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Paul Kleynhans
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Paul Kleynhans
asked on 23 Feb 2011, 09:13 AM
Hi
We've been using Team Pulse for a while now and I must say, so far I am quite impressed with it.
There are a couple of requests from my side though(compiled by talking to the developers and business users involved):
1. We need a feature where a task can be marked as completed on a date in the past. Most of the time, tasks are moved between statuses on a daily basis, but if for instance a developer is not present for a couple of days, when he comes back, all his tasks seem to complete on the same day. Can we have a mechanism where we can complete a task, but mark its completion as being on a specific date in the past? The default being today is fine, we just need a button or something to trigger a different date to be used for completion.
2. I have yet to find a place where the developers can enter their actual time spent on a story or task. Currently when a developer goes over the estimated time for a task, there is no way of indicating this. The result is that while Team Pulse functions brilliantly within the team, we have no way of guaging how accurate our estimates are. We also have no way of guaging individual developer performance based on estimated vs actual development? The actual value does not need to affect anything in the system, I just need it to create Estimated vs Actual reports to guage effectiveness.
3. There are instances where we would like to add additional customised fields containing values to stories and tasks. Can we have this functionality added to Team Pulse? (I would be able to use one of these as an actual indicator for reporting purposes as an example)
4. On the dash on the main screen, there are not enough tooltips explaining what things mean. An example is the Team Members dash: What does the progress bar with the number and progress indicator mean? Does the colour of the progress indicator mean anything? (I can see the total estimate and current stories assigned to the user, which is great, but have no idea what the rest means)
5. User Rights: Currently it seems all users can do everything in the system. I would, however like the facility to have users that can only create stories and tasks or even just ideas. I would typically like to use this functionality to have business users create ideas when they are still in their infantile stages so we as business analysts can enhance these to a point where they become requirements to be factored in for development in a sprint. Typically, the business user would create an idea, we would add tasks to better define requirements and when it is completed we would change its status to a point where it becomes visible for the development planners (I'm thinking an idea becomes a story at this point).
6. Facility to hierarchially link or group multiple stories? I know the idea is to create less complicated stories, but when you break dev requirements down to thousands of tasks, you tend to lose sight of the whole. Being able to group certain stories required for a specific function set will allow planning to take into account which stories work together to perform a greater function. Currently we are creating tasks within a story to simulate this, but it creates problems when multiple developers need to work on the same story and it seems that tasks are not tracked at all in the greater picture.
7. Facility to distinguish between bugs and development on story level would be nice (This includes visually on the storyboard. Currently we are compensating by using Priority class, but that is not optimal.
These are just ideas we came up with while working with Team Pulse
Regards
We've been using Team Pulse for a while now and I must say, so far I am quite impressed with it.
There are a couple of requests from my side though(compiled by talking to the developers and business users involved):
1. We need a feature where a task can be marked as completed on a date in the past. Most of the time, tasks are moved between statuses on a daily basis, but if for instance a developer is not present for a couple of days, when he comes back, all his tasks seem to complete on the same day. Can we have a mechanism where we can complete a task, but mark its completion as being on a specific date in the past? The default being today is fine, we just need a button or something to trigger a different date to be used for completion.
2. I have yet to find a place where the developers can enter their actual time spent on a story or task. Currently when a developer goes over the estimated time for a task, there is no way of indicating this. The result is that while Team Pulse functions brilliantly within the team, we have no way of guaging how accurate our estimates are. We also have no way of guaging individual developer performance based on estimated vs actual development? The actual value does not need to affect anything in the system, I just need it to create Estimated vs Actual reports to guage effectiveness.
3. There are instances where we would like to add additional customised fields containing values to stories and tasks. Can we have this functionality added to Team Pulse? (I would be able to use one of these as an actual indicator for reporting purposes as an example)
4. On the dash on the main screen, there are not enough tooltips explaining what things mean. An example is the Team Members dash: What does the progress bar with the number and progress indicator mean? Does the colour of the progress indicator mean anything? (I can see the total estimate and current stories assigned to the user, which is great, but have no idea what the rest means)
5. User Rights: Currently it seems all users can do everything in the system. I would, however like the facility to have users that can only create stories and tasks or even just ideas. I would typically like to use this functionality to have business users create ideas when they are still in their infantile stages so we as business analysts can enhance these to a point where they become requirements to be factored in for development in a sprint. Typically, the business user would create an idea, we would add tasks to better define requirements and when it is completed we would change its status to a point where it becomes visible for the development planners (I'm thinking an idea becomes a story at this point).
