Creating a New Product using Inflectra.ai
The typical use case is that you're working on a specific program in SpiraPlan and as part of the overall program management and program planning, you want to plan out what the scope and effort would be to launch a new product that aligns with that program. Using Inflectra.ai, you simply launch the Create new product wizard directly from the My Page:
You simply need to provide a short name and descriptive summary for the new product idea:
Once that's done, you click Enter on the keyboard to launch the product creation process:
Initially the wizard will create the new product, with 3-5 top-level requirements (often called Epics in agile methodologies) that outline the key features and needs.
If this is just a high-level concept, we'd recommend stopping at this point and simply creating the tasks/test cases and risks. That way you'll get a small product with the key information needed to assess the viability of the new idea.
If this going to be something that you want to get a detailed estimate for, then we recommend using the Generate child requirements option instead, to build out a richer product backlog:
One the backlog is completed to your satisfaction, you can then use the other options to create the test cases, tasks and risks as needed.
In our example, we first create the test cases (and steps) necessary to validate the new banking functionality:
Since this is a development project not an IV&V or standalone testing project, it makes sense to also populate the tasks associated with the requirements to help us estimate the total work needed to create the product. These tasks can of course be synchronized with other tools such as Jira, Asana, Monday.com, or Clickup.
Finally, one of the key benefits of using Inflectra.ai is that it can also help you brainstorm potential risks associated with the new proposed product. So, we recommend that you use the Identify risks feature to ensure you understand the benefits and risks of proceeding with the new initiative:
Once that is completed, you are ready to start viewing the new product and making changes as necessary.
Browsing the Created Product
Simply click on the product ID link in the Inflectra.ai sidebar, and you will be taken to the new product's homepage. You will see that the product name and description is populated from our original prompt:
When we click on the requirements link in the product navigation menu, we'll see that Inflectra.ai has created a two-level product backlog, containing Epics and User stories:
If we click on any of the user stories, we will see that it has created multiple test cases to verify each requirement:
Furthermore, when we click on each test case, we can see that it has populated test steps with appropriate sample data:
Since we had also chosen to create tasks, you will see that appropriate development and project management tasks have been associated with each of the items in the backlog:
Each of the tasks includes a name and detailed description of the task. Using Inflectra.ai, we can even generate sample application and unit test code if desired.
Finally, if we look at the Associations section of each requirement, we will see that appropriate risks have been identified:
Each of the risks will include a detailed assessment of the cause and outcome of the risk. Inflectra.ai can be used if necessary to generate mitigations.
Now that we have viewed the populated product, we can assign some or all of the requirements to a specific release, and then use the release analysis features of Inflectra.ai to get an initial assessment of this new product before we start work:
Summary
As we have seen, this new functionality lets product owners and program managers quickly and easily model new product initiatives in SpiraPlan using the power of Inflectra.ai. This lets teams quickly ideate on new ideas without the manual effort to scope and estimate the work.