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missing Timebox view in M2


Bhadri Madapusi (181171) | asked Aug 28 '07, 11:43 a.m.
Hi,

I installed M2 last week. I am unable to see the time box view in the views list. Has anyone encountered this issue?

Thank you.

12 answers



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Dirk Baeumer (4811) | answered Aug 30 '07, 12:16 p.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER
Hi,

I will try to explain the reasons why we removed the timebox view and
what the replacement will be in the future. The reason for its removal are:

- it didn't really scale with lots of work items. Especially identifying
a work item in the time box view was very hard since only the first
characters of the summary got rendered
- the presented information wasn't accurate if the work items weren't
estimated since we used a default value for non estimated work items
- the feedback we got from self hosting is that users wanted to see
better information about if and how much a developer is overbooked.

And to clarify the time box view was always local to a plan meaning that
it only showed the work items for a certain iteration (the one of the
planning editor in focus)

The replacement story, although not fully in place yet will look like
follows:

- there is a new My Work view which allows individual developers to
define the order in which they are going to work on work items. There
can be work items which aren't sorted into that order yet which we
consider assigned to the milestone but not scheduled (available in M2).

- the iteration plan editor has a new group mode "Scheduled Time" which
shows the work items in the order in which the developer arranged them.
So the team lead as exactly the same view onto the work items as the
individual developer does (available in M2). This mode is basically the
replacement for the time box view since it list the work item on a timeline.

- in that group mode we will add a bucket overbooked which will contain
all work items which to the current scheduling and estimating will not
make it in this milestone (in M2 these work items have a warning
indication saying that they are scheduled behind the end of the
iteration). The team lead can then use the normal actions (context
menu, D&D) available in the iteration plan editor to assign the work
item to a different milestone or to a different owner.

- we will add additional status information to the contributor item in
the planned items page showing the following information:
o open, closed items
o number of unscheduled items
o number of unestimated items
o total amount of work of the estimated items
o total amount of left work hours until the end of the milestone
o an indication if the developer is overbooked or not (which
precision depends on the number of estimated items)

- resource planning to specify the following information:
o working hours
o out of office
o assignment to a team. We will support a dynamic assignment
theme to support development in main and maintenance branches
were the assignment is mostly like: first fix all bugs for
maintenance and then work on main bugs.

Hope that clarifies a little why we decided to remove the time box view
and what its replacement will be. We decided to remove the view although
the replacement wasn't fully in place do to code maintenance reasons.

I would like to get your feedback whether you think the new story will
help you with the use cases you saw supported with the old time box view.

Regards

Dirk
bhadrim wrote:
Hi,

I installed M2 last week. I am unable to see the time box view in the
views list. Has anyone encountered this issue?

Thank you.

permanent link
Bhadri Madapusi (181171) | answered Aug 29 '07, 5:14 p.m.
If you want to know why it is removed please follow the work item

https://jazz.net/jazz/web/projects/Jazz%20Project#perspective=Work%20Items&action=viewWorkItem&id=29900

Thanks.

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Pravesh Patel (37612615) | answered Aug 29 '07, 4:58 p.m.
I agree with the previous comments. The ability for Team Leads to quickly view and re-balance the workload visually was a very appealing feature and a strong selling point with management.

As was pointed out, My Work Items does not provide equivalent functionality. I for one would really like to see the return of the Timebox view, or at least know why it was removed.

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Corville Allen (511) | answered Aug 29 '07, 4:48 p.m.
As we've discussed with John Kellerman and Kevin Haaland, the IBM VM team would really like to have some functionality like the old box view.

As it stands a team lead or project manager would have a hard time planning resource allocation. It's not that easy to look at all the Iteration plans and figure out who's too busy and who is not. It's possible to do it but not as easily as the time box allowed.

Another problem we have is some team members have duties in multiple teams and/or projects and there's no easy way to see what is assigned to that person in terms of scheduling. My manager can't see my "My Work" and looking at all the work items assigned to me still requires a lot of work to sort things out. The time box helped a lot in this respect and we're sad to hear that it's gone.


I'm going to have to echo my agreement here. This is a feature that I'll need to sell the project management team on using Jazz for our future development. This feature is essential or a similar feature to see where people are in the project and planning and evaluating how we are proceeding in the overall project.

Is this overall view and functionality available somewhere else?

Also, how can we help to prevent the elimination of some features which we view as essential and very helpful before they make the cut?

Corville.

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Remy Suen (426124) | answered Aug 29 '07, 4:21 p.m.
On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:17:41 +0000, gcastro wrote:
Another problem we have is some team members have duties in multiple
teams and/or projects and there's no easy way to see what is assigned
to that person in terms of scheduling.

Agreed. Unfortunately, if I recall correctly, our PM noted that the
timebox only shows stuff for the single project. So if you have multiple
project areas, this does not fly. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for
why it was removed? That it didn't scale across project areas?

we're sad to hear that it's gone.

It's really a shame that it had to go. When our team were doing demos of
our prototype, we often brought up the timebox view to show how easy it
was to see the load that someone had. I guess that won't be incorporated
in the demo anymore. ;)

One thing I'd like to know is why wasn't this mentioned in M2's N&N? :( I
come from an Eclipse background and I always read the N&N pages.

Regards,
Rem

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Gabriel Castro (1216) | answered Aug 29 '07, 2:11 p.m.
As we've discussed with John Kellerman and Kevin Haaland, the IBM VM team would really like to have some functionality like the old box view.

As it stands a team lead or project manager would have a hard time planning resource allocation. It's not that easy to look at all the Iteration plans and figure out who's too busy and who is not. It's possible to do it but not as easily as the time box allowed.

Another problem we have is some team members have duties in multiple teams and/or projects and there's no easy way to see what is assigned to that person in terms of scheduling. My manager can't see my "My Work" and looking at all the work items assigned to me still requires a lot of work to sort things out. The time box helped a lot in this respect and we're sad to hear that it's gone.

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Bhadri Madapusi (181171) | answered Aug 29 '07, 1:28 p.m.
Is there a single place where I can see the workload of all the team members in the project/team/iteration plan? Having this would help in resource planning.

Thanks.

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Bhadri Madapusi (181171) | answered Aug 29 '07, 1:26 p.m.
Is there a single place where I can see the workload of all the team members in the project/team/iteration plan? Having this would help in resource planning.

Thanks.

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Shawn Lauzon (38174) | answered Aug 29 '07, 11:44 a.m.
Ahh, I never even saw the "My Work" view. I created Enhancement 29957 to add it to the default "Work Items" perspective.

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Bhadri Madapusi (181171) | answered Aug 29 '07, 10:22 a.m.
Thanks for the replies

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