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TargetProcess v.2.19 — User Guide
1 © 2004-2010 TargetProcess, Inc. www.targetprocess.com
TARGETPROCESS USER GUIDE
v.2.19 User Guide
If you read this document, we definitely have some usability problems in the product. Please report such problems directly to product owner at [email protected]
TargetProcess v.2.19 — User Guide
2 © 2004-2010 TargetProcess, Inc. www.targetprocess.com
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................................6 PROJECT PLAN STRUCTURE .............................................................................................................................................. 6 ITERATIVE DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT................................................................................................................................... 8
GETTING STARTED............................................................................................................................................... 10 FLOWS....................................................................................................................................................................... 11 USER INTERFACE: GENERAL PRINCIPLES............................................................................................................................ 12 NAVIGATION............................................................................................................................................................... 13 LISTS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 14 PRODUCTIVITY TIPS ...................................................................................................................................................... 16
Easy Linkage....................................................................................................................................................... 16 Jump to Entity..................................................................................................................................................... 17
GENERAL ACTIONS .............................................................................................................................................. 17 INTEGRATED WINDOWS AUTHENTICATION........................................................................................................................ 17 LOGIN........................................................................................................................................................................ 18 SEARCH...................................................................................................................................................................... 18 CUSTOMIZABLE DASHBOARD.......................................................................................................................................... 19 TODO LIST ................................................................................................................................................................. 19 CONVERT ENTITIES / CHANGE ENTITY TYPE....................................................................................................................... 20
ADMINISTRATION ............................................................................................................................................... 21 USER & ROLE MANAGEMENT ........................................................................................................................................ 21
Add Users ........................................................................................................................................................... 21 Skills and Skills Filtering...................................................................................................................................... 22 Roles & Permissions ........................................................................................................................................... 22
AUDIT HISTORY ........................................................................................................................................................... 23 CUSTOM PRIORITY AND SEVERITY VALUES......................................................................................................................... 24 EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS .................................................................................................................................................. 24 DISABLE HTTP ACCESS ................................................................................................................................................. 25 PLUGINS..................................................................................................................................................................... 25
Add New Profile.................................................................................................................................................. 26 See Profile Log .................................................................................................................................................... 26
PROJECTS & PROCESSES ...................................................................................................................................... 28 PROCESS SETUP ........................................................................................................................................................... 29
Custom Terms..................................................................................................................................................... 31 Ideal Hours and Abstract Points Effort Units...................................................................................................... 32 Time Tracking Practice Customization ............................................................................................................... 32
WORKFLOW CUSTOMIZATION FOR USER STORIES, BUGS AND OTHER ENTITIES ........................................................................ 33 CUSTOM FIELDS........................................................................................................................................................... 35
Add Custom Field................................................................................................................................................ 35 Custom Fields Functionality................................................................................................................................ 36
PROGRAMS & PROJECTS ............................................................................................................................................... 37 Add Program ...................................................................................................................................................... 37 Add Project to Program...................................................................................................................................... 37 Programs List...................................................................................................................................................... 38 Manage Teams inside Entire Program ............................................................................................................... 38 Prioritize Projects ............................................................................................................................................... 39
PROJECT PLANNING: QUICK START...................................................................................................................... 40
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CREATE PROJECT TEAM................................................................................................................................................. 40 FEATURES (THEMES/EPICS) ........................................................................................................................................... 42 USER STORIES AND TASKS.............................................................................................................................................. 42
Quickly Add Tasks to User Story ......................................................................................................................... 43 ADD RELEASE .............................................................................................................................................................. 44 PRIORITIZE USER STORIES, FEATURES AND BUGS................................................................................................................ 44
RELEASE PLANNING............................................................................................................................................. 46 ITERATIONS PLANNING ....................................................................................................................................... 48
VELOCITY ................................................................................................................................................................... 48 SET ITERATION VELOCITY ............................................................................................................................................... 49 PLAN ITERATIONS......................................................................................................................................................... 49 ASSIGN TEAM MEMBERS............................................................................................................................................... 50 ADD TASKS ................................................................................................................................................................. 51 SPLIT USER STORY........................................................................................................................................................ 51 FINISH ITERATION ........................................................................................................................................................ 52
RANK CONCEPT................................................................................................................................................... 53 PROGRAM LEVEL RELEASE PLANNING ................................................................................................................. 54
ADD PROGRAM RELEASE, GENERATE PROJECT RELEASES AND ITERATIONS .............................................................................. 54 PLAN AND TRACK RELEASES ........................................................................................................................................... 55
PROGRESS TRACKING.......................................................................................................................................... 57 TASK BOARD............................................................................................................................................................... 58 DAILY PROGRESS (ACTUAL REMAINING TIME) ................................................................................................................... 59 DASHBOARD COMPONENTS ........................................................................................................................................... 59 YESTERDAY PROGRESS .................................................................................................................................................. 60
KANBAN.............................................................................................................................................................. 60 KANBAN PROCESS SETUP............................................................................................................................................... 60 KANBAN BOARD .......................................................................................................................................................... 62
Backlog............................................................................................................................................................... 64 Setting Limits...................................................................................................................................................... 64 Setting Columns Order ....................................................................................................................................... 65
KANBAN BOARD IN PROGRAM........................................................................................................................................ 66 CUMULATIVE FLOW DIAGRAM........................................................................................................................................ 67 LEAD AND CYCLE TIME .................................................................................................................................................. 68
DEPENDENCIES MANAGEMENT........................................................................................................................... 69 ADD DEPENDENCIES ..................................................................................................................................................... 70 VIEW DEPENDENCIES.................................................................................................................................................... 70
IMPEDIMENTS MANAGEMENT............................................................................................................................ 70 ADD IMPEDIMENT........................................................................................................................................................ 70 SEE IMPEDIMENTS........................................................................................................................................................ 71 PRIVATE/PUBLIC IMPEDIMENTS ...................................................................................................................................... 72 REPORTS .................................................................................................................................................................... 72
BUG TRACKING ................................................................................................................................................... 74 BUGS WORKFLOW ....................................................................................................................................................... 74
Add Bug .............................................................................................................................................................. 74 TEST CASE MANAGEMENT .................................................................................................................................. 75
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TEST CASES CONCEPT OVERVIEW.................................................................................................................................... 76 TEST CASES LIBRARY ..................................................................................................................................................... 77 ADD TEST CASES.......................................................................................................................................................... 77 ADD TEST PLAN AND ASSIGN TEST CASES ......................................................................................................................... 78 ADD TEST PLAN RUN.................................................................................................................................................... 78 RUN TEST CASES.......................................................................................................................................................... 79 TEST CASES PRIORITIZATION........................................................................................................................................... 80 QUALITY STATS............................................................................................................................................................ 80
Test Cases for User Story .................................................................................................................................... 81 TIME TRACKING .................................................................................................................................................. 81
ADD TIME .................................................................................................................................................................. 81 USING A TIME SHEET .................................................................................................................................................... 82
Custom Activity .................................................................................................................................................. 83 Navigation.......................................................................................................................................................... 83
VIEW SPENT TIME........................................................................................................................................................ 84 PEOPLE MANAGEMENT....................................................................................................................................... 84
ALLOCATIONS.............................................................................................................................................................. 84 Who is overloaded?............................................................................................................................................ 84 Who is available for an upcoming project? ........................................................................................................ 85 Who can be re-‐allocated to another project? .................................................................................................... 85 What assignments does each person have? ...................................................................................................... 85 Change Allocation .............................................................................................................................................. 86
LOAD REPORT ............................................................................................................................................................. 86 HELP DESK MODULE............................................................................................................................................ 88
HELP DESK SECTIONS.................................................................................................................................................... 89 REQUESTERS MANAGEMENT.......................................................................................................................................... 90 COMPANIES MANAGEMENT........................................................................................................................................... 90 REQUESTS MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................................................................. 90
Add Request Manually ....................................................................................................................................... 91 Add Request from Email ..................................................................................................................................... 91 Requests list ....................................................................................................................................................... 92
ISSUES QUEUE............................................................................................................................................................. 92 CREATE BUGS, FEATURES AND USER STORIES FROM REQUEST .............................................................................................. 93 TRACK REQUEST-‐TO-‐REQUIREMENT RELATIONS ................................................................................................................. 93 MERGE REQUESTS ....................................................................................................................................................... 94 HOW TO USE HELP DESK FOR GENERAL SUPPORT .............................................................................................................. 94 AUTO-‐REPLY............................................................................................................................................................... 95 AUTOMATICALLY BIND INCOMING EMAILS/REQUESTS TO THE PROJECT .................................................................................. 96 SOLUTIONS ................................................................................................................................................................. 96 HELP DESK PORTAL ...................................................................................................................................................... 97
Help Desk Portal Setup and Usage ..................................................................................................................... 97 Configuration ..................................................................................................................................................... 97
EMAIL INTEGRATION........................................................................................................................................... 98 PROJECT INBOX ........................................................................................................................................................... 98
Configuration ..................................................................................................................................................... 98 Usage ................................................................................................................................................................. 99
PERSONAL INBOX ......................................................................................................................................................... 99 BIND EMAILS TO ENTITIES............................................................................................................................................ 100
Bind Email to Entity Action ............................................................................................................................... 100
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Emails in Entity View ........................................................................................................................................ 100 SUPPORT TICKETS ...................................................................................................................................................... 101
Enable Email Notifications ............................................................................................................................... 102 Enable Inbound Email Integration.................................................................................................................... 102
REPORTS ........................................................................................................................................................... 102 CUSTOM REPORTS ..................................................................................................................................................... 103
Inner Lists / Inner Reports ................................................................................................................................ 105 Inline Edit in Custom Reports ........................................................................................................................... 106 Custom Report Actions ..................................................................................................................................... 107
PREDEFINED REPORTS................................................................................................................................................. 107 PLANNING REPORTS ................................................................................................................................................... 109
Release Burn Down Chart................................................................................................................................. 109 Iteration Burn Down Chart ............................................................................................................................... 111 User Stories Count by States Burn Down.......................................................................................................... 112
QUALITY ASSURANCE REPORTS..................................................................................................................................... 112 Bugs Distribution by Severity............................................................................................................................ 112 Bugs Dynamic................................................................................................................................................... 113 Bugs Progress ................................................................................................................................................... 113 Bugs Count by States Burn Down ..................................................................................................................... 114
TEST CASES RUNS REPORTS ......................................................................................................................................... 115 Test Cases Runs by Release/Iteration/Build ..................................................................................................... 115 Test Cases by User Story................................................................................................................................... 116
TIME TRACKING REPORTS ............................................................................................................................................ 116 Time Spent Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 116
PRINTABLE REPORTS................................................................................................................................................... 117 SOURCE CONTROL INTEGRATION ...................................................................................................................... 118 TAGS................................................................................................................................................................. 118
TAG ENTITIES ............................................................................................................................................................ 118 SEARCH BY TAG ......................................................................................................................................................... 119 TAGS IN REPORT ENGINE ............................................................................................................................................. 119 MANAGE TAGS.......................................................................................................................................................... 120
Add Tags........................................................................................................................................................... 120 Delete Tags....................................................................................................................................................... 120 Rename Tags.................................................................................................................................................... 120
MANAGE BUNDLES .................................................................................................................................................... 121 Add Bundle ....................................................................................................................................................... 121 Add/Remove Tags ............................................................................................................................................ 122
IMPORT/EXPORT .............................................................................................................................................. 122 IMPORT FROM CSV.................................................................................................................................................... 122 EXPORT INTO CSV...................................................................................................................................................... 124
APPENDIX A. RESOURCES.................................................................................................................................. 125 LINKS....................................................................................................................................................................... 125 BOOKS..................................................................................................................................................................... 125
TargetProcess is a Web-‐based project management tool that powers agile software development processes, focusing on Project Planning, Project Tracking and Bug Tracking practices. TargetProcess supports Extreme Programming and other modern iterative methodologies.
