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Sprint backlog plan view Roadmap: how are the blocks of time calculated?

Regarding Plans: In the Scrum process template, a Sprint Backlog plan type has the view available of Roadmap. Where can we find more information about the population of the chart? IE: What makes some epics, stories, or tasks appear with a block of time and others not? What goes into that calculation. In help (and here) the only info I found was:

"Roadmap: Displays work items sorted by rank. The Accumulated Time column displays the duration bar for each work item indicating the duration taken to resolve the work item. You can see the Block and Depends on relationship of work items. You can drag the right end of the duration bar to change the estimate of the work item. Rescheduling changes the work sequence as defined in the My Work view."

That does not provide enough clear information.

Thank you for help in advance!

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Hope the following discussion can answer your question about calculating the workitem's duration:

Yeah - those questions and answers are really not clear. It would be useful to just have the chart explained, instead of trying to decipher other users' questions compared to my own. Just explain what goes into the chart - what data does it look at, what causes items to be displayed or not.

I thought the answer provided in the above link could explain how the bar in the Accumulated Time column is calculated, which is depends on:

1) Estimation of the work item.
2) Time spent on the work item
3) Availability (percentage allocation, working hours ...) of the work item owner for the project. 

If you think that's not clear or sufficient, could you provide a chart of your environment and elaborate the questions you have for the specific chart? 

I'm not looking to have MY chart explained, I'm looking for an explanation of how the chart itself works. Saying "it depends on ...." Does not say much. That is very vague. I'm looking for an explanation of what the chart is showing... What you wrote does not explain why one task does not have a bar on the chart and another one does. Or does the time of children tasks, stories, epics, etc, accumulate on the parent in the chart?

We are looking for a detailed explanation of what the chart shows.

 I changed my answer to a comment so that someone else can see this post and answer your question.


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Please see https://jazz.net/library/article/586 and https://jazz.net/wiki/bin/view/Deployment/RTCProcessFundamentals#Planning_Fundamentals for some minimal information.

I agree, that this could be documented better. My summary from what I have discussed and seen:
A work item gets planned if it has
  1. An owner that has scheduled availability for the owner of the plan (process area)
  2. Is planned for an iteration (would not show up in the plan otherwise either)

The time shown in the box depends on the availability of the person at that time (e.g. person available 30% and one day effort -> 3 days duration in plan). Person on scheduled absence can add days.

The order of the items (for an owner) correspond to the order in the Eclipse Client MyWork view. You can drag and drop in the roadmap, but I found that not very effective.

Donna Thomas selected this answer as the correct answer

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The Blocks and Depends on relationships are only informational and are not considered in the scheduler.

But why would no bar show up for a task? Two tasks look similar to us. We see 2 In Progress tasks, with time spent and remaining on the plan. My guess was that perhaps the allocation for the user was filled, so there was no time to allocate the time for the task that did not show a bar. Does that make sense?

PS: I really wish IBM would explain more of what the plans display (widgets too). They give such basic information without real details. Like, a query: you set a condition and display columns and get the data you expect. More complicated plan views like this (and sometimes widgets) never seem to show exactly what you expect.

It is practically impossible to debug something like that with as few information as this.

If a task does not show any bar check if

  1. It has an estimated effort
  2. It has an owner
  3. The owner is member of the team the item is filed against
  4. The owner is allocated to work for the team

Noting is ever easy. We have an article for queries and there are things you can not do with queries. We documented some things you can't do, but it is impossible to document that all.

We have several articles in the library that are worth checking: https://jazz.net/library/#sort=pubDate&project=rational-team-concert&tag=planning

See https://jazz.net/library/article/594 and https://jazz.net/library/article/761

We try to provide as much information as possible. The issue more often than not is that users often don't find it. Also it is not necessarily trivial to translate it into ones context.


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Question asked: Sep 15 '16, 2:16 p.m.

Question was seen: 1,419 times

Last updated: Sep 22 '16, 8:37 a.m.

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