Software Process Dashboard Changelog

What's new in Software Process Dashboard 2.3

Dec 22, 2016

The main dashboard toolbar now includes an "Add Task" button. This makes it easy to quickly add a task to your plan without opening the WBS Editor first.
A mobile/smartphone application is available for use with the Process Dashboard. The mobile app works alongside the Process Dashboard, making it possible to perform a number of common tasks from an iPhone® or iPad® (AndroidTM support coming soon). (Note: the mobile app requires the use of the Process Dashboard Enterprise Server, version 3.6.0 or higher.)
The "Rate" column in the team workflow editor is only useful for very advanced teams (who have historical productivity data, and who are skilled enough to produce accurate size estimates during a launch). But even for those teams, its use is discouraged (since proxy estimation tables provide a significantly more robust way to produce size and time estimates). In recognition of these factors, the "Rate" column is now hidden on new projects by default. Teams that wish to use it can easily re-enable it by clicking the column selection button on the toolbar of the Workflow Editor window.
The WBS Editor now includes a "Collapse All" button on the toolbar.
The filter dialog in the WBS Editor now includes an option to show tasks that have not been assigned to any milestone.
The Relaunch Wizard now provides better handling for PSP tasks that are in-progress when a project is relaunched.
The embedded data warehouse now includes baseline dates and costs, project milestones, and task dependencies.
If the user starts the timer and then marks a task complete before a full minute has passed, the dashboard will now round the time log entry up to one minute if no time has ever been logged to that task in the past. This captures an individual's intent more accurately when a given project task requires a very short period of time.
The dashboard now provides improved support for individuals who work offline, or who experience intermittent connectivity to the team network data directory.
POWERFUL NEW FEATURES HAVE BEEN ADDED FOR WORKFLOWS:
A new editor makes it possible to configure process mappings between workflows. These mappings can be used to:
It is now possible to specify fixed times and minimum times for selected steps in a team workflow. To use this feature, click the icon that appears in the top-right corner of the Workflow Editor (just above the vertical scroll bar), and enable the "Min Time" column. Then enter minimum times as needed. (To specify a fixed time, enter a minimum for a task that was otherwise assigned zero percent of the overall workflow.)
The Workflow Process Analysis report has been enhanced significantly:
The report now displays an extensive collection of charts that show various process metrics, and demonstrate how those metrics have changed over time.
The report now displays information about the number of defects that were injected and removed in each phase of a workflow, along with advanced quality metrics such as phase yield and defect injection/removal rates.
The report is now available in both the team and the personal dashboard, to enable data-driven process improvement at both the team and personal level.
A powerful filtering feature has been added to the report, making it possible to adjust the list of components and tasks that should be included in the various charts and tables.
Document the evolution of a process when a team modifies the steps in their workflow
Combine data from several related workflows to produce consolidated process reports
Leverage historical data from old workflows for PROBE planning of new work
SIGNIFICANT ENHANCEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE TO DEFECT LOGGING FUNCTIONALITY:
When individuals log a defect within a team project, the "injected" and "removed" selectors will now allow them to choose phases from the team's defined workflows. (Previously, individuals were required to select a phase from the underlying metrics framework, such as TSP.)
When you create or edit a defect, you can enter URLs to external websites in the defect description. These URLs can be used to link the defect to supporting references in a corporate defect tracker, a requirements management system, or any other web-based system. When such URLs are present, a hyperlink icon will appear over the "Description" pane, making it easy to quickly jump to the given URLs.
If a defect is logged to the wrong component/task, you can now use drag-and-drop in the Defect Log to move the defect to the correct location.
When defects are imported from ReviewBoard, the description will now include the filename and line number that each defect was logged against, as well as a hyperlink to the issue in ReviewBoard.
The defect timer and the main timer now work more closely together to help you collect accurate data:
If you start timing a defect, the dashboard will start the main timer automatically. If the main timer is pointing at a different task, the dashboard will ask you if you'd like to switch to the task where this defect was logged.
If you are timing a defect and you change the main timer to log time to an unrelated task, the defect timer will pause automatically.
SEVERAL IMPROVEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE TO DASHBOARD CHARTS AND REPORTS:
The Team Dashboard contains a new "Project Data Scanner" report, which analyzes team project data to look for common problems and highlight opportunities for improvement.
A monthly earned value status report is now available. This shows data in a format similar to the weekly report, but for an entire calendar month instead. It can be useful for tracking and communicating progress on a larger, longer term project.
The Tasks In Progress chart now offers a customization setting to color discs by assigned individual. Enabling this option makes it easier to see if a particular individual has a large number of problem tasks.
Since version 2.0.2, the Team Dashboard has provided automatic labels called "Completed_Tasks" and "Completed_Components". These labels make it simple to filter the team reports so they only show data for completed work. Now, these labels are available in the personal dashboard as well.