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Introduction This section describes main ideas behind TargetProcess software. It should help you to understand TargetProcess better.
Project Plan Structure Each project may consist of several entity types depending on Project size and requirements. The overall structure is shown in the diagram below:
Program: Generally this is a large Project. For better manageability, a large Project may be divided into several smaller projects (Project 1 and Project 2 in the illustration above). In most cases a Program is not required, but if you have Projects with several teams, a Program will help organize the work and track progress better. Project: A Project is simply work encompassing one or more features that must be created or modified. Feature (or Epic): A Feature is a high level requirement. Examples are “Advanced Search”, “CSV Import/Export”, or “Leads Management”. In most cases, Features are required for large and medium Projects. Each Feature contains several User Stories. User Story: A User Story is a unit of work that can be used as requirements and as a planning item. For smaller Projects, Features are overhead, so User Stories take all the responsibility.
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Typical examples of User Stories are “Search for Contacts”, “Filterable List of Contacts”, or “Custom Drop Down Fields”. Task: A Task is the smallest planning unit that describes a small piece of functionality. Examples: “Add User UI Creation”, “Add User Controller Implementation”, “Add User Business Logic Implementation”. For large Projects, it is better to use the complete hierarchy. Program -‐> Project -‐> Feature -‐> User Story -‐> Task However, for small Projects, a simplified hierarchy may be sufficient: Project -‐> User Story -‐> Task Hierarchy example: Program: NewWave CRM Project: NewWave CRM Core Feature: Basic Contacts Management User Story: Quick Add Contact Task: UI Design Task: Implement Add Contact Logic User Story: Contacts List Task: Filters Task: List Sorting Task: Contact List Page and Base Logic Task: UI Design User Story: Delete/Undelete Contact Feature: Users Management Feature: Permissions Project: Outlook Sync Feature: Import/Export Contacts to Outlook User Story: Export Contacts Task: Duplicate Checking Development Task: Export Rules Implementation Task: Export UI Implementation User Story: Import Contacts Feature: Import Scheduled Tasks from Outlook Feature: Read Emails Online Feature, User Story, and Task are planning items that allow creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Let’s see how to create a Project plan.
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Iterative Development Support TargetProcess supports iterative development. The iterative project planning approach is described in many sources. We recommend “Planning Extreme Programming” by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler, if you are new to the concept. Other sources are in Appendix A. Basically, each Project can have several Releases and each Release can have several Iterations. (See the diagram below.) All Iterations should be of equal duration. In this example, we use 2 weeks.
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You may assign Features to Releases, thus creating a high level plan (Road Map). Also you may assign User Stories to Iterations, thus creating a low level plan (Iterations Plan). One Feature can spread over several Iterations. However, you should implement the Feature in the Release, or else split a large Feature into two or more smaller Features.
The entire planning process can be described in several steps:
1. Add Requirements a. Add Features b. Add User Stories for Features
2. Create Project Schedule a. Add Releases and Iterations (TargetProcess can generate Iterations for you during
Release creation) 3. Assign planning items
a. Assign Features to Releases b. Assign User Stories to next Iteration
4. Add details to the plan a. Add Tasks for User Stories
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b. Assign team members to Tasks As a result you will have high level Project plan and a plan for the initial Iteration. You may also plan future Iterations, but this is not required. Such plans will likely be changed after the first Iteration has been completed.
Getting Started When you login into TargetProcess first time, you will be redirected to Getting Started section. This section contains basic help on TargetProcess, typical flows and sample project generation.
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Flows Click Show Help link on the left to enable Help Panel. Help panel contains flows and actions.
You may navigate flows by clicking steps and execute the action. TargetProcess guides you through the flow and helps to understand panning and tracking process, quality management, requirements management, etc.
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User Interface: General Principles The User Interface in TargetProcess consists of several parts.
1. Project selector allows you to select projects or programs. 2. Main customizable navigation. 3. Search user stories, tasks and other entities by keyword or tag. Jump to exact entity by
ID. 4. Main area contains lists, edit forms and all other content.
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Navigation You may customize main menu in TargetProcess. Click More -‐> Customize Menu. Use drag and drop to create personalized navigation. Every user of TargetProcess can personalize navigation for himself.
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Lists All lists in TargetProcess are unified and have several common parts.
Context actions Lists item-‐related actions. For example, if you are in the User Stories list, the following actions available: Add Task, Add Time, Add Bug and Add Test Case. Collapsing Click / to expand/collapse the list. For example, User Stories list contains Tasks. Inline Editing Inline editing is available in User Stories, Bugs, Requests and Features lists. To enable inline editing just double click table row. Change required values and push Enter to save change. You may cancel editing by pushing Escape key. Next/Prev Navigation You may navigate entities in list one by one. Filter entities in list and click any entity to see view page. Right near the entity title there will be Prev/Next links. Click Next link to see next entity in the list.
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Batch actions (delete, copy, update) Select the required items and click the More Actions link in list header.
Filters Click the Filter link in the table header to see the filter panel.
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Customizable columns and inner lists To turn off unnecessary columns, click Customize, uncheck columns, and click Save Settings.
Productivity Tips
Easy Linkage You may quickly reference entities like bugs, user stories, features, etc. when creating comment or description. For example, you are adding a comment to user story and want to add a link to bug with id = 85. You may just type id:85 in comment field and TargetProcess will automatically render this as a link to required bug.
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Jump to Entity You may quickly jump to entity view. Just type entity ID in search field and push Enter.
General Actions
Integrated Windows Authentication TargetProcess supports Integrated Windows Authentication. Two actions are required to enable it:
• Enable the Integrated Windows Authentication for TargetProcess virtual folder (Internet Information Services Manager -‐> right click on TargetProcess virtual folder -‐> Properties -‐> Directory Security -‐> Authentication and access control). IMPORTANT: Disable anonymous access, otherwise integration will not work.
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• Specify the Active Directory User Logon Name for users in TargetProcess. (Example: If you setup the Windows domain CompanyUsers and user login ted, then you should specify the Active Directory User Logon Name as CompanyUsers\ted)
Then when a user accesses TargetProcess, he will be automatically authenticated and redirected directly to the Dashboard screen.
Login After TargetProcess system installation, you can login using the following access parameters: Page: http://<targetprocess domain>/default.aspx Login: admin Password: admin Important: It is recommended that you change the login and password after the first login! It can be done in People area.
Search Search has 3 modes:
• Project search: In effect when inside a Project. Shows results from the current Project. • Jump: Entering an entity ID redirects to the entity view page (for example, type 123 in
the search box and click Search button to jump to entity with 123 id). • Search by Tag: Type tag:[tagName] to find entities tagged tagName. For example, type
tag:"Visual Studio" to find all entities tagged “Visual Studio”.
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You may search in entities like user stories, requests, bugs as well as in comments. Following a search, you may filter the results by entity type (for example, see only Bugs or User Stories in results).
Customizable Dashboard You may customize the Dashboard. On a dashboard page, click the Customize dashboard link at the top to enter customization mode.
When you are done, click the Finish customizing link at the top right corner.
ToDo List TargetProcess provides an integrated ToDo list for all assignments, including User Stories, Tasks, and Bugs. You may do the following actions in ToDo list:
• Sort assignments by similar columns like Name, Rank, etc • Filter assignments by current release or iteration, by state, by custom field value • Show/Hide different columns to customize ToDo list for your needs • Change states of assignments • Add time for assignments
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Convert Entities / Change Entity Type Sometimes is required to convert bug to user story or feature to user story. You may do the following conversions in TargetProcess: Feature Story Task Bug Feature to Yes Story to Yes Yes Yes Task to Yes Bug to Yes Yes To do the conversion, navigate to entity view and find Convert link in the Actions section. Click Convert link and new popup appears:
Select required target entity and push Convert button. Current entity will be deleted and new with selected type will be created.
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Administration
User & Role Management
Add Users Project teams can be composed of system users. To add a user, login to the system and click the People link on the menu. Then click Add -‐> Person.
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Administrator
User has unlimited access to all projects.
Active
User is able to login into the system. It is possible to reuse licenses by deactivating users.
Observer
User has read-‐only access to all projects, but full access to projects that he belongs to as a team member.
Skills and Skills Filtering You may use tags to add skills for people and have automatic filtering during people assignments to tasks, stories and bugs.
1. For example, you may create a developer with Java skill. 2. Navigate to project -‐> Project Admin -‐> Tags and add Skills_Filter bundle. NOTE: it is
absolutely required to create bundle with exactly the same name 3. Add tags like Java, DBA, PHP into Skills_Filter bundle 4. Create user story with Java tag 5. Navigate to user stories list and try to assign a person. 6. Available list will contain only people with Java skill.
