Agilo Open 0.8.3 | Working Days, Multiple Backlogs and Project Burndown Chart

[dhummel]

Hi all!

I have three (more) questions to Agilo 0.8.3.

First I am wondering on how to define "working days". If I create a
sprint from 7.1.2010 to 21.1.2010 Agilo calculates this as 12 working
days. But we don't work on saturdays (and neiter on sundays ;-)...

Secend question is about backlogs. How can I create multiple Backlogs
(Product 1 Backlog, Retrospective Backlog, ...) and put Req, Stories,
Tasks in them which only show up in the one backlog I entered them. If
I create entries in one backlog they are visible in all of them.
Notice that I cannot set the strict option because we do priorization
meetings where we put entries to milestones. Setting strict doesnt
show any story at all for me.

Third question is about planning. I personally think that one of the
big benefits of scrum is planning in the meaning that I could do an
estimation of the project end (milestone end) based on the current
velocity. It would be nice if agilo would show a "project burndown
chart" or even better a "milestone burndown chart" like the sprint
burndown chart...

Regards
dietmar

[Martin Häcker]

Hi Dietmar,

> First I am wondering on how to define "working days". If I create a
> sprint from 7.1.2010 to 21.1.2010 Agilo calculates this as 12 working
> days. But we don't work on saturdays (and neiter on sundays ;-)...

This should definitely not be the case. To understand this better, could
you please elaborate on the timezones used on the server and on the clients?

Also at what time does the sprint start and end? It may be that we have
bugs in the calculations that try to mesh the timezones with the concept
of working days (which turns out to be quite hard).

> Secend question is about backlogs. How can I create multiple Backlogs
> (Product 1 Backlog, Retrospective Backlog, ...) and put Req, Stories,
> Tasks in them which only show up in the one backlog I entered them. If
> I create entries in one backlog they are visible in all of them.
> Notice that I cannot set the strict option because we do priorization
> meetings where we put entries to milestones. Setting strict doesnt
> show any story at all for me.

This is interesting. In Agilo the Backlogs filter by type - so if you
want an item to show only in a specific backlog, you need to create
custom types for that backlog.

That way you have full controll in which backlogs you want to show them.

I'd like to note however that due to a current bug remaining time on
custom types will not be counted for the capacity - we will probably fix
that in this or the next release.

> Third question is about planning. I personally think that one of the
> big benefits of scrum is planning in the meaning that I could do an
> estimation of the project end (milestone end) based on the current
> velocity. It would be nice if agilo would show a "project burndown
> chart" or even better a "milestone burndown chart" like the sprint
> burndown chart...

Yes it would. :-)

We are working on this as one of the next goals after we reworked the
backlog that supports these hooks more easily.

Best Regards,
Martin

[dhummel]

On 16 Dez., 09:54, Martin Häcker <martin.haec...@agile42.com> wrote:
> Hi Dietmar,
>
> > First I am wondering on how to define "working days". If I create a
> > sprint from 7.1.2010 to 21.1.2010 Agilo calculates this as 12 working
> > days. But we don't work on saturdays (and neiter on sundays ;-)...
>
> This should definitely not be the case. To understand this better, could
> you please elaborate on the timezones used on the server and on the clients?
>
> Also at what time does the sprint start and end? It may be that we have
> bugs in the calculations that try to mesh the timezones with the concept
> of working days (which turns out to be quite hard).

Mea culpa! I found the "bug". The problem was that the sprint start
time was set to 0:00 o'clock.
This shows up as 23:00/day before on some clients (difference between
MEZ - UTC).
If I set it to 8:00 the calculation is correct.

Regards
dietmar

[Andrea Tomasini]

On 16 Dec, 2009, at 12:21 , dhummel wrote:

Hi Dietmar,

Keep in mind that the Burndown chart is shown according to the client set timezone, therefore if a client connects from UTC+5 and the sprint was set in UTC, the burndown chart and the dynamic lines will be shown with UTC offset, the weekends will be shown with the client locale. It is not an optimal solution, but the burndown must be bound to where the team sits, so the assumption we make is that the Scrum Master, that can create the sprint (or the Product Owner) are sitting close to the team ;-)

We will improve these settings... soon ;-)

> Regards

Best

> dietmar

ANdreaT