What does JetBrains use as planning tool?

What kind of features do you need? Currently we are just gathering requirements for "planning features" in next version of YouTrack. We are going to add support of SCRUM in YouTrack.  So if you have some vision or ideas you are welcome.

I surely do. Is there a place where I can post them? Just here in the forum or somewhere else?

You can post your idea here. We'll turn them into feature requests ourselves.

I know I'm late, but here goes anyway:

I would continue the trend set with YouTrack, that is to use HTML5 extensively. What will be particularly useful is the drag&drop functionality.

When looking at a sprint it should have the typical 4 column layout, STORY, TODO, BUSY, DONE. Stories should be subdivided in tasks. Stories stay in the STORY column and tasks move from TODO over BUSY to DONE.

Every task should have an owner and a "complexity" indicating how difficult it is to implement it. The sum of the task complexities is the total story complexity.

When starting a sprint:

The STORY column will contain the stories, listed vertically.

The TODO column will contain the story's tasks that are still to do, grouped together on the same level of the corresponding story.

The BUSY column contains the tasks which are in progress, as tasks move from TODO to BUSY there should be an indication in the story to indicate the overal progress of the story based on the complexities of the tasks.

The DONE column contains the tasks which have been completed. As the tasks move into this column the story will colour greener and greener based on the tasks' complexity points.

When all of a story's tasks are in the DONE column the story is 100% finished (green), unless the story spans multiple scrum sprints. When a story spans multiple sprints it would be helpful to jump to the sprint where the remaining tasks are found. This could be visualised by adding a previous and/or next button on the story in the STORY column, which, when pressed, swipes back or forward to the sprint containing the rest of the story.

In case a story's tasks are dragged from one sprint to another the story card will be duplicated in the new sprint and the task will be added to the duplicated story there. The correct arrows are then to be shown on the story in the 2 sprints. When a task is dragged to another sprint that already contains the parent story it is added to the already existing one in that new sprint.

When a story is dragged from one sprint to another all its tasks move along.

Dragging between sprints should be easy, unlike in JIRA's Greenhopper, where you can only see 4 sprints or so in a vertical column on the right, before you have to start "minimizing" each sprint, to easily get to the future sprints there.

I could go on and on but these are a couple of the basic things that I would like to see implemented smoothly. Lastly I could say that when you make the planning tool… think of using it on something like an iPad. If you can intuitively manage sprints/stories/tasks/owner and complexities on a tablet with your fingers, you'll have a good interface.

Thank you for your detailed response. I add reference to this topic to the "Scrum"-related issue, so we would be able to take your suggestions into account. See JT-1629.

For project planning based on Agile methodology, we are using Rally Software's SAS offering rallydev.com.

It is quite a full featured offering, and they are continuing to enhance it.

Entering stories, substories, and tasks is somewhat cumbersome, and making changes like spliting stores across iterations is also a pain.

Another sore spot is that there is no integration between rallydev.com and our bugtracker (Remedy). Basically, we track the project until a code completion date, and then after the code completion date, we stop using rallydev.com and instead track based on defects filed in the Remedy system.  It does have lots of different ways to view the stories and tasks and even has some slick charts/graphs. And they do a nice job of access control/permissions/audit trail which is necessary when used in an enterprise.

I see some potential for Youtrack if can be both the project planner + bugtracker.

If Jetbrains is serious about competing in this area, I would try out rallydev.com and maybe some of the other competitors in project planning space.

-Alex

Hi Maxim,

I would like to add to the discussion as follow:

For me, I would love for YouTrack to be able to give me status of the project in terms of charts.

I think products that do this quite well are, for example:

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

If you would like, you can see some of the 25 out-of-the-box charts here

GreenHopper

Another nice chart showing project status.

YouTrack has a very lightweight feel to it, which is awesome because I really don't like JIRA, which has the exact opposite feel. I pray that the YouTrack team would keep this lightweight feel going, while also giving us some nice charts to visualize project status!

Thank you for your feedback.