Roles & Permissions TargetProcess has role-‐based permissions on add/edit/delete actions. For example, you may prohibit developers from deleting anything in the system. Click the Roles to see the list of roles.
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Note that there are no restrictions on view actions inside a Project. For example, if a developer belongs to the Project A team, she can view all the information inside Project A (bugs, reports, team, etc.). But if she does not belong to Project B, she will not see any information from Project B. Available permissions:
1. Restrict user access to Projects (administrator has full access, while other roles do not). Sometimes you do not want to disclose Project information to a user. For example, you want to add your customer to a Project team, but the customer should not have access to other Projects.
2. Restrict editing and deleting of entities for each role.
Audit History TargetProcess stores all information about changed entities (additions, updates and deletions), so you can see who made the change. To see the complete audit history, click the Audit History link. You may filter history records by User, date range and entity type.
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You can see the change history for a specific entity as well on the entity view page. For example, to see changes to a User Story, navigate to the User Stories list and click a User Story name. Then click the History tab.
Custom Priority and Severity Values You may customize the values of Priority for Feature, User Story, and Bug as well as Bug Severity. Click Priority link in the menu to see a list of Priorities for all entities. You may delete, edit, or add new Priority. Importance is a numeric representation of Priority. If two entities are of equal Priority, the top priority will be the one with the smallest (numerically) Importance. For example, if you have a Must Have priority with Importance = 0 and another Must Have priority with Importance = 1, then the Must Have priority with the zero Importance receives top priority.
Email Notifications TargetProcess can send email notifications when an entity is added or assigned. For example, when a User Story is assigned, TargetProcess can send notifications to:
• Any role in the project team (Developer, Project Manager or other) • The entire project team • An assigned user • The User Story owner
To enable email notifications, click Settings in menu. Check the Enable Email Notifications box, specify SMTP server, port and access parameters if required.
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Then navigate to Workflow and select the required entity (for example, User Story) and click the Assign tab.
Disable HTTP Access You may disable HTTP access and allow TargetProcess users to connect via HTTPS only. Navigate to Settings and mark Disable HTTP access checkbox:
Plugins Starting from v.2.8 TargetProcess provides plugins architecture. You may create custom plugins using C# API and add them into TargetProcess plugins folder. There is a separate guide that describes plugins architecture and provides information about custom plugins implementations.
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To see installed plugins, navigate to Admin -‐> Plugins section. All plugins divided into categories and each plugin may have many profiles. Depending on plugin nature, you may have different profiles for different projects for example or based on some other criteria.
If plugin supports Synchronizable interface, you may check connection of the plugin or reset synchronization date. If you click Reset Sync Date button, synchronization will be scheduled within specified time frame (setting in plugin profile). This may be useful when you tune plugin settings and want to run synchronization again.
Add New Profile To create new plugin profile, click Add Profile link. Profiles for each plugin are different; it is a responsibility of plugin developer to create correct plugin setting.
By default TargetProcess has only one plugin installed Bugzilla Integration. Check correspondent section of this user guide see how to configure and use Bugzilla Integration plugin.
See Profile Log It is a responsibility of Plugin developer to log all plugin activities. You may see them in Log section. Log contains all sync session with final result (success of failed) and additional information. You may click on record date to see comprehensive details of the sync session results.
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Projects & Processes In real life, each Project may have its own unique process. No Project management application can support all possible processes, but TargetProcess’ goal is to provide great flexibility. The Processes concept makes this possible. Currently a Process consists of Practices and each practice can be customized. Also it is possible to customize Terms, Workflows and Custom Fields for each Process. Supported practices/customizations:
• Planning o User Story effort is a sum of Tasks effort o Ideal Hours or Points effort units
• Iterative Development • Bug Tracking • Time Tracking
o Close Assignable if time remaining is zero o Make time description field visible o Mark time description field required
• Requirements Management • Test Case Management • Source Control • Help Desk
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Process Setup
1. Add process. 2. Set effort units for user stories and features (points or hours). 3. Customize time tracking practice. 4. Customize workflow (for example, add In Progress state for
Tasks). 5. Customize terms (for example, rename Bug to Defect). 6. Set custom fields for stories, tasks, features and other entities.
TargetProcess supports flexible settings for each Project via the Process concept. Each Process consists of Practices like Planning, Time Tracking, Bug Tracking, etc. It is possible to enable/disable Practices and customize some Practices. For example, if you are starting a very small project and only want to use the Planning module without Bugs, Test Cases and other items, click the Processes link. Then click Add.
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Fill in all required fields, uncheck boxes as needed, and save the new Process. Then you can create the Project and select only that Process for it. Since there will be no Time Tracking, Bug Tracking, and Requirements areas in the newly-‐created project, the interface will be simpler.
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Custom Terms In TargetProcess you may customize the terminology used in each Process. For example, you may create terminology for Scrum or any other process you have. The following terms may be changed:
• Release • Iteration • User Story • Feature • Bug • Impediment • Build • Solution
Click Processes. Then click edit for the Process you want to change and click Terms tab. Fill in any required terms, and save the changes. All Projects that use this Process will now use your custom terms. For example, if you replace Iteration with Sprint, you will not see the word Iteration inside the project, but only the word Sprint.
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Ideal Hours and Abstract Points Effort Units You may customize Practices for each Project. For example, you can set the effort units (Points or Ideal Hours), and you can choose to close/not close a User Story if there is zero time remaining. To customize a Practice, navigate to the Processes list and click the Edit for a Process. Then click the Customize link for a Practice. The Planning practice customization page is shown below.
Select the required values and save your changes. For example, you may use Points effort units for one Project and Ideal Hours for another Project. Your choice depends on team experience and personal preferences.
Time Tracking Practice Customization You may customize Time Tracking practice with the following settings:
• Close Task, User Story, or Bug if time remaining is zero • Make time description field visible/hidden • Mark time description field required/optional
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Workflow Customization for User Stories, Bugs and Other Entities You can create a custom Workflow for each entity and for each process. This affects all projects based on the process, so it is recommended that you create the Workflow before starting a Project. Click Processes -‐> Edit -‐> Workflows and select an entity type to manage the Workflow. For example, let’s change a Workflow for a User Story. The initial Workflow is shown in the diagram below:
This User Story has two states: Open and Done. We are going to add an Accepted state that will follow the Done state. Click the Add New State link.
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As you can see, each Entity State (except the final state) should have a Role. Suppose we have three states for a User Story: Open, Done, and Accepted; and we have two Roles: Developer and Product Owner. When a User Story is in the Open state, it may be assigned to Developer. And when the User Story is in the Done state, it should be assigned to a Product Owner. First it is required to add Product Owner role in Admin -‐> Roles list. Now let’s bind Product Owner role to Done state. Click the Edit link for the Done state, and select the Product Owner role. Select Accepted as the next state and click Save. We have defined the Workflow as shown in the diagram below:
You may also add rules for each state. Currently, only the Assign to and Notify by email rules are available. If you want to assign it to the Project Manager for final verification when the User Story is Done, you would enable the Assign to rule for the Done state (by checking the box), check the Project Manager box, and click the Save Workflow button. If the Project team has a member with the Project Manager role, he will be assigned to all completed User Stories and will see them in his ToDo list.
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Custom Fields Custom fields allow gathering and storing specific information about an entity. Custom fields are available for all entities in TargetProcess (Project, User Story, Bug, Time, etc.) You can create Custom Fields for each entity and for each process. This affects all projects based on the process, so it is recommended that you create custom fields before starting a Project.
Add Custom Field Navigate to Click Admin -‐> Processes -‐> Edit -‐> Custom Fields and click the Add link.
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Each custom field relates to a specific entity (User Story, Bug, Project, etc.) Select the desired entity, specify a label that will be visible in the add/edit entity form, select the type of custom field (Text, Checkbox, Drop Down, Date, Rich Text or URL) and save it. It is possible to add the same custom field for several assignable entity types (Bug, User Story, Task, Feature, Request, Test Run). When you select any of the assignable entity type, checkbox list with all the other entity types appears. Just select required entity types. Entity type custom fields You may create special type of custom fields of TargetProcess entity. Thus you can link entities together. For example, you may link Test Case to Bug. To create custom field, navigate to Admin -‐> Process -‐> Custom Fields -‐> Add. Select TargetProcess Entity custom field type and specify other parameters as required.
Custom Fields Functionality You will see custom fields on these pages:
1. Add/Edit entity 2. View entity 3. Entities list
You may sort and filter by custom fields in lists. Check the “Enabled for filter” box during custom field creation, if you want to filter data by this custom field in lists.
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Programs & Projects Usually a Program is just a large Project. For better manageability, a large Project may be divided into several smaller Projects. In most cases Programs are not required, but if you have Projects with several teams, Programs will help to organize the work and track progress better.
Add Program Click the Add -‐> Program link on the left to see the Program addition form. Fill in any required fields and save the Program.
Add Project to Program Click the Add -‐> Project link on the left.
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Select a Program from the drop down list, fill in other fields as needed, and save the Project.
Programs List Click the Programs link to see the Programs list.
Manage Teams inside Entire Program You can manage all Project teams inside a single Program. Navigate to Program and click Team.
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You may reassign people from one Project to another, change allocation percentages and dates, and change roles.
Prioritize Projects You may prioritize projects using drag and drop right in projects list. Drop required project row and move it higher or lower in the list. Projects will change rank after re-‐prioritization. Projects with higher rank have higher priority. So far this information is used in overall ToDo list. Assignments from projects with higher priority will be on top of ToDo list (if the list sorted by Rank).
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Project Planning: Quick Start Basically, the agile planning process consists of the following steps:
1. Add Project. 2. Add TargetProcess users. 3. Create project team (assign several people to the project) 4. Create User Stories. Estimate each User Story using ideal days or
points. Two items are important: a. Effort units will remain the same during the whole Project. b. An Iteration’s Velocity is measured in the same effort units.
5. Create a Release with Start and End dates and split the Release into several Iterations of equal length. (It is recommended to make each Iteration from 2 weeks to 1 month in length, depending on your environment and Project size.)
6. Assign several the most valuable or risky User Stories to the first Iteration. Assign people to the tasks and stories.
Create Project Team A Project team may be created from all available system users. So if you want to add a new team member who does not have a system account, you first create a new account, as described in the Add User section. To create a Project team, choose the Project from projects list, click the Team link.
