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Best Setup for 60 Systems developed by 5 Teams

We have:
- An organization of 80 professionals,
- Developing and maintaining about 60 SW Systems - 20 of which are active, i.e. have regular planned 'Maintenance' and 'New Dev' releases ... 40 of which have < 3 Bugs/New dev per year.
- The 80 professionals belong to 1 of these 5 'Organizational Teams': Customer Support, Technical Support, Development, Test and Project Management Teams

The 'Organizational Teams' must have a cross-System view on *all* Systems (e.g. Developers are responsible for developing *all* Systems).
Typically, 1 given WI type (e.g. Defect) is assigned from 1 'Organizational Team' to another during the workflow (e.g. Customer Support Assigns Defect to Technical Support Team).

What we've come up with in RTC (where we can only have 1 Project Area) is:
1 WI Category per System, 1 'System_Team_Area' Team Area per System (associated to the corresponding WI Category), 2 Timelines per System (1 Maintenance, 1 Main Dev).
We also created 5 Roles that roughly correspond to the 'Organizational Teams' naming and through which we can restrict who-does-what (e.g. only Developers can Resolve a Defect etc).

This provides us per-System Plans (i.e. we have 120 'Current' Iterations/Plans).
Using queries on the work items, 'Organizational Teams' can track e.g. all Open Defects across all Systems.
However, we can not have 1 per-'Organizational Team' Overview Plan, since each Timeline is related to 1 'System' and not to 1 'Organizational Team'. So the cross-System view can only be achieved using queries (as there can be no Plan spanning multiple Timelines).

Question: How could we best 'represent' the 'Organizational Team' in RTC (different from 'System_Team_Area', different from 'Roles') in our case ?
Thinking of just using a 'Enumeration' with the 5 names, and add 1 'Team Assignment' field to work items, which could then be queried.
Any other 'better idea' ?

Thanks

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Hi christophe
To start to answer your question "How could we best 'represent' the 'Organizational Team' in RTC (different from 'System_Team_Area', different from 'Roles') in our case ? "
Why not use team areas?

I'm not sure I have understood everything you have written. So excuse me if I missed some points. I am assuming WI stands for Work Item
What went through my mind when reading this.
I agree you only should have project area.
I'm not sure about "1 WI Category per System". There I would say there is one project per system. For me the work items are used for functional decomposition of the process and not for the functional decomposition of your business domain.
2 Timelines per System (1 Maintenance, 1 Main Dev) seems OK for me. However given 3 bugs/year it may not be needed to create a timeline for the Maintenance. You do need a main dev and maintenance stream though. Not having 2 timelines for each systems will take the burden of 120 Current iteration plans away. What is the use of having a iteration plan with 1, 2 or even 3 bugs?
Having 5 roles that correspondent to the existing teams is a fine starting point. The customer should be aware that more roles are likely to be added in the future.

Best regards
Jan



We have:
- An organization of 80 professionals,
- Developing and maintaining about 60 SW Systems - 20 of which are active, i.e. have regular planned 'Maintenance' and 'New Dev' releases ... 40 of which have < 3 Bugs/New dev per year.
- The 80 professionals belong to 1 of these 5 'Organizational Teams': Customer Support, Technical Support, Development, Test and Project Management Teams

The 'Organizational Teams' must have a cross-System view on *all* Systems (e.g. Developers are responsible for developing *all* Systems).
Typically, 1 given WI type (e.g. Defect) is assigned from 1 'Organizational Team' to another during the workflow (e.g. Customer Support Assigns Defect to Technical Support Team).

What we've come up with in RTC (where we can only have 1 Project Area) is:
1 WI Category per System, 1 'System_Team_Area' Team Area per System (associated to the corresponding WI Category), 2 Timelines per System (1 Maintenance, 1 Main Dev).
We also created 5 Roles that roughly correspond to the 'Organizational Teams' naming and through which we can restrict who-does-what (e.g. only Developers can Resolve a Defect etc).

This provides us per-System Plans (i.e. we have 120 'Current' Iterations/Plans).
Using queries on the work items, 'Organizational Teams' can track e.g. all Open Defects across all Systems.
However, we can not have 1 per-'Organizational Team' Overview Plan, since each Timeline is related to 1 'System' and not to 1 'Organizational Team'. So the cross-System view can only be achieved using queries (as there can be no Plan spanning multiple Timelines).

Question: How could we best 'represent' the 'Organizational Team' in RTC (different from 'System_Team_Area', different from 'Roles') in our case ?
Thinking of just using a 'Enumeration' with the 5 names, and add 1 'Team Assignment' field to work items, which could then be queried.
Any other 'better idea' ?

Thanks

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... "How could we best 'represent' the 'Organizational Team' in RTC ...
Why not use team areas?

Well, because we use the the concept for 'Team Area' for 'System' (i.e. 1 Team Area per System ... to be able to associate each 'System' Work Item Category to the corresponding 'Team Area', and to have the per-System Planning)


What is the use of having a iteration plan with 1, 2 or even 3 bugs?

Agree on that one ... there is no need/point to multiply Plans for Systems which only have 1 Bug per year --> we will define Timelines only for those 'active' Systems. For the 1-bug-per-year, queries are enough.

But so, still don't know for sure if representing the 'Organizational Team' by an Enumeration (the 'Team Areas' themselves being associated to a System) is the best option ...

Any other 'best suggestion' welcome, Thanks

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Question asked: Feb 15 '12, 3:57 a.m.

Question was seen: 6,576 times

Last updated: Feb 15 '12, 3:57 a.m.

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