Planning a project

This task describes how to plan a project using the Eclipse UI of Rational Team Concert™. A project plan is the highest-level plan in Rational Team Concert that provides a brief overview of the project goals. A project plan displays top-level work items that are associated to the project area.
Practices Tool Mentor This topic is similar to information that was previously found in Tool Mentors in the IBM Practice Library.

For additional information about the Release Planning practice and its tasks, see the IBM Practice Library at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/practices/2lvl_prjplan/.

Starting state

In this task, we will use the Scrum process template. In Rational Team Concert Project Plans are associated with project areas. Before continuing with this task, ensure that your project area is created and configured with the appropriate team areas, work item types, and work item categories. You should also ensure that work items have been created for the main tasks you want to accomplish in the project. For information on creating and configuring project areas, team areas, and work items, see the following topics:

To create a high-level plan for your project, you will perform the following steps:

Create a plan

You can create plans for Project Release plan, Team Release plan, Iteration plan, and Schedule Risk Assessment plan.
Note: In a Scrum process, a Project Release plan is called Product Backlog, a Team Release plan is called Team Backlog, and an Iteration plan is called Sprint Backlog.

To learn about creating plans in Rational Team Concert , see: Creating a plan.

Estimate project size

To determine the size of a project:
  1. Display work items by running work items query.
    1. In the Team Artifacts view, right-click the Work Items folder and select New > Query.
    2. Use the Work Item Query editor for Creating a query that retrieves all work items with Open status and click Run.
  2. For each work item, produce a rough effort estimate using your preferred estimation technique. For example, if you are using Agile Estimation, enter the actual estimation effort into the work items by following these steps:
    1. Double-click a work item in the Work Items view.
    2. Enter the estimation effort in the Estimate field.

Evaluate risks

Create new risk items

You can document risks and track them by using Rational Team Concert work item capabilities. Whenever the team identifies a project risk, you can capture it by creating a new Work Item and identifying the risk within the work item. Assign a severity associated with the risk in the Severity field as well as document the Risk's Probability and Impact.

Identify tasks to mitigate risks

To account for additional effort that is needed to mitigate risks, you can create specific task type work items for risk mitigation and include an effort estimate. There are two ways to create work items for risk mitigation: extract work items from risk description or link work items to a risk.

Extract work items
  1. In the Description field of the Work Item editor, define the steps required to mitigate the risk.
  2. Highlight each of these steps, right-click and select Extract Work Item.
  3. In the Link Type window, select Related and click Next.
  4. In the Work item type window, select Task and click Finish. The new work item is created and the related link to the parent work item is displayed in the Quick Information section.
Link work items to a risk item
  1. Create a new work item:
    1. In the Team Artifacts view, right-click the Work Items folder and select New > Work Item.
    2. Select Task in the Create New Work Item window.
    3. Click Finish.
    4. Enter the work item's name in the Summary field.
    5. Provide the details for this task such as work item severity, priority, effort estimation and so on.
    6. Click Save.
  2. Click on the Links tab of the Work Item editor.
  3. In the Links section, click Add.
  4. Select Add Related as the relationship type to be used between a task and a risk item. Then, select the risk item to which you want to relate the task to. The link between this task and selected risk item is created and displayed in the Quick Information section in the overview tab, Click these entries to easily trace between tasks and risk items.

Forecast project velocity and duration

The process template contains a development-line specification for Project Lifecycle. You can add an iteration to project lifecycle in the Project Area Editor. By default, the Jazz process component assumes an iteration length of 4 weeks.

To learn about modifying process iterations templates, see https://jazz.net/library/content/docs/process/#Process_Concepts.

Outline project lifecycle

Consider capturing high-level goals for each iteration in the project plan. High-level goals are typically not captured as work items. However, to get started with identifying such goals you can consider reviewing the existing open work items and risks.
  1. List the open work items by running the Work Item Query (see the details on how to run this query above).
  2. Starting from top priority work items (including tasks related to the high severity risks), identify the features to implement and allocate them to iterations (or iteration goals) as well as document them in the project plan.

For more information about managing work items, see Managing work items and work loads.

Results

By completing this task, you have created a project plan with associated iterations and work items. Estimated the project size by entering effort estimation in the work items. Evaluated risks and defined steps to mitigate them. Captured high-level project goals by prioritizing work items and allocating them to iterations.


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