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Use the Add To Team and Remove From Team buttons to build a team. You may select several users at a time by holding the Ctrl key. You may set roles, possible weekly effort, and allocation parameters for each team member. Note that allocation percentage and allocation end date are important parameters, they influence overall people allocation report.
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Features (Themes/Epics) High-‐level requirements are represented by the Features concept in TargetProcess. A Feature is larger than a User Story, and one feature may contain several User Stories. In some sources Features are called Themes or Epics. Features are similar in behavior to User Stories but with these exceptions:
1. Features can only be assigned to Releases, not to Iterations. 2. Features can spread over several Releases.
User Stories and Tasks Choose a Project and click the Add -‐> User Story link on the left.
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There is only one mandatory field: Name. You may assign a User Story to two developers (simple pair programming support). Alternatively, you may assign it only to a Release, thus creating a Release Back Log. Business Value indicates User Story importance from the customer’s point of view. The most valuable User Stories should be implemented as early as possible. You may assign a User Story to Iteration using the Release/Iteration drop-‐down (by default, a new User Story is put into the Back Log.) You will often add several User Stories in a row. Use the Save & Add New button to facilitate this process. The most complex thing about a User Story is effort. In TargetProcess, effort is measured in one of two possible units: Ideal Hours or Points. You may select effort units for your Project by customizing the Project’s process (see the Process Setup section). There are two possible cases for User Story effort calculation:
1. A User Story (US) can be considered a Task with its own effort included in the total User Story effort. So US Total Effort = Sum(Tasks Developer Effort) + US Developer Effort
2. A User story is just a container and its effort is a sum of all related Tasks’ effort.
US Total Effort = Sum(Tasks Developer Effort)
Quickly Add Tasks to User Story You may quickly create tasks when adding or editing user story. There is Tasks section in the bottom of the form. You may type task name, set task effort and click Add link. All these tasks will be created after Save action.
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Add Release Chose a Project, then click Add -‐> Release
TargetProcess will automatically generate Iterations for the new Release. You must set Start Date, Finish Date and Iteration duration in days. Then save the Release. The system will create required Iterations with default names (like Iteration #1.1).
Prioritize User Stories, Features and Bugs A common task for a Project Manager/Product Owner is prioritizing User Stories and Bugs. For example, you may have 5 “Must Have” User Stories and 10 “Fix ASAP” Bugs. It may appear that 3 of the Bugs are most important in the current Iteration, then the 5 User Stories should be implemented, and then the other Bugs should be fixed if possible. The Prioritize tab in the Planning area supports this scenario.
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You may reorder User Stories, Bugs and Features using drag and drop. Prioritization changes Rank of User Story or Bug. You may prioritize entities in Backlog or select Release or Iteration in the filter to prioritize entities assigned to specific Release or Iteration.
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Release Planning TargetProcess supports high-‐level Release planning by assigning Features, User Stories and Bugs to Releases.
1. Add releases. 2. Add features and user stories. 3. Prioritize user stories. 4. Navigate to Release Plan and assign features
and user stories to the releases. Click the Release Plan link.
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• Left area contains project backlog. It contains Features, User Stories and Bugs. You may o Filter backlog to see only features, for example; o Sort backlog by name, priority and effort; o Right click on item to see additional details.
• Right area contains releases timeline with current and future releases. You may expand releases to see all assigned items.
• There is a timeline switcher on the top. You may select between Weeks scale and Months scale.
To assign a Feature, User Story or Bug you may drag and drop it on the Release area (on the right). You may reassign item from one release to another. Expand release details, drag the item and drop it into required release box. Each Feature may contain several User Stories, and User Stories can be assigned to different Releases. For example, you can release Feature A in Release #2, but still have some User Stories implemented in Release #1. In this case, the Feature will have a different effort in each Release. If you move a Feature to another Release, all open and not started User Stories will move with this Feature, while all closed and in progress User Stories stay in the previous Release. You may right click on user stories and features to see details like Description, State and Assigned people.
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Iterations Planning 1. Add releases and iterations. 2. Add features and user stories. 3. Plan iterations using Iteration Plan section. 4. Break user stories to small tasks. 5. Assign tasks to people from the project team.
First, let’s examine Iteration Velocity concept.
Velocity The Iteration Velocity is the sum of all implemented User Stories’ effort during the Iteration. For example, during the Iteration #1, assume you have implemented the following User Stories
User Story Effort Users Authentication 4 points Users’ contact information management 3 points Forms validation 2 points Internal mailing engine 7 points The Velocity of the first Iteration will be:
Velocity = 4+3+2+7 = 16 points Then you set the Velocity of the next Iteration based on the average Velocity of all previous Iterations. In our case, the predicted Velocity of Iteration #2 will be exactly 16 points.
Using this iterative approach, you get significant advantages:
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• You can predict with very good accuracy how much effort the project team will accomplish during the next Iteration, and you can make fair prediction about the true Release date.
• The most valuable Features and Requirements will be implemented first. This is good for the customer and for the Project as well.
• You can easily change the plan based on the customer’s real needs. System requirements will change, and change requests are handled much more efficiently.
Set Iteration Velocity Choose Project, click the Iterations link to see the Iterations list. Find the required Iteration and click Edit. Fill in the Velocity field and save the Iteration.
Plan Iterations Let’s see how TargetProcess can help you in agile project planning. It is possible to assign a User Story to Iteration while adding the User Story, but the more common practice is to plan Iterations using the Iteration Plan page. An Iteration Plan consists of three lists, which contain User Stories and Bugs. You may select any Iteration in any list and have quite a flexible playground for Iteration planning. Planning itself is easy, just drag the User Story or Bug you want to assign and drop it on the required Iteration. (Available drop zones will be highlighted.) In the diagram below, we assign a Bug to Iteration #1.2.
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Also you are prioritizing User Stories and Bugs during Iteration planning, thus having top priority items first in developers’ ToDo lists. This almost completely eliminates questions like “What should I work on first?” Sometimes you don’t want to change priorities during iteration planning. For example, Product Owner already set required priorities and you should not change them. In this case you may disable prioritization. Click Customize link and unmark the checkbox shown on the picture below
Also you may filter User Stories and Bugs in any list (backlog and iteration). Click on Filter link, select required filters and push Filter button.
Assign Team Members You can assign User Stories, Tasks and Bugs to team members. Click the Assign Team Members tab.
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The list on the left contains unassigned Bugs, Tasks and User Stories. The list on the right contains all team members. You can assign a User Story or Bug by dragging and dropping it on a developer. Bug will immediately appear in corresponding ToDo lists. For example, you can assign the “Javascript error in FireFox” Bug to Jerry Mouse. When Jerry logs in, he will see this Bug in his ToDo list.
Add Tasks Quite often it is necessary to split a User Story into several Tasks, especially if the User Story is quite large and should be implemented by two or more people. For example, a “Simple Shopping Cart” User Story may have several Tasks:
• Create GUI design of shopping cart • Implement business classes (ShoppingCart, Order) • Create database tables
To add Tasks for a particular User Story, navigate to the User Stories list. Find the required User Story and select Task from the Add menu. You must specify a Task Name; other fields are optional.
Split User Story Sometimes you may need to split a large User Story into two smaller User Stories. Navigate to a specific User Story view page and click the Split link in the Actions list to see the Split area.
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TargetProcess immediately creates a new User Story and you may:
• Move several Tasks to the new User Story, • Cut and Paste part of the description from the original to the new User Story, and • Assign the new User Story to a specific Iteration or Release. • Set user story effort. • Assign user story to team member.
Click Save & Exit to apply the changes or Undo to delete the new User Story.
Finish Iteration When the Iteration end date has passed, you may still have open User Stories. Usually you will want to move all open User Stories to the next Iteration. Navigate to Iterations and find the Finish link.
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You will see two options available:
1. Split “in progress” User Stories that have Tasks and move not started User Stories to the next Iteration.
2. Move all open User Stories to the next Iteration. Click one of the two buttons as needed. NOTE: It is not possible to Undo the “Finish Iteration” action.
Rank Concept Prioritizing items, you assign them specific Rank that is visible in User Stories List, Bug List and ToDo. Rank is an order of items in Prioritize list. Rank has some rules:
• It exists only for open User Stories and Bugs • Higher rank means higher importance • All Tasks within User Story inherit User Story’s rank. For example, if you have User Story
with rank 34, all tasks in this User Story will have rank 34
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Program Level Release Planning Program Level Release Planning allows to create releases and iterations for all projects inside program and to plan program and projects release on the one screen.
Add Program Release, Generate Project Releases and Iterations There are two concepts of Release in TargetProcess:
• Program Release – release of whole program. It combines several projects releases and set one final release date that is a good reference point for all projects.
• Project Release – release of a single project.
To add Program Release go to specific program, click Add -‐> Release link. You will see a form for release addition.
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It is required to specify release name, start and end dates. Also you may generate releases in all projects inside program as well as iterations. All generated iterations will have equal duration.
Plan and Track Releases Click Release Plan link to navigate to Program Level Release Plan. This screen consists of two sections: Backlog on the left and Release plan diagram on the right.
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1. Program backlog contains all user stories and features from all projects inside current program. You may filter backlog items by project and sort them by name, priority and effort.
2. Release plan shows all current and future releases for all projects. Current releases marked blue color.
3. Current release for project contains all user stories and features assigned. Each release has total assigned effort and progress information as well as forecasted release date. If forecasted date exceeds original release date you will see dashed blue border on the right. Also you may use +/-‐ buttons to expand/collapse assigned items.
4. Program release deadline and forecasted program release dates. 5. Each item (user story or feature) has effort and name. Color of the item represents
priority (green items have top priority while white items have lower priority). Done items marked gray color.
Use drag and drop to assign features and user stories to release. The following assignments can be used:
• Assign user stories and features from backlog to release (to any project). If you assign user story from Project A backlog to Project B release it will be moved to Project B
• Assign user stories and features from release to release in the same project • Assign user stories and features from release to release in different projects (in this case
user story will be moved from one project to another)
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You may edit release start and end dates. Right click release bar and context menu will appear. Modify required values and click Save link.
Progress Tracking The Reports tab contains all available reports and charts. The Progress section in the Tracking area is the main feature for daily Iteration tracking.
