Brief summary of this article:
The only way to get actual information about User Story, Bug or Task completeness is to ask the developer. Targetprocess does exactly that. When a developer adds a time record, he should enter a remaining time value as well. Using this information, actual work remaining can be calculated.
Time tracking practice must be enabled to allow your users report spent and remain times.
It is possible to create the board view showing recently reported time records for each user story, task and bug in form of cards. Columns on this board represent dates for which time was reported as spent. Rows group time records by work items. On each time entry it is shown who posted it (in the form of graphic avatar), what was his or her role, how many hours were spent and what remaining time was entered. Review progress of your team daily using this board view.
You can move your mouse over time card to see a popup with additional details such as current entity state, description for the time record and exact date for cards in past column as shown below:
Additionally, visual encoding may be configured for highlighting of the problematic User Stories, Tasks and Bugs. Yellow and red color are used to indicate warnings about incorrect estimate — showing work items that have problems with implementation. Time spent or remaining exceeds effort estimated for them. White, gray, green and blue color mean that your team is on track or ahead the forecasts.
List of possible highlighting rules is the following:
- Yellow: work is in progress, time remain exceeds estimated effort to do, implementation delayed
- Green: work is in progress, time remain is less than estimated effort to do, you are ahead of the forecast
- Red: work is done with problems, more time spent than it was expected
- Blue: work is done successfully, less time spent than it was expected
- White: perfect match: time remain is equal to estimated effort to do, your team is on track
For details about users assigned to entity, its total effort, full list of time spent records, list of tasks and bugs for user stories, modification history log and flow chart please open detailed popups by clicking on numeric IDs in rows.
This dashboard serves as a partial replacement for the obsolete Daily Progress report from TP2 era, cancelled now:
If you need to see how much time has been reported as remaining on each task daily, please use Daily Time Remain Trends visual report instead of this Daily Progress view.
It is no longer possible to let Targetprocess compare remain time records with each other and highlight days when remaining time is increased. Comparison of total time spent and time remain with total estimated effort for the corresponding role is made instead.
How to create and configure Daily Progress view
The view should be configured once by Administrator; further it can be viewed by any Targetprocess user.
In left menu, click + Create > Board.
In the header, rename the board to Daily Progress.
In Setup tab, select Time as the cards you want to see.
Set projects and teams to ‘Not specified’ by clearing [X] current selection. These settings will be further overridden by project and team selection for the whole dashboard.
Select Spent Date as columns (vertical lanes) and Worked On as rows (horizontal lanes).
Filtering rows
Apply filter for rows. To show only work items from current Iteration and with at least one Time record we recommend the following one:
?Iteration.isCurrent is true and TimeSpent > 0 and it is not None
Use alternative filter if you do not have Iterations:
?TimeSpent > 0 and it is not None
Use this filter to show time records posted to User Stories only:
?EntityType is 'UserStory' and TimeSpent > 0 and it is not None
It is also possible to filter work items by their state additionally. Show time spent for user stories in all states but Done:
?EntityType is 'UserStory' and EntityState.IsFinal is false and TimeSpent > 0 and it is not None
Setup of columns
By default, columns are shown for the current day and previous 5 days. Time entries posted for all other dates are grouped under Past and Future columns. The daily range can be extended within another filter applied to columns:
?it >= Today-8(days)
We do not recommend to put there values greater than 8, because otherwise your board view will be split into multiple pages and you'll need to switch them.
Cards size and layout
Let’s customize cards for this board. Using Customize Cards tab it is possible to add the following units for S size layout:
- User (avatar icon)
- Role
- Time spent / time remaining
More helpful units are also available for selection.
Press Finish setup button. Here is the board we’re ready to use:
Configure highlighting rules
Rules for highlighting of cards are configured in Actions > Set up view menu, on Customize Cards tab.
Here we list the filters used in this example:
Rule | Color | Meaning |
?Remain > 0 and Assignable.RoleEfforts.Where((TimeRemain - EffortToDo) > 0) | Yellow | Work is in progress, time remain exceeds estimated effort to do, implementation delayed |
?Remain > 0 and Assignable.RoleEfforts.Where((TimeRemain - EffortToDo) < 0) | Green | Work is in progress, time remain is less than estimated effort to do, you are ahead of the forecast |
?Remain == 0 and Assignable.RoleEfforts.Where((TimeSpent - EffortCompleted) > 0) | Red | Work is done with problems, more time spent than it was expected |
?Remain == 0 and Assignable.RoleEfforts.Where((TimeSpent - EffortCompleted) < 0) | Blue | Work is done successfully, less time spent than it was expected |
Press Finish setup button when you are done with rules setup. Here is how the same board view now displayed:
Tracking multiple Projects and Iterations simultaneously
If you have several projects each having iteration in progress, it is also possible to handle this use case. You may follow one of the two approaches:
- Create separate Daily Progress board view per each Project. Apply Actions > Clone view action to your origin view for this purpose. Switch views when needed, organize them with folders in the left menu freely.
- Use single Daily Progress board view, but change currently selected projects and teams using selector in the top left corner of the view whenever needed.
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