Checklists, Tickets, Tasks
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Hi there!
Our company has over than 20 developers and 2 huge projects. We started establishing of the agile methodology in our development and we are going to check if aC covers our requirements.
I've found that aC allows 3 types of assignements:
1. Checklist with tasks
2. Tickets
3. Page related tasks
I'm a bit confused. In which way these features should be used?
As I think at the moment:
1. Can be used for QA by filling things to be completed before product goes life.
2. Tickets are like a bugtracking.
3. It's good idea to manage project documentation (such as user scenarios) on these pages and to assign tasks related to the each of page scenario.
Could you explain how to build workflow using these features?
Thank you!
Our company has over than 20 developers and 2 huge projects. We started establishing of the agile methodology in our development and we are going to check if aC covers our requirements.
I've found that aC allows 3 types of assignements:
1. Checklist with tasks
2. Tickets
3. Page related tasks
I'm a bit confused. In which way these features should be used?
As I think at the moment:
1. Can be used for QA by filling things to be completed before product goes life.
2. Tickets are like a bugtracking.
3. It's good idea to manage project documentation (such as user scenarios) on these pages and to assign tasks related to the each of page scenario.
Could you explain how to build workflow using these features?
Thank you!
Ilija Studen
on Oct 16. 2007. 1:25 am
activeCollab is built so there is no workflow - you create one for yourself. Teams, businesses, industries, people - they are different and everyone uses activeCollab in a specific way.
activeCollab team member
Ilija, I can't imagine that these features were implemented without any background ideas of how to use.
May be someone from the community could provide me some samples of usage? We are using Agile methodology and I'm trying to understand how these features may be used. Is there any success stories?
May be someone from the community could provide me some samples of usage? We are using Agile methodology and I'm trying to understand how these features may be used. Is there any success stories?
Here is how we are currently using aC to deliver software to our clients. This will probably evolve over time.
Tickets are the main unit of work. This is because you can divide them up into tasks and record time against them. You can comment on them. You can also break them up into categories. So we use tickets to manage the following
client related categories
Feature Requests( ie User Stories)
Issues (bugs)
Ongoing Support ( a project has an on going support ticket that we use for booking time for unscheduled support)
internal categories
Overhead ( we create an internal project for us only and book time against internal Tickets)
We use Milestone to schedule the delivery of builds. We attach tickets to MileStones and move the tickets from MileStone to Milestone as needed if things slip or get moved up.
CheckList and Tasks we use for simple stuff that doesn't need time booked against it.
Tasks related to pages we are not using yet.
Hope this helps
Todd
Tickets are the main unit of work. This is because you can divide them up into tasks and record time against them. You can comment on them. You can also break them up into categories. So we use tickets to manage the following
client related categories
Feature Requests( ie User Stories)
Issues (bugs)
Ongoing Support ( a project has an on going support ticket that we use for booking time for unscheduled support)
internal categories
Overhead ( we create an internal project for us only and book time against internal Tickets)
We use Milestone to schedule the delivery of builds. We attach tickets to MileStones and move the tickets from MileStone to Milestone as needed if things slip or get moved up.
CheckList and Tasks we use for simple stuff that doesn't need time booked against it.
Tasks related to pages we are not using yet.
Hope this helps
Todd
Ilija Studen
on Oct 17. 2007. 1:03 pm
We use activeCollab a lot for all things activeCollab related:
1. We use tickets to track bug reports and feature requests. They are grouped in milestones where every milestone is one of the upcoming releases (currently two active are v1.0.4 and v1.1). If we don't have a feature planned for a specific release it is in Unknown Milestones group. From time to time we go through that group to see if there is something interesting we could add to the release we are working on.
2. We use pages for everything related to writing - documentation, release notes, blog posts... These documents evolve through time and we usually work in teams on them so revisions are a real life savior. Comments and email notifications are really helpful to have everyone in the loop.
Discussions, checklists, files and time-tracking are features we rarely use for our own business.
1. We use tickets to track bug reports and feature requests. They are grouped in milestones where every milestone is one of the upcoming releases (currently two active are v1.0.4 and v1.1). If we don't have a feature planned for a specific release it is in Unknown Milestones group. From time to time we go through that group to see if there is something interesting we could add to the release we are working on.
2. We use pages for everything related to writing - documentation, release notes, blog posts... These documents evolve through time and we usually work in teams on them so revisions are a real life savior. Comments and email notifications are really helpful to have everyone in the loop.
Discussions, checklists, files and time-tracking are features we rarely use for our own business.
activeCollab team member
Hi, I have the same problem as errd with understanding the pinciples of aC ... You say there is no defined workflow but this is very confusing. Maybe you can answer some wuestions:
- Milestones: You say you use them for "grouping" purposes. But to my understandig milestones in project-management are just important dates. Like "Website Launch". They have no time span (in aC you have to provide a time span > 1 day). Am I wrong with this definition?
- Milestones II: If you use the term "milestone" similar to "Group" - Why has it its own navigational section? Isn't it just another hierarchical level for tasks (Milestones -> Checklists -> Tasks)?