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The Task Board powers daily Tasks management activity. Also there are several dashboard components for progress tracking:
• Progress Summary • Time Spent Summary
And there is a Yesterday tab in the Dashboards area that shows what happened yesterday.
Task Board The Task Board is an area that powers effective Tasks management. When all User Stories are set for Iteration, this is the best place to manage Tasks. Click Task Board.
The Task Board provides the following actions:
• Change Task state (from open to done, for example) • Assign/Re-‐assign people to Tasks and User Stories • Update remaining time for Tasks • Show Tasks for a specific person • See User Story Impediments
You can customize the Task Board view. You can setup a very simple layout with a minimum of detail or a complex one with many details. Click the Customize link and uncheck boxes as desired to hide specific information.
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Daily Progress (Actual Remaining Time) The only way to get actual information about User Story/Task completeness is to ask the developer. TargetProcess does exactly that. When a developer adds a time record, she should enter a remaining time value as well. Using this information, actual work remaining can be calculated. The table below shows daily remaining time for each User Story and Task for the current Iteration. If remaining time increased in compared to the previous day, it will be highlighted in red. If remaining time decreased, it will be highlighted in green.
Thus you see daily team progress and can identify problematic Tasks and User Stories. Also you can see how much time has been spent on each Task. You can move your mouse over a time remaining cell to see a tool tip as shown below.
Dashboard Components The Progress Summary component answers the most important question in software development: “When will the release be completed?” This knowledge comes from the historical data analysis and the remaining work calculation. TargetProcess forecasts the Release finish date and shows the current Release and Iteration progress.
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Yesterday Progress The usual questions every Project Manager asks herself in the morning are these:
• What did we accomplish yesterday? • Are there any new requirements from the customer? • How did our team members spend their time yesterday, and were there any problems?
The answers are on the Yesterday Dashboard screen.
Kanban Starting from v.2.15, TargetProcess supports Kanban process. There are many good introduction articles about Kanban, you may check them at http://www.targetprocess.com/blog/2009/05/lean-‐and-‐kanban-‐software-‐development.html
Kanban Process Setup First it is required to create a new process for Kanban. Navigate to Processes and add a process. Then it is required to change workflow for User Story (if you are going to use Bugs in your Kanban projects, it is required to modify workflow for Bug as well). Simplest setup may contain 4 states: Open, Planned, In Progress, Done.
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You need to add Planned state and In Progress state. Planned state shows that User Story is moved from Backlog and is ready for implementation. Make sure that you select Planned option below the state name.
In Progress state shows that User Story is in development now, so Developer is responsible for it.
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Then you need to set Kanban process for a project. Navigate to projects list, click Edit for the project and select Kanban process.
Kanban Board Kanban Board shows flow of User Stories and Bugs. Left panel is a project Backlog – it contains User Stories and Bugs in Initial state (Open or New for example).
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Central panel represents User Stories states as columns. To change User Story state, just drag required story and drop it into the required state column. Note that if you did not configure state transition in Workflow, it will be impossible to move Story into this state. For example, if there is no transition in Workflow from Planned to Done state, it will be disabled on Kanban Board as well.
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User Stories in columns are sorted by Priority. Color of the User Story represents priority. Green User Story has high priority, while light green User Story has low priority. Done area in the bottom of the Kanban Board shows 10 latest completed User Stories. You may click to links inside User Stories boxes to navigate to User Story view.
Backlog Backlog contains User Stories and Bugs in Open state. You may filter it by keyword and by tag. Also you may sort User Stories in backlog by Name, Priority and Effort.
Setting Limits One of the most important thing in Kanban is limiting work in progress (WIP). For example, there should be no more than 2 user stories In Progress, or 7 user stories in Planned state. Kanban Board in TargetProcess supports limits and highlights columns if limit is exceeded. To set limit for states, click Customize icon in the right top corner, then click Limits. Specify required limits and click Apply button.
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Setting Columns Order You may change columns Order. Click Customize icon in the right top corner, then click Order. User Drag and Drop to change columns order and click Apply button.
Complex Kanban Board with User Stories and Bugs, many states and limits may look like this:
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As you see, this Kanban Board represents quite complex workflow and limits on almost all states are already exceeded. It is a clear sign of serious troubles in development process.
Kanban Board in Program Kanban Board is available in Program area. In this case it shows all stories and bugs from all projects that related to the current program. In Backlog you have an additional filter by project. Also stories and bugs are sorted by Priority, not by exact Rank. The reason is that Rank is project-‐specific in TargetProcess and you may have two user stories from different projects with the same Rank.
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To see related project for a user story or a bug, move mouse cursor over the story/bug card and check tooltip.
Cumulative Flow Diagram A cumulative flow diagram (CFD) helps to track User Stories and Bugs by state. It helps to track average cycle time. Cycle time helps answer the question “if I asked you to start on feature x when will it go live?” Also it shows work in progress (WIP) and helps to find bottlenecks. Cumulative flow diagram in TargetProcess shows 3 states:
• ToDo – User Stories and Bugs that were added into the system, but not started so far. • In Progress – User Stories and Bugs that already started but not completed. • Completed – User Stories and Bugs that were completed.
You may specify duration for CFD and grouping (days, weeks, months). Also you may see total effort on Y axis or just count of User Stories and Bugs.
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Lead and Cycle Time Lead and Cycle time are two very important metrics in Kanban. Here is the picture that shows a difference between Lead and Cycle time.
Lead and Cycle time report is available in Project -‐> Reports area.
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Dependencies Management Dependencies inside a single project and single development team are easy to manage informally without any tool, thus there is no explicit dependencies management in TargetProcess. However, sometimes you have complex program with several projects and several development teams. Obviously, it is hard to avoid that all teams will work independently. In some cases a user story from project Alpha will depend on a user story from project Omega. How you may handle that in TargetProcess? Luckily, there is a powerful Custom Fields concept to server your needs. You may create “Depends On” custom field for user story and select a user story from project Omega to show the dependency explicitly.
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Add Dependencies You may set dependent story when adding or editing a user story. Click Find link in Depends On custom field and select required story. You may filter by Project and by story State if required. Also you may quickly find the story by ID or by Name.
View Dependencies You may create a custom report that will show user stories for several projects with dependent stories.
1. Navigate to Custom Reports and click New Report 2. Select User Story entity type 3. Select required columns for the report, Name, Depends On 4. Specify filters if required (for example, to see only Open stories) 5. Specify report name and Save it.
Resulting report will contain stories as well as Depends On stories.
Impediments Management An Impediment (or Block) is an obstacle that prevents User Story/Task/Bug completion. For example, you may have Impediments such as these:
• New server for performance testing will be purchased Jan-‐20, so we are unable to start performance testing till that date for now
• Teddy Bear left the company and complex User Story “Patterns recognition algorithm” can’t be implemented by any person on our team. This task needs highly specialized knowledge.
• Jerry doesn’t want to communicate at all with team. TargetProcess provides the functionality to manage Impediments in your Project:
• Add Impediments to User Stories, Bugs, and Tasks. • All User Stories, Tasks, and Bugs with Impediments are marked with a special symbol
so you can quickly see all related Impediments. • You may create public or private Impediments. Private Impediments will be visible to the
owner and responsible persons only. • There are several reports that show Impediment dynamics and distribution.
Add Impediment Click the Add -‐> Impediment link to see the form for Impediment addition.
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You may assign the Impediment to a person, mark it as private (in which case it will be visible to you and the assigned person only), and bind the Impediment to a User Story, Bug, or Task.
See Impediments There are several places in TargetProcess where you can view the Impediments:
1. Impediments list in the Tracking -‐> Impediments area 2. Impediments related to a particular assignable entity
An assignable entity with Impediments is marked with the icon. Click the Impediments icon, to see a popup window with an Impediments list. You may change the Impediment state in the list or navigate to Impediment details.
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Private/Public Impediments Sometimes you may need to create Impediments that should be hidden from the Project team. In general, that may be not a good practice, but in real life you likely will have problems with people, like “John can’t even complete tasks with average complexity. It seems he needs some training or pairing with an experienced developer”. Obviously, you don’t want to decrease John’s motivation by allowing him to see this comment. Such Impediments may be marked as private and thus visible only to the creator. You must check the Private box during Impediment creation. Moreover, it is possible to hide (temporarily) all private Impediments. This may be required while a co-‐worker is sitting near you and you show him assignments in TargetProcess. You may accidentally click the wrong link allowing him to see private Impediments. Navigate to Settings, uncheck the “Show private Impediments in lists?” box, and save your changes. Now private Impediments will be invisible even to you.
Reports TargetProcess provides two reports to track Impediments more effectively. The first report shows private/public Impediment distribution by priority.
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The graph above shows that there are two private Impediments with critical priority, which means that there are likely some problems with that team. Another graph shows the private/public Impediments dynamic by dates.
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The graph above shows that two Impediments have been added today. In general, this report is useful for broader period of time; that is, to display the problems dynamic for an entire Iteration or Release.
Bug Tracking Bug Tracking in TargetProcess differs from most existing Bug Tracking systems.
• Bug addition simplicity: You will find only the most important fields in the Bug addition form. Almost all Bug Tracking systems have 20 or more fields, but usually only 3-‐5 of them really used.
• User Story -‐> Bug relationships: You can track how many Bugs each User Story has. This helps to define the most difficult User Stories and plan the next Iteration accordingly.
• Integrated ToDo list for Bugs and other Project Tasks.
Bugs Workflow Basic Bug workflow will likely look like this:
1. Add Bug a. Add attachments b. Add comments
2. Assign Bug to developer 3. Change Bug status
a. Fix b. Verify and close
Add Bug Choose a Project and click the Add -‐> Bug link on the left.
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Only the Name field is required. Severity and Priority determine Bug importance. If it is a Blocking Bug with Priority Fix ASAP, it likely should be fixed in the current Iteration. You may bind a Bug to a User Story and assign it to an Iteration or Release. Also you may assign the persons who will fix and verify the Bug.
