tinyPM 1.2 has been released. This release contains a number of features, and I am happy to say that there are first features picked from our feedback forum http://feedback.tinypm.com The forum works really great and we are awaiting your next ideas and votes.
Ok, let’s see what’s new in tinyPM:
Tasks and stories versioning
If you work with tinyPM, you already know how useful the history log is. Now we’ve added the versions view in which you can compare side-by-side versions of the chosen task or story, you can see who did the change and what exactly was changed. This view can be accessed from the history page or from the task/story card (the extended one).
Acceptance view
Now in tinyPM you can define a person for each user story, who is responsible for functional acceptance of it. Depending on the project type, this person may be a customer, product owner, product manager or domain expert. When all tasks are completed, the story is ready for acceptance and can be accepted with one click. In case the implementation doesn’t meet the functional requirements, you can reject it but you have to provide a reason of the
rejection. That information will occur as a new task for the development team. Once the task is done, the story is ready for acceptance again.
User story owner
Additionally, for each story you can define its owner This option is helpful in bigger projects, where a contact person or responsible person should be visible.
User stories export as CSV
With this option we wanted to allow for downloading of list of stories (filtered with a tag) and put it, for example, into Excel.
Timezones support
Now tinyPM supports globally distributed work. In My account you can set up your time zone and see all dates in your local time, even if tinyPM is installed on a server in a different part of the world.
Dashboard
My projects section is reorganized and improved. We also have added ‘My stories’ section where you can see stories and tasks you are working on. It provides a short summary, just for a notion of the current status. This is really useful when you work on several projects at the same time, because you have information in one place.
Backlog
We’ve added a big visible box presenting the current project state. Each time you access the backlog, you see how many points are pending, in progress, completed.
Customizable logo
You can upload your logo and it will replace the default tinyPM logo in the main view.
Archived projects
When a project is completed it shouldn’t appear with our current projects. In tinyPM 1.2 you can make the project inactive.
October 29th, 2008
New tinyPM 1.2 is coming in October but in the meantime we’ve prepared a feedback forum and a tinyPM users group for you.
Feedback Forum
As we get many e-mails asking about our plans and features that will be included in the next tinyPM releases, starting from the tinyPM 1.2 version we would like to drive our product backlog based on the community ideas. So from now on you can check (and we can’t wait to hearing it from you) what’s waiting or should be done down the road at:
http://feedback.tinypm.com
tinyPM at LinkedIn
Also to activate and form the community around tinyPM we invite you to join the users group at LinkedIn. There you can contact us directly as well as share you experience on using tinyPM in your agile projects with other tinyPM users. To join the group use the following invitation link:
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/148973
Our Twitter Feed
Finally if you’re interested in what’s happening around tinyPM you can follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/tinypm
Your feedback is most wanted and valuable to us!
tinyPM Dev Team
October 1st, 2008
TinyPM 1.1 is ready for download! We’ve added a few new useful features. I hope you will like them.
- support for German and Polish languages
We’ve added a handy language switcher and now you can choose between three languages. It makes using tinyPM even easier for German and Polish users.
- card colors
Now you can change the color of the user story, which allows you to group stories. Just decide on your own meaning of the color, exactly like with traditional cards. That’s a fine feature because visual attributes usually work better than textual ones and you can also filter the backlog out with the chosen color - we’ve added colors to the tag cloud.
- effort scale customization, iteration length setting, default task setting
Check out especially the configuration of the project. We believe that each team should constantly improve their methods and processes, and each of them has some unique methods. That is why we keep adding features that make tinyPM more flexible and easily adjustable to particular needs.Navigate to Projects and go to the configuration form of the project. This is the location when you can customize the points scale used for estimating user stories. You are also able to set the length of and iteration. You can set up one project with a 2-week iteration and the second one with 3-week duration of the iteration. You can specify the content of the default task when the user story is created.
- improved wiki rights
Now you can decide if a wiki page is tied to a project, making it accessible only to the project members.
- rearranged permissions
In reply to many questions about granting user rights, we’ve rearranged privileges to make them more clear.
June 29th, 2008
Are you about to start using tinyPM in your project? I’m going to tell you about the most common tinyPM features and necessary steps to get going. I hope you have your tinyPM up and running. If not, you can play and learn using our on-line demo. Let’s start:
Creating the first project
This is very easy, just log in to tinyPM (http://your_domain/tinypm) and click on Users link. Click Create a new user for each person involved in your project. Next, go to Projects, choose Create a new project and fill in the form. Easy, right?
