working in Excel. Inline editing available for User Stories, Bugs, Features and Requests lists.

New Iteration Plan Concept

Problem: Answer usual questions for iteration planning meeting: What user stories are the most important? What have top effort? What user stories we may assign to iteration to complete it on time?

Solution: Visualize importance and effort parameters (numbers and text are not appropriate).

When you see a list of user stories with efforts and priorities it is not so easy to plan iterations. For example, when you assign large user story to iteration you don't feel that it is really large. When you assign to many stories to iteration you don't feel that it is overloaded. You do understand that, but don't feel. We've tried to resolve this problem in TargetProcess and visualize main user story parameters.

The main idea is simple: user story with significant effort should be large, user story with high priority should have different color.

This is an important large user story.

And this is a small nice to have user story.

The difference is obvious. Below is one more interesting beast which called "blocking bug".

As you see assignable items like bugs and user stories have different sizes. Now we may visualize iteration Velocity without problems. Iteration is just a large box where we can put all small boxes (user stories and bugs). When the box is full, iteration planning is completed.

Here is an example of an iteration that is not full and may accept several user stories. It has green label about effort availability. It has space to accept user stories.

And here is an example of overloaded iteration. Bugs literally jump out of the box. You feel that there are to many items assigned to iteration and red label shows what effort should be removed.

You may guess how is good planned and completed iteration looks like. Exactly like this picture

The whole Iteration Plan. It consists of three areas. You may select iterations in two top areas and select Product or Release backlog in bottom area. To plan user story just drag it and drop on required iteration.

Use sorting and filtering to find required user stories.

One more common problem is to quickly change effort or priority of a user story. That is not a problem anymore. Right click on user story and change required values in context menu (no page reloads as you may guess).

Visual Source Safe Integration

Problem: Visual Source Safe users can't use source control integration.

Solution: Implement Visual Source Safe integration with the same functionality.

Now Visual Source Safe users can benefit from TargetProcess. You may change bugs state automatically; bind source code to user stories, bugs and tasks; add time records right from commits messages; view source code in TargetProcess; diff files.

New Dashboard Components

Problems: Customized Dashboard resets after upgrade to new version. Inability to see assigned Impediments. Inability to create quick links list.

Solutions: Implement new Dashboard mechanism that store customized settings without version information. Implement new dashboard components.

New Dashboard has modified components catalog that allows drag and drop customization. It stores configuration in custom format that will not be reset after upgrade.

My Links Dashboard Component

Allows to add custom links on Dashboard.

My Impediments Dashboard Component

Shows all your impediments

Customizable Inner Lists

Problem: There is no view that allows to see all related entities for user stories.

Solution: Implement mechanism that allows to add Bugs, Tasks, Test Cases and other inner lists into main User Stories list. Expand this mechanism on other lists.

New Charts / Bugs Dynamic Chart

Problem: Old Chart engine has some limitations that do not allow to create useful charts. For example, it was not possible to draw line and bars on a single chart (ideal progress line in burn down chart).

Solution: Integrate better charting component.

Bugs Dynamics by Days or Weeks

Other Improvements