Test Case Management The Test Cases module closes the gap between Development and QA. The Test Cases and Bug Tracking modules provide comprehensive information about the actual state and quality of User Stories. Usually, QA uses MS Excel or MS Word to run manual test cases and bug tracking software to post bugs. This makes manual testing more complicated. A typical workflow:
1. QA opens test plan in Excel, reads test case 2. QA runs application that should be tested and verifies test case 3. QA switches to Excel and marks test case as failed, specifies build number and run date 4. QA switches to bug tracking tool and adds a bug 5. Finally, QA makes report in MS Word and sends it to Project/Product Manager
With TargetProcess, this workflow much simpler:
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1. QA opens test plan in TargetProcess, reads Test Case 2. QA runs application that should be tested and verifies Test Case 3. QA switches to TargetProcess, marks Test Case as failed, and adds a Bug
No reports are required, since all data is available online in real time. No additional software like Excel or a Bug Tracking tool is needed, since TargetProcess does all the work (except the testing itself).
As you can see, fewer tools and fewer steps will save time and keep QA focused on functional testing.
Test Cases Concept Overview Briefly, the Test Cases module should be used this way:
1. Add a Test Plan. 2. Add Test Cases and assign them to the Test Plan. 3. Create a Test Plan Run for a Build or Iteration. 4. Assign the Test Plan Run to QA. 5. Run Test Cases against a specific Build. 6. View Test Cases stats.
The diagram below shows the relationships among entities in the Test Cases module.
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Test Cases Library TargetProcess has a library of Test Cases. The Test Cases library contains general Test Cases that can be reused in different Projects. For example, login functionality is the same in many Projects, so you can create a Test Case for login once and put it into the library. Then you can copy your login Test Case into other Projects. You can filter Test Cases with tags. You should tag each Test Case thus creating natural Test Case categorization. Example workflow:
1. Add a Test Case called “Basic Login” and tag it with “login”. Check the “add to Test Cases library” box.
2. Click the QA link on the top menu. 3. Type “login” in the Tags filter on the left and click Filter. TargetProcess will show only
Test Cases that have the tag “login”. 4. Check the “Basic Login” Test Case. 5. Select the required Project from the drop down above the Test Cases list and click Copy.
Add Test Cases Click the Add -‐> Test Case link on the left menu to see the Test Case addition form. Each Test Case should contain Steps/Success information and relate to a User Story. In the Steps field, describe all steps that should be performed in the Test Case. In the Success field, describe expected results.
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Add Test Plan and Assign Test Cases Test Plan is an entity that groups Test Cases. For example, you may create a Test Plan for smoke testing and a Test Plan for testing several User Stories. Each Test Case may be included in different Test Plans. Click the Add -‐> Test Plan link on the left menu to see the Test Plan addition form. Type the Test Plan name and a brief description, set the expected effort that will be required to execute Test Plan and click the Save & Assign Test Cases button. TargetProcess adds the Test Plan and displays the page for Test Case assignment.
The left panel contains all unassigned Test Cases; the right panel contains Test Cases for the selected Test Plan. To add Test Cases to the Test Plan, check the boxes for the required Test Cases and click the -‐> button. To assign Test Cases later, click the QA -‐> Test Plans link, find the required Test Plans, the Actions link, and select the Assign Test Cases action.
Add Test Plan Run Usually you want to have historical data about Iteration/Build quality. For example, if Build 1.0.0 has 50 failed Test Cases and Build 1.0.5 has 15 failed Test Cases, it is clear that quality is improving over time. To support this concept, TargetProcess introduces the Test Plan Run entity. Simply speaking, you may run the same Test Plan over different Builds and have run results stored in TargetProcess. To add a Test Plan Run, click Test Runs -‐> Add.
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In the diagram above, we’ve created a run for Build 1.0.1 and assigned it to Teddy Bear. This Task will appear in Teddy’s ToDo list.
Run Test Cases To run Test Cases, navigate to the Test Runs list and click the Run link. Test Runner will appear.
Test Runner contains two areas: The current Test Case on the left and all Test Cases grouped by User Story on the right.
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You may mark the Test Case as Passed or Failed, add a Bug when the Test Case failed. When a Test Case has Passed, Test Runner loads the next Test Case. When all Test Cases have run, you will see the results and may rerun a specific Test Case.
Test Cases Prioritization It is possible to prioritize Test Cases using drag and drop in all lists. Test Case has Priority and Rank. Navigate to Test -‐> Test Cases list and sort Test Cases by Rank. Drag table row and drop it to required place thus changing Test Case rank.
Prioritization is available in the following places:
• Test Plans list – inner list of test cases • Test Plan view – tab with test cases • Test Plan Runner
Quality Stats There are several places where you can find quality stats for Release/Iteration/Build or a specific User Story.
1. User Story view page 2. Reports section in the QA area 3. Test Runs list
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Test Cases for User Story To see all Test Cases for a User Story, navigate to User Story view. (For example, enter a User Story ID into the search field, and TargetProcess will redirect you to the User Story view.) The Test Cases tab contains all Test Cases with their last run states.
Time Tracking Time Tracking may be useful in several cases:
• You want to have more precise progress information, like a Daily Progress report. • You want to compare estimated effort and actual effort. • You want to know how much time was spent for each User Story. • Your employees are paid by the hour, so you need to track time to calculate actual
payments.
Add Time You have two options when adding a time record: bind it to a User Story/Task/Bug or just to a Project. Sometimes there are general tasks that are not related to a User Story. In such a case, the time will be bound only to a Project. To add a time record, select a Project and click the Add -‐> Time link on the left menu:
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Choose an assignment, write a small description about your activity, select a date, and enter spent and remaining time. You can also add time for a User Story from other places: ToDo, User Stories list, User Story/Task view.
Using a Time Sheet You may use a Time Sheet to add time for a whole week. Click Time Sheet link in menu. Note that a Time Sheet contains items that are assigned to the current Iteration only. For example, if you have a Bug that is in the Back Log, the Bug will not appear in the Time Sheet. To add time for a specific day:
1. Click the cell for a Task for the required day. 2. A new window with Description, Spent, and Remaining fields will appear. 3. Fill the Description field with a description of the activity, specify spent time and
estimated remaining time, and click Enter. 4. Time will be added into the database immediately.
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To delete time:
1. Click the cell for a Task for the required day. 2. Click the Delete link.
Or navigate with the Tab key on your keyboard to the required cell and press the Delete key.
Custom Activity You may add custom activities to track time on. For example, Meetings, Email handling, and so on.
1. Click the Add Custom Activity link below all assignments. 2. Specify an activity name. 3. Set the estimated time and click Save
Navigation • Use the Prev and Next links to navigate by weeks. • Use the keyboard (up, down, left, right arrows) to navigate by assignments/days. • Use the Delete key to delete time entries.
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View Spent Time To view all time records for a Project, click the Tracking tab and the Times link. You can apply filters to Time Spent records. For example, you may display time spent by user during the last month. Also it is possible to view spent time for all projects. Click Time link at the top and the click Time List link.
People Management
Allocations TargetProcess provides information about overall people allocations and workload. Click People -‐> Allocations.
The allocations tab answers the following questions:
Who is overloaded? Overloaded persons with a current allocation > 100% are highlighted red. For example, in the diagram above, Jerry Mouse is overburdened by 50%, so his allocation should be changed.
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Who is available for an upcoming project? You can filter people to find who is available on a specific date for a specific role/position. For example, if a Project starts on 3/14/2007 and you want to find developers available for it, you may apply the filter shown below.
Who can be re-allocated to another project? Often the allocation percentage does not give enough information for decision making. For example, a person may be allocated 100% but in fact has just a few Tasks, and nobody knows what he is doing in his “spare” time. The allocations view provides detailed information about current assignments.
The diagram above clearly shows the situation. Both developers have 100% allocation. Jerry Mouse is a very busy developer. He has 5 User Stories and 2 Bugs assigned, and his total current assigned effort is 150 hours. So even the best case scenario shows that he will be busy next month and can’t be re-‐allocated. Jim Hook has only one User Story assigned, so it is possible to re-‐allocate him on another Project soon, if required.
What assignments does each person have? Even when one person has 3 User Stories and another person has only one, it may happen that the one User Story is much more complex and important. You may click User Stories, Bugs, and Tasks links to see exact assignments. This information may help to make the right decision in complex cases.
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Change Allocation You can change allocation percentages for Projects from this view. Expand a person and find the Allocation and End Date text boxes. Set the new allocation percentage and allocation end date and click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page. People may work full-‐time (usually 40 hours a week) or specific weekly hours. You can set how many working hours each person has.
IMPORTANT: The Project Manager may change the allocation percentage and allocation end date in the Team area of his Project. It is recommended to review allocations and provide correct information for the Project each week to have an accurate overall allocation report.
Load Report The Load Report shows the total assigned effort for each person. Click Load Report in People section. If you don’t use the Points effort unit, the report will show only the Hours effort. However, if you use Points, there may be two efforts: assigned points of User Stories and Bugs,
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and assigned hours of tasks. The report will show Hours and Points efforts separately, since there is no conversion between Hours and Points.
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Help Desk Module Help Desk module provides the complete feedback loop between customers and project development team.
The Help Desk module structure is shown below. Help Desk in TargetProcess consists of several sub-‐modules:
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• Help Desk Admin. Integrated into TargetProcess application. • Email Integration. TargetProcess may receive emails and convert them into requests,
bugs, user stories and features. • Import from Excel. It is possible to import requests from Excel into TargetProcess. • Help Desk Portal. External application that may be installed on your web server and
integrated with your web site.
Typical request workflow:
1. Customer sends request with idea via Help Desk Portal. 2. Team Lead accepts request and creates user story from request. 3. Team Lead assigns user story to next release. 4. Customer logins into Help Desk Portal and sees that request accepted and scheduled for
the next release. 5. Customer sees related user story and leaves some comments. 6. Development team implements user story and Team Lead marks request as Closed. 7. Customer sees that request is implemented.
Help Desk Sections There are three main concepts and sections in the TargetProcess Help Desk module: Requests, Requesters and Solutions.
• Request: feedback from customer with idea, question, problem or bug report. Requests may be product specific or general.
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• Solution: solution to common problem. It is possible to send a solution to the requester, thus quickly answering the question and provide issue resolution.
• Requester: person who sends the request.
Requesters Management It is possible to add requesters manually, but in some cases requesters created automatically:
• If you enable email integration, then requester will be created for each new email address. For example, if TargetProcess receives email from [email protected], it will create requester with [email protected] email.
