Hi,

I am customizing a project that needs to work with staggered/shifted time lines. E.g. one set of teams works on developing hardware one does software for that hardware. To complete specific work the hardware team has to deliver some work that is then used in the software team to complete the work. Since the rhythm of both teams might be completely different e.g. the software team having more iterations in their milestone I decided to use two time lines. My use case is most likely not what development had in mind for 2.x but nevertheless is probably a common setup in the industry where software is not the only deliverable.

The setup looks like:

HW Time Line (HWTL)
SW Time Line (SWTL)

HWTeam (on HWTL)
Project Management Team (on SWTL)
SWTeam (on SWTL)

I would like to track over all progress in the plans of the Project Management Team Plans. SW and HW Teams are supposed to work on child work items and have their own plans. I need to file work items from one team on one time line to another team on another timeline.
Here some observations and requests for advice.

1. In the web ui for plans
1.1 I have only plan for and change owner as bulk operations. I can't easily assign a work item to another team. The planned for only shows the iteration of the timeline.
1.2. Even if displaying filed against or the team area in the plan view I can't change them.
1.3. The only way to do what is needed is on single work items in the plan web inline editor.
1.4. An option seems to be bulk update using a query. But it is harder to use since I can't see the children of a work item like I can in the Eclipse UI.

1.5 As a remark: I found the difference between the plan handling and the work Item query handling of the inline editor confusing. In the plan clicking on the summary closes the editor in the queries it opens and closes the work item inline editor. In queries I have to go to the edit symbol and have to explicitly close the editor using the button. I found the behavior in the plan more natural.
1.6 As a remark: Also the capability to at least edit some columns similar to the eclipse UI in plans (using a context menu like behavior) is very convenient and I'd like to see the same in the queries. To make it even more convenient it would be great to be able to configure which attributes should be accessible for this, as an example "Filed against".
1.7 As a remark: In the agile planning drag and drop only works for work items that are already in the plan view. E.g. I can move a work item to another iteration in the same plan. Top level work items on other plans don't accept to be drag/dropped onto the active plan. Not sure yet if it would have helped in my situation but it is certainly slightly different to the Behavior in Eclipse and it would be great if there would be a similar behavior.

2. In the Eclipse UI
2.1 In agile planning I am able to change filed against from the context menu, even bulk updates are possible. But apparently my choices are only Teams/categories on the same time line. This restricts my capabilities to distribute the work as required.
2.2. I can use inline editors for single items or the query capability and that might ease the work.
2.3 I can drag work items from one plan to another and top level work items ask if the children should be moved too. This is really nice and probably my best choice.

In general it would be nice if there would be better support for my situation in the plan editors especially the Web UI. It would be great if at least the filed against picker would allow me to select other choices not on my time line.

However, maybe I am just missing something and would be happy about any suggestions from other users.

Thanks,

Ralph