New in Software Process Dashboard 2.1.1 (Dec 13, 2014)

New in Software Process Dashboard 2.1 (Oct 9, 2014)

New features:
The Process Dashboard's internal web server has been enhanced to support Java servlets and JSPs. This makes it possible to develop custom reports using standard Java technologies, and run them against the project data in the Team Dashboard.
Significant new features have been added for Common Team Workflows:
In the WBS Editor, different icons are now used to visually distinguish tasks that were created by the application of a workflow. This makes it possible to track the process origin of a particular task in the plan.
In the Team Dashboard, a new "Workflow Process Analysis" report is provided on the script menu. This report shows the time spent in each step of the workflow, along with high-level metrics such as cost of quality and historical productivity rates.
When defining a workflow, teams can now add a special "Personal PROBE Planning" element. This element enables the assigned individual to use the Size Estimating Template and PROBE Wizard to generate size and time estimates for their work. It also provides a personal Project Plan Summary for the component, as well as a "To Date" report showing aggregate metrics for other components that the individual has produced using this workflow.
The Common Team Workflows window will now allow teams to prepopulate workflows with labels and notes. To do this, teams can click a button in the top-right corner of the workflows table to select the optional workflow columns they wish to edit.
The embedded database in the Team Dashboard now includes information about the workflows that were used to generate various tasks in a project plan.
A new Relaunch Wizard is provided to help teams prepare for team project relaunch meetings. This Relaunch Wizard:
Creates a new Team Project to hold the plan for the new iteration, and invites team members to join this new project iteration.
Copies the workflows, milestones, and team member schedules from the old plan to the new plan.
Copies incomplete components and tasks from the old plan to the new plan, and adjusts the planned times of in-progress tasks to account for work that has already been performed.
Marks the old project as closed, indicating that no additional work will be performed there. The next Sync WBS operation will help team members to close the remaining tasks on the old project.
Milestones receive significantly improved support within earned value schedules:
A new Milestones chart is available for earned value schedules in both the team and personal dashboard. This chart displays a horizontal bar for each milestone, comparing projected progress to the milestone commit dates. When the plan is not projected to satisfy a given milestone date, you can click on the corresponding bar and view a Gantt chart to determine which tasks are responsible for the slip.
The Task & Schedule window, EV report, and weekly report display a new Milestone column (rather than folding milestone data into the Labels column).
When a task is projected to miss a milestone commit date, the new Milestone column will visually flag an error and provide a tooltip with more information.
In Flat View, an individual can check a box to highlight all of the tasks associated with a particular milestone. When they do this, a dashed line is drawn over the list of tasks to illustrate the commit date when tasks must be completed. These features help the individual as they rearrange tasks to meet the deadline.
The enhanced charts are now available for all teams to use free of charge.
The Weekly EV Report has always displayed the total actual time logged against each completed and in-progress task. Now, it also displays the amount of time that was logged to each task during the week in question. This makes it possible to distinguish between active and idle tasks.
When filtering a report in the Team Dashboard, two new tokens are automatically available. "Completed_Tasks" filters the report to display the tasks that have been marked complete, and "Completed_Components" filters the report to show data from team project components that are 100% complete.
The active task selector has been redesigned to make better use of available space, and to better support complex projects with deep work breakdown structures. The main window now displays as much of the active task name as possible, and the portions that do not fit are displayed in an overflow menu.
It is now possible to move time log entries to a different task by dragging and dropping rows in the time log editor.
The Task & Schedule dialog now provides new options for working with multiple baselines:
You can now save multiple baselines for an EV schedule, providing a name and optional comment for each one.
You can view the list of baselines that have been saved for a schedule, edit their details, and delete them if necessary.
You can review the saved baselines for a schedule and select the one that should be "active" for the purposes of charts, reports, and calculations.
When individuals join a team project, they will experience a new streamlined joining process:
Instead of being presented with page after page of questions, they will see a single form that collects all the necessary information.
The new form provides reasonable default values whenever possible. Fields that need attention are visually highlighted so they stand out from the fields that already have a workable default value.
As they click on various fields, context-sensitive help is displayed to explain the data that is needed.
New performance tunings were added to improve the startup and shutdown time of large team and personal dashboards.
The "Find Task" functionality (available in the personal dashboard by typing Ctrl-F) has been improved for better usability. Completed tasks are indicated with a strikethrough, and past projects can be collapsed so they do not participate in the search operation.
A new option in the Team Member List makes it easy to move the start date of the entire team at once. This option is provided in the "Team Schedule Settings" window that appears when you click the date customization hyperlink.
The WBS Editor has traditionally displayed values with only one digit of precision after the decimal point. When numbers in a plan were smaller than 0.1, unusual rounding errors would sometimes occur. These problems have been corrected.
Additional keyboard shortcuts are now available for many actions in the WBS Editor.
A new user preference enables the main window's title bar to display timing information for the currently active task.
When an individual is participating in more than one team project simultaneously, they can create an EV Rollup in their personal dashboard to display a consolidated plan for their work. Now, the Task & Schedule window for that EV Rollup provides special support for balancing available task hours across the various projects. Clicking on the PT (planned time) column for a schedule row opens an interactive dialog for visually reallocating time and managing the total amount of time that has been committed across all of the projects.
If an individual leaves the timer running for several hours, the dashboard will now display a warning message asking if they did this intentionally. This can help individuals catch their mistake if they forget to stop the timer (for example, if they leave it running overnight).
The Task & Schedule dialog now has an "Expand All" option on the View menu.
Fixes are included for a number of bugs.