• If new user sends request from Help Desk Portal, new requester will be created (user should fill First/Last Name, Email, Login and Password fields)
To add requester manually, go to Requesters link in Help Desk area and click add. There are no required fields in this form, since you may know only email for example or only a full name and phone.
Companies Management Company entity was introduced to enable Company scope isolation in Help Desk Portal. If requester has a company, he will be isolated from requesters with another company. Thus you may use Help Desk Portal in a more flexible way and hide unnecessary information from users. Company functionality allows you to:
• Add/Edit/Delete companies • Bind projects to company • Bind requester to company
Companies management can be done in Companies link in Admin section.
Requests Management Requests may be added from different sources:
1. Manually using Add Request action. 2. Semi-‐automatically from email. 3. By end users via Help Desk Portal.
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Add Request Manually To add request manually, click Add -‐> Request
You may specify several requesters. This information may be used to prioritize requests. If a feature requested by 49 end users it is likely more important than a feature requested by 5 people.
Add Request from Email Go to Inbox -‐> Public Inbox. Find required email, click Actions -‐> Create Request.
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TargetProcess will automatically set Name, Description, Requesters and Request Type fields. You should set Request Type, Priority, and Product and Save request. Also it is possible to create request from a part of email message. Just select required text and Create Request action will appear.
Requests list Requests list is a core of Help Desk module. It powers requests management. You may do the following actions:
• Filter and sort requests • Create user stories, features and bugs from requests • See related user stories, features and bugs in inner lists • Merge duplicated defects • Assign requests to team members • Change requests state
Issues Queue Issues Queue contains all requests that demand reaction from company support. Issues Queue shows not processed requests based on the following filters:
• Issues and Questions are shown (Ideas filtered out). • No comment for issue or customer’s comment last. • TargetProcess user comment last and comment date > 2 days. • Issue is not in final state.
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You may do the following actions on Issues Queue page:
• Change request state (for example, from New to In Progress) • View request details and comments • Change assigned person • Convert issue to idea • Attach solution to the issue or question • Edit and Delete requests
Create Bugs, Features and User Stories from Request TargetProcess allows creating requirements from requests. Navigate to requests list, find request and click Actions -‐> Create Bug link. TargetProcess will show Add Bug form with prefilled Name and Description fields. Set other required bug parameters and Save new bug.
Track Request-to-Requirement Relations TargetProcess tracks Requests-‐to-‐Requirements relation. It is possible to:
• See related requirements in requests list and Request View • See related requests in User Story View, Bug View and Feature View
It is always known who and when requested specific functionality or report specific bug.
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Merge Requests Sometimes you may find or receive two equal requests. In this case it is possible to merge them. When you merge two requests the following rules applied:
• Comments from both requests combined • Attachments from both requests combined • Requesters from both request combined
To merge several requests:
1. Select requests in list using checkboxes 2. Click Merge link 3. Select primary request. Name, Description and other parameters will be used from
primary request. Secondary requests should not have related bugs, user stories or features. Only primary request may have related requirements.
4. Click Merge button
How to Use Help Desk for General Support 1. Go to Admin area and create special Support Process, which will include just Planning
and Help Desk practices. 2. Create separate support project “Support” and select Support Process for it. 3. Create team for Support project. The team should include all support personnel. 4. Configure special email address for Support project. Users should send they requests to
this address. 5. Configure Help Desk Portal
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6. Go to Admin and configure email notifications for requests addition. Thus support team will be notified immediately when new request added into TargetProcess
Usage specifics:
1. Use Requests list in Support project to manage all incoming requests. 2. Assign requests to specific people and requests will be visible in ToDo lists 3. If request targeted specific product it is possible to change Project field in request, thus
assigning it to the product 4. Do not add releases and iterations 5. Do not create features and defects from requests
Auto-Reply It is possible to configure auto-‐reply email to requester when new request created. Navigate to Admin -‐> Plugins area, find Auto Reply To Requester plugin, click Add Profile link.
You may configure auto-‐reply for specific projects with different templates. Specify the profile name and select Project. Change email Body if required (please be careful with special template placeholders like #${Request.ID}). Click Save & Exit.
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If Help Desk Portal installed and configured, requester will receive a link to the created request to Help Desk Portal, otherwise link will not be included into email. If Tickets are enabled, email will contain special line to support tickets functionality.
Automatically Bind Incoming Emails/Requests to the Project Company may have many products and only one support email. People send requests to one mailbox and there should be a possibility to sort incoming emails/requests to different projects based on keyword in the email subject. You may specify such rules. Navigate to Admin -‐> Plugins area, find Bind Email/Request to Project plugin, click Add Profile link. Here you should specify different keyword for different projects. For example, we have two projects: Project Alpha and Project Beta. We may ask users to put Alpha or Beta into support/request email subject and configure email sorting rules as shown below:
Click Save & Exit to save profile.
Solutions Solutions allow maintaining a single list of ready-‐to-‐use solutions to common issues and questions. Also you may quickly answer questions and provide resolutions to issues by attaching existing solution. Alternatively you may use solutions right from Issues Queue list.
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Help Desk Portal
Help Desk Portal Setup and Usage You may freely download Help Desk Portal from http://targetprocess.com/Product/Download.aspx and follow Installation Guide as well as Help Desk Portal User Guide.
Configuration Go to Admin -‐> Settings and find Help Desk section. There are two options:
• When you add requester manually TargetProcess may send notification to requester with access parameters to Help Desk Portal.
• When requester added into TargetProcess automatically (from retrieved email for example), TargetProcess can send notification as well.
It is required to enable email notifications and the first option if you want to allow manually added requesters to post requests via Help Desk Portal.
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Email Integration TargetProcess may retrieve emails from specified mailbox and do some actions with the emails:
• Create requests from emails • Bind emails to user stories, features, bugs and other entities
There are two types of inboxes: Project Inbox and Personal Inbox.
• Project inbox should be used for support or general project communication. • Personal inbox should be used for your own needs. It contains internal messages (sent
by TargetProcess users inside the system) and emails sent by other people.
Project Inbox
Configuration Go to Projects list and click Edit for required project. Find Inbound Email Integration section and mark Enabled checkbox. Specify Mail Server, Port, Login and Password and push Check connection button. TargetProcess will show success message if email connection works fine.
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TargetProcess may check emails automatically each 10 minutes. To enable automatic email check corresponding option. Also TargetProcess may create requests from all incoming emails.
Usage Click Inbox link in the top right corner and then click Public Inbox. Click Check Email link to receive all emails from specified email account. TargetProcess will show how many messages will be retrieved and start the process in a separate thread. You may click Public Inbox link to check progress. It is a simple email client. You may read emails, delete them, and mark them as read or unread. Two specific business actions are Create Request from email and Bind email to entity (user story, bug, feature, etc.).
Personal Inbox Personal Inbox resembles Public Inbox. It has settings in different place however. Click Settings link in top menu on the right and then click Email Settings tab. Specify required parameters and save changes. Then go to Inbox -‐> My Inbox and click Check Mail link. My Inbox contains internal messages and emails.
• Internal messages created by TargetProcess system for events like task assignment and task completion. Also TargetProcess users may send internal messages.
• Emails are receiving from configured mail box.
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Bind Emails to Entities TargetProcess may bind emails to entities like Feature, User Story, Bug, Iteration and other.
Bind Email to Entity Action Navigate to Inbox, click Actions link and click Bind To… link. Popup window with entities list will appear.
You may filter entities by Name or sort them by ID, Type and Name. When you find the required entity click on entity name and email will be attached to it.
Emails in Entity View Entity View contains all attached emails. Navigate to entity view and find Messages section.
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You may view attached emails and unbind them from entity.
Support Tickets It is possible to configure tickets support in TargetProcess. How tickets work? The simplest flow:
1. Person sends email to TargetProcess support 2. TargetProcess automatically create request from this email 3. TargetProcess admin read the request, add a comment and send email notification to
the person 4. Person receives the email with admin reply 5. Person reply to email 6. TargetProcess receives the email and create a comment from this email to the request.
Thus person may interact with support department via emails, while support department communicates via TargetProcess only. Several steps required to setup tickets.
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Enable Email Notifications Navigate to Admin and find Email Settings option. Configure SMTP Server to allow TargetProcess send emails.
Enable Inbound Email Integration Go to projects list, click Edit for the project and setup inbound email for the project. Make sure that Check email and Create Requests automatically options marked.
Reports There are three types of reports in TargetProcess:
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1. Custom Reports 2. Combined reports for selected Projects 3. Reports inside a specific Project
Custom Reports To generate custom report click Custom Reports link and then click Create New Report button. Report Wizard has the following steps:
1. Select Entity for the report 2. Select Columns 3. Set Filters (optional) 4. Configure Summary Columns (optional) 5. Set Inner lists (optional) 6. Save and Run Report
Custom Fields are fully supported by Report Engine. You may add them as columns, filter by custom fields and group by custom fields. On the first step it is required to select entity for report. For example, you may create report for user stories, bugs, features, time and so on.
On second step you may specify report columns. It is possible to have associated entities columns as well. For example, if you creating report for bugs, you may include iteration name column.
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On third step you may specify filters. For example, for bugs report you may select bugs with non-‐zero effort that belongs to project with “My” word in the project name. It is required to select property, operator and value.
On fourth step you may configure summary columns. For example, bug has a collection of Times, so you may add calculate spent time on each bug. Moreover, you may specify filter for this sub-‐query. On the screenshot below sum calculated only for time records posted at 23-‐Dec-‐2008.
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To add columns like Sum of Spent time by Developer do the following:
1. Specify column name (# Developer Spent Time) 2. Select Time collection 3. Select Sum operator 4. Click Filter link and specify filter as shown on picture below
Finally you save the report for future use.
Inner Lists / Inner Reports Also you may create inner reports. For example, Bug has Times collection. You may create report for bugs that will show all time records related to each bug. The following steps are required:
1. Create report for Time entity. You may use any columns and any filters. 2. Create report for Bug. 3. Click Inner List tab in Bug report. 4. Select Time collection type. 5. Select the report you’ve created for Time entity. 6. Save the report.
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As a result you will have bugs report with times inner list. Click plus icon to see all related time record.
You may create as many inner reports as required. For example, you may include Impediments, Times, Comments into report for Bug entity.
