The Seapine View

The TestTrack Agile Task Board gives team the ability to work with project information via a web browser or mobile device. In a previous post, we discussed how to configure the task board. In this post, I’d like to share more information about how you can use the task board.

Mobile Meetings

The Task Board is a great way to enhance your existing meetings and stand-ups, whether they’re in a conference room or just outside of your cube. Meeting leaders can use an iPad or other tablet computer to give everyone insight into project status and make changes to project artifacts on the fly. Remote team members can get a real-time view of the same information, with the ability to view and update work items along with the rest of the team. Meetings become much more efficient, and the team isn’t left in the dark just because a member or two might be traveling and unable to reach a computer to provide their updates.

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The TestTrack Agile Task Board is a fully configurable web interface, enabling teams to work with TestTrack in a streamlined interface configured to match the way they work.

Let’s look at how a team can set up the Agile Task Board to deliver the information they need for their project. Logging onto the Task Board presents a view of tasks to do, in progress, blocked, and completed. Configuration options can be accessed across the top of the page.

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TestTrack’s sample project includes a sample workflow for managing requirements and requirement documents. In most cases, customers base their workflow on the sample, but want to tweak it to meet their needs. This article  explains how to make three quick tweaks to the sample workflow: configuring when requirements and requirement documents are locked, enabling test cases to be generated from requirements, and configuring the workflow states and events.

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One of the core strengths of TestTrack is its configurable workflow. It allows TestTrack to support your process, regardless of complexity. The workflow consists of two main components:

1. States: These are the steps an item goes through. Also known as the item’s status.
2. Events: These usually represent user actions and are used to move an item from one state to another, assign an item, and more. Events are tied to the user that performed it and the date. Other data can be captured as well.

For a more in-depth look at how the workflow is configured, check out the workflow tutorial I posted.

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When I review TestTrack defects to address documentation requests or review product change requests that affect documentation, I typically look at the Overview tab first. This tab displays a read-only summary of the defect description, workflow events, and tracked emails. It helps me quickly see all the information related to the defect in one place and follow any discussion about the defect in sequential order.

Our development or QA teams typically enter a Comment workflow event to add feedback to defects instead of adding comments to the defect description field. This makes it much easier to follow the discussion thread because inline comments can get buried if a description is long.
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Most TestTrack workflows consist of several states, each representing a status in the process. Usually, several of these states are considered “open”, meaning more steps are needed before completing the item. Also, there are states that are considered “closed”, meaning that an item is finished when it reaches that state.

In TestTrack, open vs. closed is designated through the use of state attributes. Each state in the workflow must have a state attribute of either “Open” or “Closed”.

State Attributes

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If you use TestTrack and have it integrated with Surround SCM, you probably know that you can access the Fix workflow event when you associate a source code file with a defect during a check in operation. In TestTrack, you have a Check in & Fix button

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TestTrack’s built-in time tracking features make it easy to manage estimates, get updates on actual and remaining effort, and gain insight from the data about project status. You can track and report on time for specific items or across all items in a project—all directly in TestTrack. For a quick introduction to time tracking, see How TestTrack Time Tracking Works.

Use the following tips to make configuring time tracking easier. After completing some pre-work, you can easily modify projects to implement time tracking the way you want to use it and test the configuration before users start entering time.

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TestTrack includes built-in time tracking features that make it easy to manage estimates, get updates on actual and remaining effort, and gain insight from the data about project status. You can track and report on time for specific items or across all items in a project—all directly in TestTrack.

Before you configure time tracking, it is important to have a basic understanding of how it works, including the available data, how values are captured and calculated, and where you can view the data.

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Custom fields allow you to define metadata you want to capture about a file beyond the normal information (like last date modified) that Surround SCM inherently tracks. Each field can be typed as text, integer, float, list, SCM users, date/time or check box. You can also set default values for any of these.

By themselves, custom fields let you do some useful things. For example, Surround ships with a custom field called Owner, which is a drop-down list of your users. As a team lead you can grab groups of design specifications and, with one click, assign those files to an engineer to manage.

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