Heidi's dashboard

Heidi replied on December 11, 2008 19:19 to the question "Out of sequence error & stale command error" in Pivotal Labs:

Hi - I've been getting out of sequence errors today/yesterday. After the second one I got today, a release marker keeps getting placed at the bottom of the backlog.

Heidi asked a question in Pivotal Labs on November 14, 2008 23:28:

Getting a lot of you are currently offline messages

We are getting a lot of messages that tell us we are currently offline and then our changes get reversed. But our internet connection is fine. It's just today. Tracker has been working better for us in general.

Heidi replied on October 07, 2008 22:15 to the question "Moving multiple stories to "top of backlog" moves the stories to top of Current in FF3.03" in Pivotal Labs:

Hi Mark- current is filled up with stories matching our velocity. If you want to contact me via email I can show you via screensharing.

Heidi asked a question in Pivotal Labs on October 07, 2008 21:46:

Moving multiple stories to "top of backlog" moves the stories to top of Current in FF3.03

STR:
-select some stories (I selected 6)
-select actions->move to top of backlog
-result: the stories got moved to top of current (also reproduced with a separate set of stories, and also on another account/computer here)
-moving to the icebox or to the bottom of the backlog works.

Heidi shared an idea in Pivotal Labs on October 03, 2008 18:03:

Add ability to distinguish groups of stories

It would be nice to have the ability to add a solid line (or something) to separate groups of stories from each other.

Although you use labels to mark stories that doesn't seem to distinguish groups of stories enough.

We have been using release markers to separate groups of stories as you can see in the screenshot but they are very bulky and not intended to be used for this.

Anyhow, food for thought.

Heidi asked a question in Pivotal Labs on September 23, 2008 22:32:

Bug count different than type=bug. Why?

Bug count says 204. I search for type:bug and I get 213 results. Which is correct? See attached screenshot.

Heidi replied on September 10, 2008 18:48 to the question "Some stories moving on their own" in Pivotal Labs:

Hi - we just had another case where some stories moved on their own into current - this time from the bottom of backlog to current.

Looking at tracker history for one of the stories, it first says it was "unscheduled" and then it was "unstarted". But there is no history of actually starting the story, and I asked the guy who's name is in the story if he started and unstarted and he said no.

What does unscheduled mean?

?

Heidi replied on August 22, 2008 17:42 to the idea "Sprint burndown chart" in Pivotal Labs:

Hi YY I didn't notice this until now. Tell me your email address and I can share the googledoc with you.

Heidi reported a problem in Pivotal Labs on August 22, 2008 17:26:

Open story moves up/down when another user doing something

This isn't that big of a deal but fixing it would make the app more polished.

When someone else is using tracker at the same time as you are, you can see the notification at the top of your screen indicating who made a change. When that notification shows up, if another person has a story open, the open story moves up and down.

Scenario in which this is annoying:
Joe is projecting an open story on the wall, and he is discussing it with a group of developers.
Tom is re-ordering a bunch of stories at the same time.
Joe is annoyed by Tom since he is trying to read the story aloud for the group but it keeps moving around on him.

Heidi reported a problem in Pivotal Labs on August 21, 2008 17:57:

Apache error when trying to export to CSV

-Click on orange CSV image.
-Wait for result
-you see the attached error.

Heidi replied on August 12, 2008 14:00 to the question "Restarts still moving to bottom of backlog on their own" in Pivotal Labs:

I don't know if you did anything to this, but it hasn't been happening for the past few days.

Heidi replied on August 07, 2008 21:47 to the question "Restarts still moving to bottom of backlog on their own" in Pivotal Labs:

Thanks for looking into that and for the update. I just found another one down there that I moved back to current. Strange.

Heidi asked a question in Pivotal Labs on August 07, 2008 11:16:

Restarts still moving to bottom of backlog on their own

We have team strength adjusted this sprint and every day, consistently, some of the restarts are at the bottom of the backlog. I've been moving them over to current manually. If I refresh they don't correct themselves. Wondering if the mystery moving of stuff is related to team strength?

Heidi replied on August 01, 2008 16:30 to the question "Some stories moving on their own" in Pivotal Labs:

FYI - This morning all of our restarts moved to the bottom of the backlog and then they were moved back manually to current. I didn't get a chance to tell anyone to hit reload first before moving them.

Heidi replied on July 31, 2008 01:03 to the idea "Sprint burndown chart" in Pivotal Labs:

Hi - I've seen that. It's a nice chart but it doesn't get granular enough for us to use it.

Some type of visual way to identify clogs or bottlenecks in our system is what we need so we can try to fix things during the sprint - before our sprint is over.

If we can see, for example, that a lot of stories remain each day in deliver state we can have a discussion about how to speed up our qa delivery process (which is what we use the deliver state for). So then we can try to course correct and keep things moving.

Or maybe some stories stay in accept/reject too long and we need to speed that up to get quicker feedback from our product owner. (We have one person who goes through stories in accept/reject all during the sprint).

And sometimes there is a need to add stories during a sprint. Bringing visibility to that can be really powerful since there is a cost to adding points.

We can get this type of info by looking at the Current column in tracker each day, but to be able to see this for a period of days helps us get the bigger picture so we can take action and meet the goal we set a the beginning of the sprint before it's too late.

Heidi replied on July 30, 2008 23:56 to the idea "Sprint burndown chart" in Pivotal Labs:

By the way, Google autoassigns the colors in the chart and you can't change them. You could choose better color mapping to the different states. It might also be nice to hover over a color on a particular day, like the delivers on 6/17 and get the number of points that are in that state. But those are extras.

Heidi shared an idea in Pivotal Labs on July 30, 2008 22:11:

Sprint burndown chart

I have been creating a sprint burndown chart manually every day using a Google spreadsheet. Attached is an example (with fake data).

I hang it on our bulletin board daily above our espresso machine next to an old picture of a Pivotal mustache contest. Hee hee.

This chart keeps our sprint progress visible to anyone who is interested.

Maybe something like this could be built into Tracker someday?

Heidi started following the question "Printer friendly layout of 'Current'?" in Pivotal Labs.

Heidi asked a question in Pivotal Labs on July 25, 2008 16:58:

Sometimes descriptions aren't saved and people lose information

Sometimes tracker doesn't save the descriptions that you enter into stories. People that are writing longer stories are starting to write the descriptions in a text editor and then are copying and pasting into tracker. This is something that has been frustrating a lot of people. Typical errors that happen when people lose things are the unresponsive script error and also that someone was editing the same story, and then the issue where the connection icon in the upper right corner of tracker is showing with the red circle with a line through it. Maybe there is something that can be done to prevent losing information. ??

Heidi asked a question in Pivotal Labs on July 23, 2008 22:05:

Some stories are staying orange longer than usual

Some stories are staying orange after someone makes a change to the story. Usually they blink orange and then change back to the color that they were. If you refresh the orange goes away.