Consideration for Task Types in the future

Thursday, September 12, 2013
Avatar
For SpiraTeam we have a bunch of tasks associated to a requirement.  Some could be development, some could be testing.  For the testing tasks I would like to be able to assign different types to the task.

For example we could have the following tasks:
* Test planning
* Automated test case creation
* Automated test case review
* Spira Completion Review
etc..  Those are all tasks that have to be complete to have the requirement status be "Complete"  That works fine now, because once they are all complete the requirement shows complete.

However, consider all the other tasks that need to get finished but that we don't consider to have to be done before the release of the product.  See below examples:
* Testing Code Update to include a different kind of reporting (has nothing to do with functionality testing just cleaner code).
* Writing internal training documentation on this requirement.  (often doesn't get finished until after the release of the project, but should be tracked to this requirement for overall time we spent on it)

In reality we have many tasks that span mostly the testing cleaning up code from things we learned over the project like updated methods, updating reporting etc.  It could be 5+ tasks per requirement.

What I want to be able to do is have a list of task types and designate which types are calculated with the requirement as they currently are (i.e. which ones have to be finished before the requirement auto flips to complete), and which ones I don't want to hold up the process of completing the requirement as they are not mission critical.   Then be able to assign tasks to those task types.

For example if the tasks that were marked as mission critical were all complete, but say the writing training one wasn't (which had a type of not mission critical) then the requirement would say complete 100%.  The non mission critical wouldn't update the reporting for % complete, but would still be included in hours spent on the requirement.


IN ADDITION what I would like to use these task types for is to provide helpful rollup reporting.

For example for the following tasks:
* Test planning                         100%       (Assigned to the Test Planning Task Type)
* Automated test case creation   95%       (Assigned to the Automated Test Case Creation Task Type)
* Automated test case review TC1 50%     (Assigned to the Automated Test Case Review Task Type)
* Automated test case review TC2 25%     (Assigned to the Automated Test Case Review Task Type)
* Automated test case review TC3 75%    (Assigned to the Automated Test Case Review Task Type)


I want a report that is one line per requirement that looks like
REQ #, REQ Name, Task Type 1: Test Planning,              Task Type 2: Automated Test Case Creation , Task Type 3: Automated Test Case Review
1234    Testing stuff   100%                                             95%                                                            50% (which is an average of all automated test case reviews for that req.


I realize I could add a task type as a custom property, however that doesn't help with the rollup on the requirement being completed only when all tasks are completed along with the % complete. I would also have to develop custom reporting which I am not certain I can do exactly as I have above as a rollup average without putting it into excel everyday and redoing formulas.  This isn't time efficient.  All the info is in the software so we should be able to quickly get it out in a nicely formatted report without messing with excel.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
1 Replies
Friday, September 13, 2013
Avatar
re: swycoff Thursday, September 12, 2013

Hi

We're going to be adding Task Types and Task Workflows in the upcoming v4.1 release. I believe this should meet your need. We will also be adding requirement types and requirement workflows as well.

Regards

Adam

Spira Helps You Deliver Quality Software, Faster and With Lower Risk

And if you have any questions, please email or call us at +1 (202) 558-6885

 

Statistics
  • Started: Thursday, September 12, 2013
  • Last Reply: Friday, September 13, 2013
  • Replies: 1
  • Views: 2507