Jazz Jazz Community Blog Jazz Plan Jam results are in!

The results are in and the team has crunched through the data. In my previous post, Now that’s how we jam, I gave a breakdown the roles, ideas and votes cast. In this blog, I’ll focus on the popular content items by vote.

Jazz Plan Jam Tag Cloud

Jazz Plan Jam Tag Cloud

With over 400 ideas expressed (see final tag cloud in image at right) we need a workable model to consume the data. We’re looking at the results in three ways:

  1. Top ideas by theme
  2. Top ideas across all themes
  3. Additional top ideas by role

In addition, we’re adding these as enhancement requests linked to backlog items in our CLM Project area (see below).

Top ideas by themes

Here are your top 5 ideas by theme, with the number of votes in parenthesis (votes):

How can we make our tools easier to use, learn, and adopt? (82 ideas)

  1. Command line interface for work item (98)
  2. Edit work item comments (93)
  3. Simplify/improve the process configuration in RTC (69)
  4. Customizable GUI menus and views (66)
  5. Provide a common review and approval process across tools and the lifecycle (60)

What improvements would hit your sweet spot for Agile development? (30 ideas)

  1. Voting on plan items or any artifact ( 56)
  2. View public dashboards without the need to login (44)
  3. Add features to RTC for peer code review (43)
  4. Planning poker feature (31)
  5. Simple user interface (26)

How can we better optimize for large scale deployments and adoption across teams in the enterprise? (57 ideas)

  1. Ability to see all my tasks in all project areas (99)
  2. Improve API documentation (78)
  3. Project area movement to another Jazz server (77)
  4. Improve resource planning across projects (53)
  5. Performance of web UI of large plans (49)

What product features should we add or improve? (178 ideas)

  1. Project archive/unarchive/ delete/ export /import capabilities (86)
  2. Version identifiers are missing (80)
  3. Jazz Calendar (80)
  4. User defined link types for work items (78)
  5. Provide an offline mode for SCM (72)

How can we strengthen the integration of our tools? (44 ideas)

  1. Share a timeline between all CLM Products (83)
  2. Cross lifecycle query (60)
  3. Provide a bridge integration with Git that seamlessly uses that system for SCM (56)
  4. Project dashboards across lifecycle project should be common (42)
  5. Automatic work item creation from Requirements (37)

How can our tools help unify the development and operations lifecycle? (13 ideas)

  1. Work items automated test success rate and code coverage automatically computed upon build (29)
  2. Extend continuous integration services to support continuous delivery (21)
  3. Set roles for multiple users at once after they’ve been created (21)
  4. Create a generic service desk / help desk template (18)
  5. Use automated deployments in support of dev and test (17)

How can our tools be more effective in embedded software development and product line engineering? (16 ideas)

  1. Version and Variant Management across the lifecycle (70)
  2. Version and Variant Control for requirements (56)
  3. Jazz SCM capabilities for all resources (52)
  4. Consistent cross-lifecycle baselining and baseline version (51)
  5. Links to specific versions of artifacts (36)

Which scenarios best reflect the lifecycle needs of your organization (20 ideas)

  1. Traditional/Waterfall projects using lifecycle tools (48)
  2. Product/component reuse in systems development (30)
  3. Provide multi-level approvals (23)
  4. Create sample DB for users to learn CLM with formal project management template (21)
  5. Provide compliance report templates (20)

Top ideas across all themes

We combined the items from all the themes and to create the “top ideas” list. In some cases, we merged related ideas and individual votes cast, ensuring one vote per person. Merged ideas are denoted with an asterisk (*).  In many cases only one vote separates ideas, therefore, we created a false stopping point of ‘top 10’ for this blog.

