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.
 |
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
To
learn about creating plans in Rational Team Concert ,
see: Creating a plan.
Estimate project size
To
determine the size of a project:
- Display work items by running work items query.
- In the Team Artifacts view, right-click the Work Items folder
and select .
- Use the Work Item Query editor for Creating a query that
retrieves all work items with Open status and click Run.
- 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:
- Double-click a work item in the Work Items view.
- 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- In the Description field of the Work Item
editor, define the steps required to mitigate the risk.
- Highlight each of these steps, right-click and select Extract
Work Item.
- In the Link Type window, select Related and
click Next.
- 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- Create a new work item:
- In the Team Artifacts view, right-click the Work Items folder
and select .
- Select Task in the Create New Work Item window.
- Click Finish.
- Enter the work item's name in the Summary field.
- Provide the details for this task such as work item severity,
priority, effort estimation and so on.
- Click Save.
- Click on the Links tab of the Work Item editor.
- In the Links section, click Add.
- 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.
- List the open work items by running the Work Item Query (see the
details on how to run this query above).
- 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.