A few more chart pictures for JetBrains team for ideas:

http://www.rallydev.com/images/products/screen_shots/ce-standard-reports-800.png

http://www.rallydev.com/images/products/screen_shots/ce-my-report-800.png

http://www.rallydev.com/images/products/screen_shots/ce-iteration-chart-800.png

Thanks a whole bunch! Keep up the great work!

Here is my proposition, with common points and differences from the original one.

I work with scrum so I mainly talk with scrum terminology but I think what I say is valid for every agile methodology.

I think we have 2 needs : planning releases, managing a sprint

PLANNING RELEASES

To plan releases, the best way IMHO is to see the whole backlog.

We would have 2 columns : backlog vs not planned issues

The backlog column is an ordered list of tickets grouped by sprints in function of the velocity.

I must be able to see at least the 3 previous sprints and the 6 next sprints. The other sprints may be invisible or lazy loaded.

The velocity appears at the top of the screen with other infirmation like sprint duration in days and day 1 of sprint 1 and current sprint number.

Each item of the list is an issue (we see issue id and title + story points).

Each sprint line summarizes the number of story points inside the sprint (which is the velocity +/- 10%).

The not planned column is a column where I can type a search query (and eventually use a saved query) and see the issues that are NOT in the backlog yet.

Then I can :

* drag&drop from the not planned column to the backlog column in order to plan an issue

* drag&drop inside the backlog column inorder to reorder the issues (the sprints are recomputed in function of the velocity)

* modify the story points of an issue (even if it is not in the backlog) : ideally, the story points is an information like state or type : I can modify it whenever I want inside a list of issues via a simple "button-list".

* save the current query to reuse it for another planning session

The velocity is modifiable (the sprints that are not started are  recomputed in function of the new value) BUT not visible to other users  until the user choose to do so.

This allow me to test various scenario before other users see it.

Let us take an example.

I have 10 issues in YouTrack and an empty backlog.

I type an empty search so all 10 issues are displayed in the not planned column

I start by estimating the issues : 1-1-1-5-8-3-13-40-8-5 (the total number of story points is then 85).

I choose a velocity of 20.

Then I drag all the issues into the backlog => there are 5 sprints : (1-1-5-8-3 = 19 points) + (3-13 = 16 points) + (40 / 2 = 20 points) + (40 / 2 = 20 points) + (8-5 = 13 points)

The not planned column is empty.

I then move the last story with 8 points BEFORE the 40 points story : (1-1-5-8-3 = 19 points) + (3-13-8 = 24 points) + (40 / 2 = 20 points) + (40 / 2 = 20 points) + (5 = 5 points)

Note : "cutting" the issue with 40 points in multiple sprints is not very scrum-compliant and may be technically hard to implement so you may choose to disallow that (i.e an issue must have less points than velocity).

In real life however, when you are planning a 3 months release, the last stories often have this kind of points.

Ideally, you must impose this restriction only for the current and next iteration.

Note : being able to see a burnup chart of the release and the velocity history chart via a button in the top of the scrren will be good

MANAGING A SPRINT

To manage a sprint, I think the original proposition is quite good : a kanban board with 1 column per state : open -> in progress -> fixed -> verified.

I am NOT interested in seeing this board for completed sprints OR next sprints (because in completed sprints everything is in verified column and for next sprints everything is in open column).

Also note that when a sprint is finished, all not finished stories move to the next sprint in the state they were and count for 0 points.

In the top of the scrren, where I see which sprint is displayed, there is a button to see a burndown chart of the iteration.

Note : this approach does not take into account the fact that some people like to split their user stories into tasks for the current sprint.

Wow. Thank you for your feedback. Currently we run our own Scrum on an offline whiteboard. But your requirements are that precise that we'll be able to use it as a "how to demo".

I agree.  Now that your licensing model has improved for small teams, the planning aspect Greenhopper gives me is the only thing keeping me from migrating to YouTrack from JIRA.

+1 for sprint planning functionality - even a simple backlog where we can drag and drop to order tickets would be enough for us to make the switch to YouTrack.

Can you please share with us what your plans are here?  Is this functionality on the roadmap and when might we see it?

We've just released YouTrack 3.0. Now we're collecting features for the next release. You can track our plan with a request: Project: YouTrack fix for: Fascination sort by: Priority, votes