  1. Version and variant management across the lifecycle for product/software lines* 217065
  2. Project archive/unarchive/delete/import/export* 217047
  3. Improve API* 217052
  4. Make CLM project based and not application based* 217043
  5. Consistent cross-lifecycle baselines (snapshot) and baseline version 217073
  6. Ability to see all my tasks in all project areas 217044
  7. Command Line interface for work items 217045
  8. Edit work item comments 217046
  9. Cross lifecycle query* 217062
  10. Jazz Calendar* 217049

When we filter out the IBM users, 8 of 10 items remain on the list and the order changes in the following ways:

  1. Notable change: Ability to see all my tasks in all project areas jumps to #1 217044
  2. Notable change: Jazz Calendar jumps to #6 217049
  3. New: Improve resource planning across projects* appears at #8 217071
  4. New: Allow folder creation in My Queries* appears at #10 217041
  5. Below top 10: Consistent cross-lifecycle baselines (snapshot) and baseline version* 217073
  6. Below top 10: Command Line interface for work items 217045

Additional top ideas by role

For the top ideas across all themes, most of the data was consistent across each roles top ten list. Here we’ll call out the differences by role.

  1. Business analysts also care about having a delta comparison between two versions of requirements*
  2. Developers also showed interest in having  a Command line interface for work item, and Version identifiers (file version in RTC scm)
  3. Testers looked for improving Build integration with RQM
  4. Build and Release Engineers voiced interest in Work item description support rich text and embedded images, and having the ability to organize RTC build definition
  5. Process engineers added a request to integrate RMC with CLM
  6. Managers looked for the ability to delete users and project areas (not just archive)

Administrators don’t have a delta with the top 10, which is no surprise when we look at the voter demographics.

Emergent Voices

Your Emerging Voice

Your Emerging Voice

In looking across these items, we observed emergent voices expressed from the “me”, “you” and “us” points of view. We welcome your comments on these voices and our interpretation. This is where our reasoning goes beyond raw data and fact. You may or may not agree with our deductions, and we welcome your comments on this blog.

  • Consistency – (Common CLM features) Many ideas express the desire for us to provide a consistent experience across the lifecycle. “Easy”  includes having a consistent user experience across the tools I work with so that I don’t have to relearn common tasks in different contexts.” Integration goes beyond linked data, and there are concepts and task flows that are shared across the lifecycle – from concept, name, function, look, feel, and guidance.
  • Immediacy – Many items resonate as ideas that make it easy for me to access and complete my work, regardless of where my work is stored. “Easy”, in this voice, includes the notion of me, the user, as the center of my CLM universe, not the application that stores the data that I use.
  • Project focus – Several strike on the notion that my work occurs in a ‘context’, where the “context” voiced most often was ‘project’. Here a project comprises work of the entire team, not a single discipline. “I work on projects with teams of people, all contributing different assets and perspectives to each project. I want to be grounded in my project, in the sphere of others who share that project with me, and move effortlessly across the assets we collectively create. I work on multiple projects at a time. Sometimes I work in hierarchies of projects and programs of projects.”
  • Tool specific features – while integrations topped the charts, the tool specific feature discussions were also lively. I want best of breed tools in addition to best of breed integrations.
  • Integration & Extensibility – No solution is an island, or complete unto itself. It needs to be extended as well as integrated with others. Together, we make a more complete, heterogeneous, solution that is more useful to me, my team, and those we connect with beyond our borders.
  • Deployment – While we made great strides in administration there’s more improvement to make, particularly when it comes to moving data.

What’s next?

The top items from the plan jam have been added as enhancements in the CLM Project. These enhancements are linked to plan items and user stories on the CLM backlog, and all have a tag “PlanJam_June2012”.

Plan Jam ideas as enhancements

We also created a query and dashboard widget to reveal all items using the tag.

Some of the top items were created as enhancement requests for a specific product. This occurred for instances where a specific role was requesting a feature that we deemed product specific, or more important to one product verses all products.

Keep the Jam going

We’ve provided you the links on how to find the plan jam enhancements. Here are some things you can do to keep the jam alive:

  • Subscribe to the work items you are interested in.
  • Continue the conversation using the work item comments on the Enhancements
  • Leverage the new My Stuff feature on jazz.net to keep track of your favorites.

Would we do it again?

Absolutely! The team behind the jam conducted a retrospective and all agreed this approach to collaborating with our stakeholders is one we’d like to repeat. The great debate is when and how often? This may not sound like something to debate, but the primary tension lies between engaging with you in a compelling event and overwhelming you with too many.

Let’s have a mini jam on this blog. Please use the comments feature to share your thoughts: What worked well? What can be improved?  What do you define as ‘success criteria’ for the jam? What do you expect as our next steps? Do you want to do it again? If so, how often?