Inline Edit in Custom Reports You may edit everything in custom reports using inline edit. Inline edit works in inner reports as well. To edit something do the following:
1. Double click on property you want to change 2. Select or Type the new value 3. Click Submit Changes link to save changes to the server.
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Changed property marked with small red triangle. You may do many changes and then submit them to the server. However there is no auto-‐save, so be careful.
Custom Report Actions On a generated report screen you may do the following actions:
1. Export report into CSV file (click export to excel link) 2. Print report 3. Navigate to entity in the report (click on the id link) 4. Group entities by any column 5. Sort by any column 6. Resize columns (drag column right side and change its width) 7. Change column position (drag the column and move it to required position) 8. Edit report 9. Inline edit records
Predefined Reports Click the Predefined Reports link. The left side contains all Projects, and the right side offers three possible combined reports: Project Progress Report, Quality Assurance Report, and People Report. Each report may include several sub-‐reports.
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To generate a combined report
1. Check the required project(s). 2. Select a combined report from the drop down list. 3. Check/uncheck sub-‐reports as needed. 4. Click the Generate button.
In the generated report that opens in a new window, you may hide different sub-‐reports on the fly. These reports have been modified for printing. Click File -‐> Print Preview in your Web browser to preview the printed version.
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Planning Reports
Release Burn Down Chart A Project Manager could compare team performance among Iterations and get general information about Project status.
• Yellow bars show effort needed to complete the Iteration. • Green bar show done effort in current iteration. • Red bar shows new effort that was added to the release. For example, new user stories
or new defects added. • Gray bars show forecasted progress in the next iterations. • Green line is an ideal line. If the yellow bars below the line, progress is good and
development team is on track.
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You may use two forecasting algorithm. It works as follows. For example, you have completed first release with several iterations. You may calculate average iteration velocity (completed effort in all iteration divided by number of iterations). And you may use this value to forecast how much effort you will be able to complete in future iterations. Also you may enter velocity manually to simulate what-‐if scenarios. The chart will show forecasted progress and final iteration. Also Release Burn Down Chart shows scope creep. You see red bar if new work added into the release (some new user stories or bugs added), and baseline shifted to the new level. On the chart above about 40 points were added to the release backlog in iteration #0.2. Black bar shows removed work (some user stories removed from the release). On the chart below 13 points were removed from iteration #0.2 and baseline moved up (we have less work to do).
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Iteration Burn Down Chart Iteration Burn Down is similar to release burn down. It shows progress by days for selected iteration. It shows scope creep, iteration progress, ideal line and forecasted progress.
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User Stories Count by States Burn Down The User Stories Count by States Burn Down Report shows User Stories dynamics. It is particularly interesting if you have many states for User Stories, such as open, in progress, and accepted. In this case, the chart shows how User Stories implementation is going.
Quality Assurance Reports
Bugs Distribution by Severity This chart helps to define overall Project quality. If there are many open Blocking and Critical Bugs, action should be taken to improve quality. For example, introduce Test-‐Driven Development, try Pair programming, or another tactic. Concrete actions are up to the Project Manager; this chart helps to define when to apply these actions.
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Bugs Dynamic Bugs Dynamic report shows how many bugs where opened, fixed or closed each day or week. For example, 5 Bugs were Opened, 6 were Fixed and 3 were Closed. The report also shows how many new Bugs found each day, so it is possible to predict when new bugs ratio will be small enough to make a release.
Bugs Progress The Bugs Progress Chart shows open/closed Bugs dynamics. It answers the following questions:
• Is the Bug fixing dynamic positive or negative? • How many Bugs have been added each day?
The chart below shows bugs progress for several iterations. It is clearly visible that project has more and more open bugs in the end of the each iteration and quality probably suffers.
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Bugs Count by States Burn Down The Bugs Count by States Burn Down Report shows Bugs dynamics. For example, the chart below shows that the Bugs dynamic is not positive. There may be Bugs that are not fixed or many new Bugs may have appeared. The first assumption is more likely, since the Bugs in Fixed state value does not change.
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Test Cases Runs Reports There are two reports in the QA -‐> Reports section: Test Cases Runs by Release/Iteration/Build and Test Cases by User Story.
Test Cases Runs by Release/Iteration/Build The Test Cases Runs by Release/Iteration/Build report shows overall quality state over Releases/Iterations/Builds. For example, the chart below shows that 20 test cases failed in Beta Version release and 28 test cases where not run at all.
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Test Cases by User Story The Test Cases by User Story Report shows the quality of specific User Stories. You can see the quality of all User Stories in the current Release or current Iteration. For example, the chart below shows that only one User Story has failed test cases, while two other User Stories have been completed and tested.
Time Tracking Reports
Time Spent Summary The Time by Person report displays total spent time for all users in a team for a selected period of time.
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Printable Reports Several lists (Features, Test Cases, User Stories, Bugs) have the Print action. Navigate to a User Stories list and click the Printable View link to a see list of User Stories, related Bugs, Test Cases, Tasks and other info. You may hide/show areas using checkboxes on the right.
You can also print selected User Stories. Select the required User Stories and click the Printable View link and only the selected User Stories will be included in the report.
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Source Control Integration TargetProcess provides out of the box integration with Subversion, Perforce, Team Foundation Server (TFS), and SourceSafe. TargetProcess Source Control integration helps avoid some repetitious actions for developers. For example, when a developer fixes a Bug, he usually does the following:
1. Commit change into source control system with comment that includes Bug ID 2. Go to TargetProcess and find fixed Bug 3. Add the same comment to the Bug 4. Change Bug state to Fixed 5. Optionally, add spent time on Bug
With subversion integration, all these actions can be replaced by just one action:
1. Commit change into source control system with proper comment that includes Bug ID TargetProcess will do the rest automatically. Additional options include viewing files associated with the Bug as well as viewing differences. Source Control Integration User Guides are separate documents. You may download them from http://www.targetprocess.com/support/Documentation.aspx
Tags TargetProcess supports information categorization via Tags. It is possible to specify tags for all entities in the system.
Tag Entities You may specify tags when adding/editing entity. Click Add -‐> User Story link and find Tags section in the bottom of the form. Click Tags link to expand the section. You may type tags into the field or select tags from the cloud. In the cloud you see 100 first tags based on sort settings. You may sort tags by rank (most used tags have higher rank) and alphabetically. Also you may filter tags in the cloud by typing first letters into the filter field.
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You may add tags to several entities at once using batch action. Go to list (for example, User Stories list), select several user stories and click More Actions link. Type several tags space separated and push Add button. Tags will be added to selected entities.
Search by Tag There are two ways to find entities by tag. Type tag: tagname in the search box
The search above will find all entities that have bugzilla tag. The other way is to use filters in lists:
Tags in Report Engine It is possible to see tags column in custom report as well as filter by tags. For example, you may generate a report and see all user stories that have Team A tag. This option powers custom reporting and allows to see assignments for specific team or category, see requests of specific types, etc.
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Manage Tags You may add, delete and rename tags in a project. Click Project Admin and navigate to Tags and Bundles section.
Add Tags Type new tags space separated into Add Tags text field. If you want to use phrases as tags it is required to enclose them into quotes (for example, “complex tag”). Added tags will appear in current project.
Delete Tags Type tags or select tags from the cloud in Delete Tags section. Push Delete button. Selected tags will be deleted from current project and from all entities in current project.
Rename Tags You may rename several tags into one new tag. It is the same as merging several tags into one. Select one or several tags in Old Tags field, type tag in New Tag field and push Rename button.
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Manage Bundles Bundles are a way to group related tags. It is quite powerful mechanism for advanced categorization. For example, you may create bundles like Teams, Modules, Components, Browsers, OS, Technical, etc. Tag may belong to several bundles in general. In TargetProcess there are two types of bundles:
• Exclusive. If you create bundle and mark Exclusive checkbox, entity may have only one tag from this bundle. For example, you create bundle Teams with tags Team A and Team B. You want to assign some user stories to Team A and to Team B. It will be not possible to assign the same user story to both teams.
• Non-‐Exclusive. Entity may have many tags from such bundle. For example, you may create Technical bundle with tags architecture, database, and business logic. You may create user story that will have all these tags.
1. Add bundle. 2. Bundles list. 3. Tags in bundle. You may add tags to bundle or remove tags from bundle.
Add Bundle Click add link near Bundles title. Specify bundle name and mark checkbox Exclusive if you want to create exclusive bundle (IMPORTANT: It is not possible to change bundle type later, so decide wisely!). Push Save button to add the bundle.
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Add/Remove Tags Click on bundle name in bundles list, tags area will be filled with tags that are already in the bundle. You may click to tags in cloud to add/remove them or just type tags in the tags field. Push Save button to save changes.
Import/Export TargetProcess provides Import/Export from/to CSV format for Bugs, Features, User Stories and Test Cases.
Import from CSV TargetProcess imports entities in the current Project only. Select a Project and click Project Admin -‐> Import to start the import wizard.
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Select the required entity type (Feature, User Story, Bug or Test Case), browse for a *.csv file. Then select the column delimiter and click Next.
In the next step, you must specify a mapping between CSV file columns and entity properties. For example, a User Story entity may have an “Effort” property while in the CSV file you may have an “Estimated Effort” column. You may import custom fields as well. TargetProcess tries to define the mapping by itself, but in complex cases it may fail. When you finish mapping columns, click Next and TargetProcess will start importing.
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The last step shows import results and a complete import log.
Export into CSV Navigate to a User Stories list and filter User Stories to get the required list. Click the Export link and TargetProcess will generate a file for saving. You may either open it via your Web browser or save it on disk.
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Appendix A. Resources
Links TargetProcess in twitter http://www.twitter.com/targetprocess Submit problems and ideas to TargetProcess Help Desk Portal http://helpdesk.targetprocess.com Updates and new builds announcements http://www.targetprocess.com/tp2releases/index.html
Books Agile Estimating and Planning By Mike Cohn (strongly recommended) http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/book/view/1 Planning Extreme Programming by Kent Beck, Martin Fowler http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-‐/0201710919/002-‐5598678-‐3693648 Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn (strongly recommended) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-‐/0201699699/qid=1088001735/sr=1-‐3/ref=sr_1_3/103-‐5739680-‐9585429 Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber http://www.amazon.com/Agile-‐Project-‐Management-‐Microsoft-‐Professional/dp/073561993X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;s=books&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;qid=1215592679&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;sr=8-‐1