ndp's dashboard

A comment on the idea "API-based story re-ordering" in Pivotal Labs:

I think moving it after a specific story is probably the clearest.

This feature brings up concurrent modification issues. Having an absolute position in the list would probably be most vulnerable to this, whereas being after a specific story would produce bad results if someone else moved that reference story.

I suppose you could say "place between these two stories and fail if they are not one after another." Actually, that sounds pretty safe...

We need the ability to move anywhere in the backlog right now, not just to the top or bottom. – ndp, on November 16, 2009 23:39

ndp started following the idea "API-based story re-ordering" in Pivotal Labs.

ndp marked one of Cameron O'Rourke's replies in Pivotal Labs as useful. Cameron O'Rourke replied to the idea "It would be nice to have an easy way to split a story in two.".

ndp replied on January 30, 2009 20:52 to the problem "Velocity calculation is jumping all over the place for us" in Pivotal Labs:

/projects/3598/stories
vs.
/projects/3598/stories?include_all_iterations=true

I also just noticed that the graphs are messed up as well.

Here's workaround: if I change "number of done iterations to show" to the same (or greater than) the number of iterations for velocity calculations, it's all good. Perhaps therein lies a solution.

But it seems like the graphs, and perhaps other things, will still be off.

ndp started following a topic that has since been removed from goBalto. see the change log

ndp reported a problem in Pivotal Labs on January 28, 2009 20:05:

Velocity calculation is jumping all over the place for us

When I bring up my project the velocity will be 6. This doesn't look right, so I go into my "Done" stories to see what is up. It only has the last 2 iterations, so I hit the button that loads all the previous iterations. My velocity changes to 12.

It seems to me I have seen a third number sometimes. I haven't isolated this though. It also could be something around team strength, which I have modified over the holidays and MLK day.

ndp posted a topic that has since been removed from goBalto. see the change log

ndp asked a question in Apple on January 05, 2009 04:03:

Reactivating an account? Good luck.

Because I had an old credit card in the system, I got a note from Apple to change the credit card. ("If your account cannot be renewed, your access will be restricted"). Well, I did what they said, went the the me.com site and changed my credit card (which it accepted). But when I hit the "Reactivate..." button, I get (another) login screen, and then a 404 page. Happens every time, both Firefox and Safari.

ndp replied on December 14, 2008 04:46 to the idea "It would be nice to have Timestamp each time the Status field is changed" in Pivotal Labs:

Yes I'm using the API to pull dates about stories, but most of the information is missing. Just having the finished date for finished stories isn't enough. No way to figure out durations, or how many stories get rejected, etc. It also seems like the iteration information isn't the same information displayed within the tracker UI. I'm still working on it, though...

ndp started following the idea "It would be nice to have Timestamp each time the Status field is changed" in Pivotal Labs.

ndp started following the idea "Bugs and Chores should be estimable, without counting toward velocity." in Pivotal Labs.

ndp replied on August 21, 2008 18:43 to the idea "It would be nice to be able to switch a task to 'Not Started' easily" in Pivotal Labs:

I just call it "Unstart", and yeah it happens enough that it would be nice to be able to do it with a click or two less.

ndp replied on July 25, 2008 19:32 to the problem "Dragging from icebox to backlog goes to current iteration" in Pivotal Labs:

Perhaps this is a place where a little animation could clarify what's going on... perhaps it goes where you drop it, and the bounces into the backlog as it doesn't fit...

ndp shared an idea in Pivotal Labs on July 24, 2008 01:32:

Stories linking to other stories without new windows

When clicking on internal links to stories, it opens another tab (or window) for me. I don't really need this window... it would be great if it just "reveal"ed it in the current window. This would make it more usable to link to other stories.

This could actually be pretty easy to implement... when recognizing URL, if it looks like /https?:\/\/www\.pivotaltracker\.com\/story\/show\/\d+/ replace it with the javascript behind the "reveal" button.

ndp replied on March 07, 2008 23:29 to the problem "Inviting user fails with "Email is in use already."" in Pivotal Labs:

I've had this problem a two (or was it three?) times. It seems unfair to ask for their exact name and initials...

If it's a privacy issue, why don't you just not reveal the name and initials until the recipient accepts the project invitation.

ndp started following the problem "Inviting user fails with "Email is in use already."" in Pivotal Labs.

ndp replied on January 25, 2008 17:58 to the idea "I would love a public API for Tracker" in Pivotal Labs:

A couple thoughts:
1. We settled on using JIRA and Tracker in tandem on a couple projects, so coordination between them would be useful. On one project, we did our iteration planning in one tool (not tracker, but the same function), and then when we started the iteration, we put the stories into JIRA, each as its own task. JIRA provides workflow and commenting that tracker doesn't need. So facilitating this, coordinating IDs, automatically linking things would be nice.

2. We almost always have a Confluence wiki page backing a story or set of stories. People want somewhere to write more, upload lots of images, etc. Tracker has this, but it is more "comfortable" in a wiki, and people are just used to it. Also, often several stories have a shared wiki page, which tracker doesn't handle.

So some sort of automatic linking would be convenient... we just copy and paste URLs from the wiki into Tracker. We never have pasted tracker links into the wiki.

3. Finally, I don't think having a simple RSS feed of the current iteration would hurt. I don't mind keeping tracker up all day in a tab, but I bet some people would dig the RSS feed more.

ndp replied on January 23, 2008 05:15 to the idea "How about custom point values" in Pivotal Labs:

I appreciate that tracker prescribes much of the process, eliminating choices that are meaningless or problematic... so I don't feel that more point choices will make us any more productive or our estimates any better...

A couple points, though:
- zero pt stories are allowed. I wrote a separate report requesting the ability not turn this off.
- It _would_ be useful support larger pt values (13/20/40 etc.) for "epics". We've had to find out some way around this. We've used a couple techniques (unsuccessfully):
(a) don't estimate these stories until we can break them up
(b) our highest pt value is "illegal" and denotes a story that needs to be re-estimated. These are both "hacks" around the tool

It would be nice to do this the right way.

ndp asked a question in Pivotal Labs on January 23, 2008 00:55:

Is there a way to turn off the ability to make zero point stories?

The practice at estimating zero point stories is controversal for some people (not me). It would be nice to have point scales that didn't include this.

I know, I know... just don't use it.

ndp replied on January 23, 2008 00:47 to the idea "I would like current and backlog columns merged into one" in Pivotal Labs:

yeah, maybe "backlog" is confusing with scrum... "upcoming"? "scheduled?" ... you could use "past" "present" and "future" tabs...

I too have had trouble explaining the icebox (but only a little). the fact that it's prioritized like the backlog is a little counter-intuitive to its purpose (at least how i perceive it-- a repository for unprioritized stuff). It's tempting to try to maintain order there...

sure, if there were some way stories were organized there that was different than the queue, that would probably make more sense-- but what would it be? and how would people understand it? in the end i'm happy with the metaphor, love it's strengths and can live with its weaknesses.