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11 Comments
  1. Sterling Ferguson-II July 11, 2012 @ 1:31 pm

    Hello,

    The jam was a good effort. If there is a next time, I would like for those that participated to be able to rank the ideas via Focal Point at the conclusion. While I voted for lots of ideas, my ranking would be different.

  2. Anthony Kesterton July 11, 2012 @ 7:34 pm

    Really nice to see this Jam work – and to see the results. I think this should be done every quarter as a way to guide product direction. Adding a voting capability to work items could mean we eventually move this Jam into something that happens every day as even more people contribute directly by raising enhancements.

    I do like Sterling’s idea about using FP to help do some relative ranking.

  3. frederick carter July 11, 2012 @ 11:31 pm

    A lot of the extensive involvement we saw from the plan jam effort was due to the socializing features of the platform, as mentioned in these posts. One example of this was how the top contributors was continously published and tracked with hyperlinks to the contributors ideas ,comments , and votes.

    I would have liked to see this theme continued in these two blog posts by highlighting for example the persons who made significant contributions for example. But no persons are ever mentioned. Some reasons or benefits for making some mention of contributors are obvious:
    1. rewards them for their time and effort
    2. encourages more participation, and involvement from existing and new contributors
    3. continues the theme of socialization started in the Plan Jam
    4. helps sell and market the CLM brand

    some ideas
    1. As mentioned, display the names of top contributors in these posts in a variety of dimensions (votes,comments, by top ten ideas, etc)
    2. In the enhancement requests (plan items) that were generated , list the names of the person(s) who contributed the idea that led to the enhacement request as the ‘created by’ column. replace the name current name ‘carolyn pampino ‘ with the name of the actual contributor.

    I am sure there are other ways to highlight the people who make contributions to this plan jam, but i just wanted to emphasis that by doing so making the socialization effort that much more effective.

  4. Patrice CORBARD July 12, 2012 @ 4:42 am

    Hello,
    Is there still a place where we can find all the ideas submitted during the jam in order to see if they are included in the development backlogs ?
    In my understanding, only the top voted ideas are included for the moment (about 60).
    The concern is to not lose the other contributions that were made during the Jam, and to be able to follow their future implementation.
    Thanks

  5. Marcio Braga July 12, 2012 @ 10:53 am

    As mentioned, I wonder if an easy to use, high level environment ( Focal Point style ) could be provided from all this data.

  6. Mike Shkolnik July 12, 2012 @ 6:44 pm

    There are many much needed enhancements that have been sitting in the backlog for a long time and I would not want those to get forgotten just because they weren’t part of a “jam”.

  7. jeniffer jones August 30, 2012 @ 5:31 am

    Hello,
    Is there still a place where we can find all the ideas submitted during the jam in order to see if they are included in the development backlogs ?

  8. Carolyn Pampino August 30, 2012 @ 10:43 pm

    @Jeniffer the blog post above includes a link to a query and dashboard widget for the items we brought into RTC. Currently they are enhancement requests, some have been linked to plan items but not all. Summer vacations hit and we are behind in linking all enhancements to plan items. For now the queries will help you find all enhancements we added.

  9. Carolyn Pampino August 30, 2012 @ 10:44 pm

    @Patrice In terms of ALL ideas, we do have the results in our possession. As we stated when we kicked off the jam we were not promising to implement all ideas that came out of the jam. We wanted to get a view of where the crowd was most active / interested. We gained a lot of insight and are currently busy working some of the ideas into our plans.

  10. Carolyn Pampino August 30, 2012 @ 10:48 pm

    @frederick Good idea regarding the mention of the top contributors. Some of you were stunningly active and deserve mention! I’ll see what we can do with the data we now have. In terms of identifying the contributors, I can’t change the ‘created by’ field, but we could look into mentioning the names in the comments, or description field.

  11. Carolyn Pampino August 30, 2012 @ 10:53 pm

    @Sterling, Anthony, Marcio – a ranking of ideas is a natural follow-on to an idea generation activity such as the jam. First generate a bunch of ideas and discover which are most active… then begin to rank. Not sure if we’ll do that with the ideas from this first jam. We are diligently working on the product backlogs and ranking those items by first clarifying the plan item and then ranking them. We do need to close the loop by linking plan jam generated ideas to the plan items on the backlog.

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