Now, what exactly happens in reality when project starts? Your customer or product owner wants you to implement some new product, system, platform or whatever. You work together hard to gather requirements and planned features. After that, you have a pile of cards ready to be stuck to the whiteboard/wall/window or maybe another spreadsheet on your hard disk. In that way you start a backlog for the project.
Starting a backlog
The new way is to put user stories directly into tinyPM. You can do this during meetings or workshops, but remember that everyone is able to see the backlog. All you need is one laptop, network connection and a projector. When discussing requirements one person adds stories to the tinyPM.
Technically, if you want to add a new story, you need to set the current project with the project switcher, then click Backlog and then click Create a new user story. You will need to fill in several fields:
- Name - something short but meaningful (like “login”, “password change”, “booking statistics”, “order status”)
- Priority - importance of the story (always determined by a customer)
- Description - depicts expected feature, like “As a user I can log into the system and in that way access my profile”. You can also put here some additional information, however this is not a right place for the implementation ideas. Keep it understandable to your customer and whenever possible, let the customer be an author.
- Effort - this time you may leave it with default value “?” (I’ll discuss it later).
In case you already have your backlog in spreadsheet (Open Office Calc, Excel, Google spreadsheet, Edit Grid) or in other format that allows to be exported as csv, you can import it to the tinyPM. Navigate to Backlog and click Import User Stories. Open your backlog file and copy data to the system clipboard, Then paste it into the text area and go through the wizard.
Estimation and iteration planning
With the backlog ready your team can start to organize the work. First, you need to estimate how much work is required to complete each story. You can do this using planning poker. We highly recommend it, as it’s a great technique, because it makes each developer think about a story. It leads to better feature understanding and finally to more accurate estimation. So, give it a try and have a planning session with your team (the customer does not estimate stories but may take part in the discussion if you play poker during the planning meeting). After each turn, one designated participant edits story in the tinyPM’s backlog and he also puts there final result in the field Effort.
Now, you should decide on the iteration length. Use the one that works for your team or if you are undecided, just try 2-week iteration. Keep in mind that each iteration should be of equal length. To create the first iteration, navigate to Backlog and choose Create a new iteration, input the first day of development (Start date) and the length of iteration (Duration). Make up your mind about initial velocity, that is how many points your team is able to implement during iteration. Then have a meeting with the customer to determine which stories are to be included in the first iteration (this basically should be consistent with priorities). In the backlog view drag stories to the iteration box until the sum of points reaches your initial velocity level.
Working with the taskboard
On the first day of the iteration, you think hard how to implement planned items. Navigate to the Taskboard. On the left side, you can see a list of stories to be completed in this iteration. Discuss each story with your team and decide what tasks have to be done to fulfill the story. Add tasks using Create a new task form. Fill the name and description (use technical terms - this is a developer area). As you have probably noticed, each story already contains a default task. You may want to leave it unchanged when a story is trivial, clear and could be implemented quickly.
Now, you may want to start working on some task. You should choose and then drag it into In progress column. After this move the team is able to see that it is your task. If you want to work in pairs, edit task and add your colleague to the task. When the task is done, simply put it in Completed column and choose the next one. This works similarly to a traditional taskboard on the wall.
Moving on to the next iteration
When the iteration ends, Completed column is full of tasks. Your team is ready to present the result of the work to the customer. Technically, the newborn software is released or deployed into a production. It’s time to organize a meeting with the customer where you discuss the features done and some new ones. You can present current situation of the project by showing the backlog (e.g. use a projector). If you have any unfinished stories, you need to move them to the next iteration. You can do this automatically using Close iteration option, which you can find in the iteration box of the Backlog. It will create next iteration if necessary. Once it’s done, you ask the customer to select stories for a new iteration and drag the stories into the iteration box. After that, you have a new iteration started.
May 18th, 2008
There is no turning back - tinyPM is on-line! On the team blog we will guide you through the tinyPM usage patterns and best practices. We will also share some thoughts about agile development in general. Finally, here you will find the information about new tinyPM features and will learn how to use them to improve your own agile process.
In the meantime you can put your hands on live tinyPM version.
Read more here about our free demo version.
Regards,
tinyPM Dev Team
November 27th, 2007
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