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• Tim Elton

  Posted on Sep 11, 2009 (permalink)

  We have 3 development teams that run concurent iterations in the same project.  Thus, there are always 3 current iterations.  I set the iteration schedule to reflect this, but it looks like the application only picks up the first current iteration found.  Any ideas?

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• JP Intermediate

  Posted on Sep 11, 2009 (permalink)

  Hi Tim,
  
  You're right.  The dashboard only supports 1 current iteration and it will pick the first current iteration that it finds if there is more than one.  Just so I'm clear on what you're after, if the dashboard could display information for multiple current iterations, what would you expect to see on the dashboard?
  
  What you could possibly do is have a separate iteration schedule for each independent project and make each schedule so that there is only ever one current iteration.  In this case, you would not be able to use the shared settings option (i.e. store settings in source control) because you can only store one iteration schedule per project in source control.  If you wanted to share the schedule among team members you would have to manually copy the iteration schedule file between computers
  
  Iteration schedule file location: {My Documents}\WorkItemManager\{server-name}\{project-name}\ProjectMetadata.xml
  
  I realize this is less than ideal but it's the best we can do at the moment.
  
  JP
  

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• Tim Elton

  Posted on Sep 15, 2009 (permalink)

  If multiple current iterations in the same project were supported, I would expect to see them treated as a single iteration.  In other words, an aggregate would be displayed.  A "nice to have" would be an option to select the aggregate mode, or have each current iteration rotate in the same way that multiple projects rotate.
  
  Thanks,
  
  TE

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• JP Intermediate

  Posted on Sep 16, 2009 (permalink)

  Hi Tim,
  
  Thanks for the feedback.  I think either an aggregated view or rotating the iterations could both work, but rotating them probably makes more sense and would be more accurate.  I have added this to our backlog and we will consider adding it to a future release.
  
  Thanks,
  
  JP
  

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• Chris Kinsman

  Posted on Sep 16, 2009 (permalink)

  We have the same issue however we have gone with a single iteration (i.e. it represents a period in time) and then have a field we call Team that indicates what team owns what items for that iteration.
  
  Ultimately we need something along the lines of grouping support for many of the items in the dashboard due to this.
  
  i.e. in a single team project we have multiple teams and/or multiple backlogs at any point in time.

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• Tim Elton

  Posted on Sep 16, 2009 (permalink)

  When we set up our project, we looked into how to set it up for multi-team support.  After researching it, we found that the two most common approaches are what you described (using the team field) and what we are now doing (using multiple current iterations).  There are tradeoffs associated with each.  I would think that in order for the dashboard to work well in an enterprise environment, it should support both scenarios.
  
  TE

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• Craig Gjerdingen

  Posted on Dec 2, 2009 (permalink)

  Currently we keep TFS projects in place for each solution and run project iterations by using the iteration hierarchy in TFS.  I think this might be common among some dev teams. But it kind of breaks how things are supposed to work and be reported on.
  
  We have multiple teams working in these multiple iteration branches on the same VS solution.
  
  But given that is how we have handled things up tell now, I think that having the rotation option would be good. 
  
  Each new Telerik TFS project definition would have it's own ProjectMetadata.xml file and be able to pick its own current iteration.
  
  That would allow for isolation, rather than aggregate views, of the work that is being done in that iteration branch.
  
  What this issue has brought to light for me is the need to break our 1 TFS project - 1 VS solution - multiple iteration model and just fire up a new TFS project for each new code project, rather than needed a new feature in your Dashboard software.
  
  Thanks for the great solutions,
  Craig Gjerdingen
  
    

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