- Why can't I assign tasks directly to projects? I have alway to create checklists, right?
thanks!
orbi
- Milestones: You say you use them for "grouping" purposes. But to my understandig milestones in project-management are just important dates. Like "Website Launch". They have no time span (in aC you have to provide a time span > 1 day). Am I wrong with this definition?
- Milestones II: If you use the term "milestone" similar to "Group" - Why has it its own navigational section? Isn't it just another hierarchical level for tasks (Milestones -> Checklists -> Tasks)?
- Why can't I assign tasks directly to projects? I have alway to create checklists, right?
thanks!
orbi
These questions are a single blocker of using aC. And I think there should be a lot of people having similar questions.
From my point of view Tickets feature should be used for bugs tracking and features requests (but for requests only).
If team decided to implement requested feature then some <Task> should be created.
Tasks may be used in this way if they have description field, not only the summary.
Also tasks are assigned to pages, that's great... but there is no way for administrator to browse all of the tasks created on all of the pages.
Then if Pages are feature like project documentation, it's good to have Pages Index similar to Table of Contents.
Also it is useful to view tasks list for each person on the single page, may be I just haven't found this feature?
Ilija, you do very usefull job for all of us, look forward for any comments on this!
Thank you!
From my point of view Tickets feature should be used for bugs tracking and features requests (but for requests only).
If team decided to implement requested feature then some <Task> should be created.
Tasks may be used in this way if they have description field, not only the summary.
Also tasks are assigned to pages, that's great... but there is no way for administrator to browse all of the tasks created on all of the pages.
Then if Pages are feature like project documentation, it's good to have Pages Index similar to Table of Contents.
Also it is useful to view tasks list for each person on the single page, may be I just haven't found this feature?
Ilija, you do very usefull job for all of us, look forward for any comments on this!
Thank you!
Ilija Studen
on Oct 18. 2007. 8:47 am
First, a really brief definition:
* Ticket - big tasks that can be discussed, connected to a milestone, have attachments, long description etc. For instance, we have the "Improve TinyMCE integration" ticket that we are working on. It's a complex problem and we broke it into smaller tasks, has some screenshots attached etc. Also, "Localization" ticket. BIG task with a lot of things that need to be done before we can hit the Complete button.
* Task - small task that represent steps in execution of a bigger task - ticket, page or checklist. For instance, we have a "Fix Indent for elements that are not list items" in "Improve TinyMCE integration." If you need a standalone task create a ticket.
* Milestone are designed to let you define phases project is going through, not just deadlines. For instance, we started working on new version few days ago and have a deadline set for a specific day in the future - it's a period with the beginning and the end. This is how they are implemented now. We'll see in the future how can improve them so they can be used to mark single day events like deadlines and avoid the confusion.
Tickets can be grouped by the project phase they are part of, right? Due date is OK for setting the exact date when ticket needs to be completed, but milestone lets you define what phase of projects lifecycle it belongs to. On the other hand, you can group tickets in Categories. We have Bugs, Feature Requests, Modules etc in our setup, but you can decide to use a different set based on your needs.
When I said that there is no workflow I meant that activeCollab is a set of tools that can be used in many ways. What works for us does not necessarily needs to work for you and the other way around. We have been using activeCollab for the past 3 months and we already have a workflow that works for us, but it's still evolving. As time goes by we are learning better ways to keep things on track, organize data, our efforts etc.
I'll be working on detailed descriptions of what activeCollab modules CAN do, but it's up to you to decide how you will use them.
* Ticket - big tasks that can be discussed, connected to a milestone, have attachments, long description etc. For instance, we have the "Improve TinyMCE integration" ticket that we are working on. It's a complex problem and we broke it into smaller tasks, has some screenshots attached etc. Also, "Localization" ticket. BIG task with a lot of things that need to be done before we can hit the Complete button.
* Task - small task that represent steps in execution of a bigger task - ticket, page or checklist. For instance, we have a "Fix Indent for elements that are not list items" in "Improve TinyMCE integration." If you need a standalone task create a ticket.
* Milestone are designed to let you define phases project is going through, not just deadlines. For instance, we started working on new version few days ago and have a deadline set for a specific day in the future - it's a period with the beginning and the end. This is how they are implemented now. We'll see in the future how can improve them so they can be used to mark single day events like deadlines and avoid the confusion.
Tickets can be grouped by the project phase they are part of, right? Due date is OK for setting the exact date when ticket needs to be completed, but milestone lets you define what phase of projects lifecycle it belongs to. On the other hand, you can group tickets in Categories. We have Bugs, Feature Requests, Modules etc in our setup, but you can decide to use a different set based on your needs.
When I said that there is no workflow I meant that activeCollab is a set of tools that can be used in many ways. What works for us does not necessarily needs to work for you and the other way around. We have been using activeCollab for the past 3 months and we already have a workflow that works for us, but it's still evolving. As time goes by we are learning better ways to keep things on track, organize data, our efforts etc.
I'll be working on detailed descriptions of what activeCollab modules CAN do, but it's up to you to decide how you will use them.
activeCollab team member
Thanks for this Ilija. I'd noticed that milestones changed from 0.71, in that you can no longer include a 'note' with the milestone. One other thing is that it currently looks like it's not possible to delete milestones, only complete them.