6. Facility to hierarchially link or group multiple stories? I know the idea is to create less complicated stories, but when you break dev requirements down to thousands of tasks, you tend to lose sight of the whole. Being able to group certain stories required for a specific function set will allow planning to take into account which stories work together to perform a greater function. Currently we are creating tasks within a story to simulate this, but it creates problems when multiple developers need to work on the same story and it seems that tasks are not tracked at all in the greater picture.
7. Facility to distinguish between bugs and development on story level would be nice (This includes visually on the storyboard. Currently we are compensating by using Priority class, but that is not optimal.
These are just ideas we came up with while working with Team Pulse
Regards
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Hi Paul Kleynhans,
Thanks for the compliment and great feedback. I'd like to address some of your questions..
1. That's an interesting idea. I will log your suggestion and it will get reviewed by the team.
2. There are three fields in the Task grid - Work Completed, Work Remaining and PERT Estimate that should allow you to capture this information. However, we do not currently have a report that directly compares this.
3. Adding custom fields has been in our product backlog for some time. It will eventually make it's way into TeamPulse although I can't say when that will be.
4. It's funny you mention not enough tooltips.. We were dicussing something internally this morning where someone claimed "nobody uses the tooltips." We know it's not the ideal way to communicate with users, but I'm glad someone is using what's there! The dashboad part for the team member is intended to show the progress of Stories in the "Done" states during the current iteration. It displays a progress bar of the story points assigned to that member that changes colours from Red-Orange-Yellow-to-Green as stories are marked Done.
5. We also have more refined user access in our product backlog. Another feature that will eventually make it's way into TeamPulse but I can't say when. In the mean time, users do not require access to a project to add Ideas (though they do require a license).
6. The stories in TeamPulse fully support creating a parent-child hierarchy. There are a couple ways you can do this...
Further to your concerns about developers tracking tasks - our next release will have a number of enhancements related to tasks which we hope will make it easier for developers and managers! The My Perspective feature will allow developers to quickly find their tasks and a Task Board that shows stories with their associated tasks.
Kind regards,
Greg
the Telerik team
Thanks for the compliment and great feedback. I'd like to address some of your questions..
1. That's an interesting idea. I will log your suggestion and it will get reviewed by the team.
2. There are three fields in the Task grid - Work Completed, Work Remaining and PERT Estimate that should allow you to capture this information. However, we do not currently have a report that directly compares this.
3. Adding custom fields has been in our product backlog for some time. It will eventually make it's way into TeamPulse although I can't say when that will be.
4. It's funny you mention not enough tooltips.. We were dicussing something internally this morning where someone claimed "nobody uses the tooltips." We know it's not the ideal way to communicate with users, but I'm glad someone is using what's there! The dashboad part for the team member is intended to show the progress of Stories in the "Done" states during the current iteration. It displays a progress bar of the story points assigned to that member that changes colours from Red-Orange-Yellow-to-Green as stories are marked Done.
5. We also have more refined user access in our product backlog. Another feature that will eventually make it's way into TeamPulse but I can't say when. In the mean time, users do not require access to a project to add Ideas (though they do require a license).
6. The stories in TeamPulse fully support creating a parent-child hierarchy. There are a couple ways you can do this...
- In the View Stories page, in the center above the grid there is a drop-down that contains "Grid View" and "Hiearchy View" as the entries. When in hierarchy view, you can add children stories or use drag & drop within the tree to move stories around.
- When editing a story, in the relationships tab you could add stories as children of a parent story (or vice versa - add a parent as a child, though the UI enforces that a child can only have one parent). The Hierarchy View will properly display these relationships (or create them if you use the view to create your hierarchy directly).
- Our 2011 R1 release has an even easier way to create these relationships through the Quick Linker!
7. Our next release will contain a number of features related directly to Problem Management (Bugs, Issues, Risks). Please refer to the TeamPulse Product Roadmap for more details.
Further to your concerns about developers tracking tasks - our next release will have a number of enhancements related to tasks which we hope will make it easier for developers and managers! The My Perspective feature will allow developers to quickly find their tasks and a Task Board that shows stories with their associated tasks.
Kind regards,
Greg
the Telerik team
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