You can use iteration plans to manage work items within the context
of fixed development periods within a project. You can create a plan overview,
create and modify work items assignments for team members, track the progress
of the work that is committed for the iteration, and create additional documentation.
Rational® Team
Concert projects
are organized into a series of fixed-length development periods called iterations.
Each development line has its own set of iterations. Development lines, iterations,
start and end dates, and the current iteration designation are defined in
the project area overview Process Iterations list.
Iteration plans are composed of a set of work items. Changes to the plan
are reflected in the work items; for example, new entries in the plan create
new work items. Changes in work item are reflected in the plan; for example,
when a work item is closed, that status is reflected in the plan. This keeps
the plan synchronized with current project activity and minimizes the need
for redundant documentation. The plan structure is also flexible. You can
group the work items in the plan by owner, functional category, planned time,
tags, or custom folders. Iteration plans are accessible to all team members
in the Team Artifacts view in the project's Plans folder.
You can use the iteration plan editor to manage three kinds of information:
- General information for the plan, such as important dates, high-level
dependencies to other components, objectives, test plans, and other unstructured
content. This information can be documented on the Overview page
and additional pages using wiki syntax for text formatting. You can include
links to work items and queries on these pages.
- The actual work in terms of work items planned for this iteration. Planning
the work is done using the Planned Items page. You
can modify a work item owner, type, estimated time for labor, and priority.
You can open a work item by clicking its number ID link or simply by double-clicking
the work item entry on this page.
- Progress information to determine if the team is on schedule to meet the
committed objectives.
- The plan progress can be tracked using the progress bars in the iteration
plan editor heading and on the group headings on the Planned Items page.
- The Charts page shows how progress evolved over
the duration of the iteration.