Usage of Iteration Plan in RTC
RTC by default provides a hierarchal way of defining the iteration plan for example if you have
Project by Name ABCD (Main development line)
Phase as "Requirement, Design, Development , Test , Exit"
Let us take Test as the one of the phase we are writing the iteration plan
then we have milestones
Planning
Design
Execution
Exit
Now we can have one or many iterations to complete this milestone.
Is this the right way of doing the iteration plan ?
As another option is I go to bottom most ,say iteration plan under iteration for milestone and create work items under that.
Which is the right way ?
Project by Name ABCD (Main development line)
Phase as "Requirement, Design, Development , Test , Exit"
Let us take Test as the one of the phase we are writing the iteration plan
then we have milestones
Planning
Design
Execution
Exit
Now we can have one or many iterations to complete this milestone.
Is this the right way of doing the iteration plan ?
As another option is I go to bottom most ,say iteration plan under iteration for milestone and create work items under that.
Which is the right way ?
One answer
We had tried the process of essentially creating an iteration plan a week, which would typically mirror the many iteration plans to complete a single milestone. This was not a usable scenario. The work items don't roll up (for summary purposes) very well and managing the items (i.e., moving incomplete items from one iteration plan to another) is a bit tedious.
One of the things we're trying to do, good or bad, is easily correlate the tasks from RTC into the MS Project Schedule for PM reporting. Our goal is to easily take a high level work item, 'Complete this Widget' and communicate that work item, and the associated hours estimated on the project schedule, to the software team. They should then create low level tasks (i.e., 'Review Design', 'Create display form', 'Create inputs handlers', 'Demo display form', etc.) along with hours estimates. Doing so with fine grained and frequent (i.e., every week or every other week) iteration plans is proving difficult. If you are trying to do something similar, then I would again suggest the single iteration plan or at least one iteration plan for each three or four weeks.
One of the things we're trying to do, good or bad, is easily correlate the tasks from RTC into the MS Project Schedule for PM reporting. Our goal is to easily take a high level work item, 'Complete this Widget' and communicate that work item, and the associated hours estimated on the project schedule, to the software team. They should then create low level tasks (i.e., 'Review Design', 'Create display form', 'Create inputs handlers', 'Demo display form', etc.) along with hours estimates. Doing so with fine grained and frequent (i.e., every week or every other week) iteration plans is proving difficult. If you are trying to do something similar, then I would again suggest the single iteration plan or at least one iteration plan for each three or four weeks.