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XpTrackerPlugin

Version 3.0 - Nov 19 2002

This is a plugin for tracking XP projects. The original code was written by RichardBennett?, It was converted into this plugin by MartinWatt? and enhanced.

Changes in 3.0

See http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/XpTrackerPluginHistory for a description of changes in this new version.

Upgrading from 2.0 to 3.0

To make 2.0 data work with this plugin you need to change each Team page to have one extra table which contains the project the team is working on, in this format:

 | *Project* | ProjName |

An easy way to check the team pages are all updated is to go to the WebHome page for the XP tracker. In the first table on that page, any teams pages that have not had the above table added correctly will be shown as belonging to an unnamed project. Edit these team pages to add their correct project name to replace ProjName in the table above.

Description

Layout

There is a hierarchy of information here:

• Web - the TWiki web for XP tracking. One web can be used to track multiple products.
• Project - the project being worked on for a Product. Usually this will be the next major release. Each project has a page, which contains an auto-generated summary of the project progress.
• Team - Each project has one or more teams, groups of developers that work on one aspect of the project. Each team has a page which contains an auto-generated summary of the team's progress.
• Iteration - a project is divided into a series of short iterations. Each iteration has a page, the contents of which are also auto-generated.
• Story - An iteration comprises a number of stories. Stories are pieces of related functionality that are owned by a lead developer but can be worked on by more than one developer. The story page contains information on the acceptance criteria, and also a list of tasks.
• Tasks - these are the atomic units of work. A story is usually broken up into a number of tasks. Tasks may be shared among more than one developer. Tasks details are entered on the story page.

Information is entered for Stories and their associated tasks, and for iteration dates. Information for all other levels in the hierarchy is automatically generated.

Example of hierarchy:

Usage

Creation of pages is recursive, each page has an html form that uses a template to create child pages:

• Projects/Teams. You can create a new project page using the html form on the home page for the tracking web. You can create a new team page using the form on the project page. You can add additional content to these pages if desired, but do not delete the existing content. This is used to provide high level overviews of schedule progress.

• Iterations Create new iterations from the team pages.

• Stories Create new stories from the iteration page. The story name can be any unique name, as long as it ends with the string "Story". Fill in the two tables for the story summary and task list respectively.

XpTrackerPlugin Settings

Plugin settings are stored as preferences variables.

• One line description, is shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = This plugin tracks XP projects

• Debug plugin: (See output in data/debug.txt)
  • Set DEBUG = 0

XpTrackerPlugin sample output

The iteration status page displays the stories and tasks currently allocated to that particular interation.

Stories are displayed in the order in which they are to be developed.

Tasks within a story are displayed in the order in which they are to be developed. Tasks are considered complete once their estimate until completion is 0 days.

Below are examples of the autogenerated tables produced by parsing the story pages:

Show all iterations in a project: XPSHOWPROJECTITERATIONS

Show summary of iterations in a project - XPSHOWITERATIONTERSE

Show details of iterations in a project - XPSHOWITERATION

Developer velocity - XPVELOCITIES

Note - the column FEA (meaning Feature) in the XPSHOWITERATIONTERSE table is something we use at our company to link a story to an entry in our feature/bug tracking database which in turn links to the code checkin, thus providing a link from the XP tracker through to the associated code change and back. Since I am sure other companies have similar setups, I've left this field in there for this purpose.

Other tables available

This is a list of all the tables available. The names should be self-explanatory.

Limitations

• This version is not quite compatible with V2.0.
• This plugin has only been tested successfully with the 01Dec2001 TWiki release.

Additional TWiki plugins/changes needed to get this plugin to work at its best

The plugin should work in a standard 01Dec2001 TWiki install, but it is easier to use with these additional plugins:

• TablePlugin is optional but useful as it allows you to sort tabulated information by column
• EditTablePlugin is used to simplify entering of stories and tasks.

Plugin Installation Instructions

• This plugin has only been tested with the 01Dec2001 TWiki release.
• Download the ZIP file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unzip XpTrackerPlugin.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

Installation test

• If installed correctly you should see the following content between the two horizontal lines below - a title "All Projects" and a single cell table with the field containing the word "Project", and finally an html form to add a new project (dont use this form from here though!)

All projects

Plugin Info

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins, DefaultPlugin