Another take on the Portfolio Timeline page in Rally: a string board for PI planning with drag'n'drop positioning.
Option 1: after selecting a top level item, the app will find all the portfolio items attached to that and then lay them out using the PlannedStartDate and PlannedEndDate. The initial view will be today minus 30days until today plus 180 days, but you can set that in the app settings if you want to override it.
The lowest level portfolio items can be filtered based on the advanced filter settings. This means that you can look at just those items that are in a Release timebox, or just the things that are yours, etc.
Option 2: select a portfolio type and all those of that level found in the current context will be shown. The filters then apply to the level chosen.
You can make the view expand so that a particular item fills the dateline by clicking on the text of the title. If you have finished with that view and want to return to the full view, just click on the white background.
If items do not have correct dates set, then they will appear lined up to the left.
The span of the item is used as a progress bar and shows a colour going from left to right as far as the %-done field says. The %-done can be story points or story count via the app settings. The colour chosen is based around the standard Rally algorithm of comparing the amount of work defined against the expected completion rate.
You can ask the app to fetch items in the work hierarchy. So that means you can get stories and defects (that are connected to stories only) into the view. If you put up the Iteration and Release timeboxes you can see when things are scheduled.
NB: If you select to see one portfolio level only AND you ask for team level items, the 'one level only' gets overridden and you will get the hierarchy. This allows you to select all features, filter on a release (aka PI: Program Increment) and see all the Features and Stories associated with the PI
You can have just the timeline (no vertical colouring), timeline+releases, timeline+iterations or timeline+release+iterations. If you are running Kanban teams, then do not select Iterations or Releases and then you will be able to use a custom field to supply a "Target Date" or "Required By" date. User stories and Defects with this field will then be placed in the timeline with am icon that has a small sliver on it's righthand side so that you can get to the card pop-up. This sliver will be white if the story has no AcceptedDate or grey if it does. If you do not provide a correct field name or the contents of the field is not set, then the artefacts will be placed on the "Today's Date" line.
All defined dependencies for the items shown can be revealed by using the selection box at the top of the page. Choose 'All', 'User Stories', 'Features'(aka lowest level portfolio items) or all 'Portfolio Items'.
If you have a lot of portfolio items and only want to see those with dependencies, there is an app setting for that too. If you select a single level of portfolio item, then you will see them all. If you are still on the multi-level view, then only the lowest level portfolio item dependencies are shown (as the default).
Hover over a dependency link dot and it will give you the dependency popover. Hover over the bar and it will give you a small details panel. If you then decide you want to look at an item in more detail, click on the suitcase icon in the left end of the bar. This will open a either an FDP or QDP panel for the item.
The dependencies are those that exist between the portfolio items. The user story dependencies are not rolled up in this app right now. However, you can get to them via the datapanel just mentioned.
The dependency lines can be shown for just the lowest level item (usually Features) or you can ask for all of them. If you ask for all of them, then the higher level portfolio item dependencies are shown by dashed lines. The dashes get bigger the higher up the portfolio hierarchy the items are. Lowest level item dependencies remain as solid lines.
Select either Global Milestones (those with no project associations) in brown or Project Milestones in green. Dateline is in black.
The dependency dots and lines on the bars are coloured when there is a discrepancy in the Planned dates compared with the items parent. E.g. the dates are outside the parent's ones.
The text of a bar goes red as well (and this is independent of dependencies).
The up/down arrows to the far left of the bar will collapse/restore that portfolio item and it's corresponding children. Use alt-click to toggle the state of all the items at the same portfolio level as the one you clicked on for that parent only. E.g. if all Features are open, then alt-click on a Feature will close up all Features below the parent Initiative. You can use the metaKey (on a Mac that is the 'command' key) to close every single item at the same level as the one you click on, regardless of which parent it is connected to.
If you think the text is too small, you can set a "line size" in the options which will increase the bar width and the font size!
The symbol on the left end of the bar will take you directly to the edit page for that item. If you update the start/end dates in the edit panel, then the view will redraw to reflect those changes. If the portfolio item does not have both the PlannedStart and PlannedEnd dates, then the symbol will be red
Now for the good bit..... YOU CAN DRAG AND DROP the items to change their dates. In this initial version, you can drag on the bar (not just the text or icon) and you can push the item back and forth. The duration of the item does not change. If you want to change that, then click on the three bar symbol and manually modify the dates. Don't forget to save any changes using the button at the top before you do or they won't be reflected in the QDP. Alternatively, you can use the QDP to change them and the change will be removed from those outstanding (which can then be saved using the other button at the top).
Just added the ability to drag stories about. The stories without a timebox will be clustered around the "Today's Date" line. If you have the Releases and Iterations in view, moving the story around will cause both those to be set to where you move the story to. Stories and Defects get given a length equal to the Iteration they are in, if appropriate.