New in Software Process Dashboard 2.0 (May 2, 2014)

The Process Dashboard now includes a powerful new Data Warehouse component. This component stores team project data in a relational database, making it possible for external analysis and reporting tools to access project data via SQL queries.
The various reports, charts, and calculations in the Team Dashboard have been rewritten to take advantage of the Data Warehouse component. As a result, Team Dashboard reports are displayed 100 to 1000 times faster than before. Team Dashboard memory usage has also decreased significantly. Together, these improvements introduce a dramatic change in the scalability of the Team Dashboard for large and long-running project teams.
For over a decade, the Team Dashboard has reused the same graphical user interface as the "personal" Dashboard. With this release, the Team Dashboard now displays a redesigned user interface that focuses on the needs of coaches, team leaders, team role managers, and other users of consolidated team data. The new interface provides quick access to team tools and reports, improving productivity of existing teams, and reducing the learning curve for teams that are new to the Process Dashboard.
Historically, some teams have observed extremely long startup times for the Team Dashboard - especially when opening the data over a VPN, WAN, or other slow network. This version introduces a change to the storage strategy for team projects, enabling significantly faster startup times for the Team Dashboard.
When the Team Dashboard and Process Dashboard shut down, a task runs to export data for various team projects. Historically, as more team projects are added to a particular dashboard, this export step takes longer and longer. In this version, the export task has been streamlined significantly, allowing the dashboard to shut down much faster.
Significant improvements have been made to the efficiency of the earned value calculation logic, enabling earned value reports to display much faster than before.
The Defect Log Editor now includes an option to import defects from the Review Board code review tool.
A new REST API has been provided that makes it possible for external tools (running on the same computer as the personal Process Dashboard) to add entries to the Size Inventory Form for a Team Project.
The splash screen appears more quickly after clicking an icon to launch the Process Dashboard.
Fixes are included for a number of bugs.

New in Software Process Dashboard 1.15.0.1 (Jul 30, 2013)

New in Software Process Dashboard 1.10 (Sep 23, 2008)

The Process Dashboard is now released under version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
For new team projects, created after the installation of this update, a new streamlined task structure will be used.
For a new-style team project that is underway, new columns will appear in the Work Breakdown Structure Editor to display actual metrics. This makes it possible to see which tasks have been completed, which are in progress, and which have not yet started.
When changes are made in the WBS, individuals use the "Sync to WBS" operation to copy those changes into their personal plan. In a new-style team project, the synchronization is now bidirectional. When individuals make changes to the following data in their personal plan, many changes will be propagated back into the WBS automatically.
The colored bars in the WBS Editor are a useful tool for balancing work between team members. For a new-style team project that is underway, these bars can now be toggled between two modes: "Show End-to-End Plan" and "Show Remaining Work." The new "Remaining Work" mode is a powerful way to rebalance work during a relaunch. Teams can also use it throughout a project iteration to continually rebalance work.
The Process Dashboard now supports baselines for earned value data. You can save a baseline for any earned value schedule, then view baseline metrics in the task list and EV charts.
The WBS Editor now includes support for project milestones
A new icon on the main toolbar makes it easy to attach free-text notes to any component or task in the Process Dashboard. On a team project, these notes are shared by the team, and accessible in the WBS Editor.
Play and pause now appear as separate toggle buttons.
A new "timing reminder" feature is available. This feature can periodically display pop-up alerts, reminding the user to start or stop their timer or to change the active task.
The WBS Editor now allows you to enter detailed schedules for each team member, to include start dates, end dates, and planned time exceptions on specific weeks. This information is bidirectionally synchronized with each individual's personal earned value schedule.
Previously, the WBS Editor would not allow you to assign a task to an individual until a time estimate had been entered for the task. Now, it is possible to assign a task to an individual even while the task's time estimate is still zero. Agile project teams may use this feature to support on-the-fly cost estimation.
The Team Dashboard Users Manual is now included in the dashboard's searchable online help.
When starting a new project or iteration, you can now bring forward the data from historical earned value schedules. As a result, the dashboard can calculate forecast dates and prediction ranges during a team project launch, even before any actual data has been collected.
The weekly earned value report now includes a "Tasks In Progress" section. This section displays tasks that have been started but not yet completed, making it easier to spot problems such as overspent tasks.
Historically, "PSP Tasks" were required if a team wanted to capture planned and actual LOC for their project. Now, LOC can be captured for "code" tasks as well.
Installation and operation of the dashboard on Mac OS X is greatly improved.
ON Unix/Linux systems, the default web browser has been changed from Netscape to Firefox.