milestones Questions - FogBugz Knowledge Exchange

Feature Request: Milestone Planner for Fogbugz

2011-09-30T17:34:09Z

After seeing Trello I was originally thinking of using it for a top level milestone planning in meeting. After playing with it some I realized its missing a critical piece, dependencies. After a little more thought I realized what I needed was a display of several linked lists in a sliding window. This way I could logically layout the various phases of development, rollout, etc.. on a high level so everyone can see what's still to come. ie that shiny new feature doesn't happen until phase 3 because of some tool and database refactoring that's needed before hand. So when planning things out everyone sees that "oh phases 1 and 2 have to happen first and they're each 2 weeks long so I won't be getting that shiny new feature for at least a month" if we choose to make it a priority.

In the end this is mostly a way to visualize milestones across the system. What's been missing for us is a bird's eye view of what's down the road, or in other words a great view for meetings. If you're planning the next 3 months, 6 months, a year it'd be nice to "see" the impact of moving priorities around, where the give and take is without jumping through various schedules and piecing back together what's dependent on what.

As a small company our backlog of new feature ideas is already bigger than what we have resources to do, so planning for us is more about getting the most ROI we can smartly. A big part of that is keeping everyone on the same page and by everyone I mean developers, owners, customer support, and customers. Fogbugz is already helping quite a bit, but something like this would allow managing / seeing the big picture to be much more accessible to everyone.

I've diagrammed an example:

Each vertical section is a different project.
"Current" represents milestones where now is within its date range.
The items off to the far right are milestones without a startdate set.

This view would have the following abilities:

Create new milestones
Create dependent milestones by clicking its parent and choosing create dependent milestone.
edit milestone properties
drag reordering of milestones to flip flop dependencies or drag off to the right to unschedule it. Dragging will also move all dependent milestones with it.
hover over and see cases assigned and/or summary (# of cases, # of people assigned, etc..)
quick assign cases to milestone. Mostly for small #'s of case assignment, larger batch assignments should probably still be done in the list case view.
project filter
print and fullscreen view, nice for meeting and outputting screen to a projector/tv.
show official and est completion dates. possibly show probability distribution as that node's background image, or hover to see.
"Next" could be a smart blocking depending on the official due date distributions. If your milestones are always in 3 month blocks then it would show x number of Next 3 month blocks. Could be a configurable "Show me X months of the schedule."
Current/Next internally would show a timeline. Having just had to back up a few milestones I can't just start with the first one and bump all dependent ones back, I had to start with the end ones and move forward. This ties into #4 where dragging one milestone bumps dates of all dependent ones back as well. Could show message/warning about it happening, "Approve new completion date?".

The idea of "Current" needs a little work, perhaps a global milestone with multiple dependent milestones to mark a "release / rollout", but probably something else entirely. Needs more thought.

How can I list all cases that recursively block a milestone in a filter?

2011-03-22T06:40:08Z

Let's say I have milestone "A" blocking milestone "B' and both of them have cases that need to be completed. I created a filter that says "All opencases blocking milestone B". This only show me cases under milestone "B".

Is there a way to make it recursively list all cases that block milestone B directly or indirectly through other milestones that block B? Milestone B could be a global or a project specific one.

Is it possible to display all tasks within dependent milestones?

2011-04-18T07:09:29Z

We have a number of different projects/products that contribute to our offering as a whole. When a new client comes onboard, we create a milestone that is used to track the work required for that client.

We also set up multiple milestones within our individual projects, that represent customizations and new development work relating to that client. These milestones are then set up as dependencies on the global 'client' milestone mentioned above.

What our bosses would like to be able to see, is a list of all the work required to hit that global milestone. This would involve showing all the tasks within all the child milestones of the global one. Is this possible?

If it's not, has this been discussed before? What is the likelihood of this feature 'making the cut'?

Can I force the user to specify a milestone when they resolve a case?

2011-05-05T22:18:24Z

Would be nice to have the ability to force a milestone other than the default milestone on resolving a case.

Feature Request: Ability to set a completion date on a milestone which depends on another that has no date

2011-06-17T15:43:34Z

When I setup these milestones:

Prep Work (no date)
Coding (no date, depends on Prep Work)
Testing and Release (no date, depends on Coding)

and I then try to set a completion date for Testing and Release, FogBugz won't let me, complaining that it starts before a milestone which it depends upon.

What's going on?? Answer: FogBugz always assumes that milestones with dates come before ones with no dates.

Feature Request

If there are dependencies involved, as in my case, EBS should be smart about it and see that the one with a date must come after those without dates, and allow me to set it that way.

Case FC2077466

Global Milestones show day before completion date in case milestone list

2011-04-26T20:31:57Z

Steps to repo: 1. Create a milestone with a completion date (5/30/2011 for example) 2. Create a new case 3. Drop down the milestone select list

RESULT: Select list displays "Milestone Name: 5/29/2011"

EXPECTED: "Milestone Name: 5/30/2011"

This keeps confusing our testers because the milestone date is supposed to correspond to our release date. They freak out when they see it a day early.

Feature Request: Add milestone to project group

2011-12-01T19:40:01Z

Would be extremely useful to me to be able to add milestones to project groups as well as view schedules for project groups, rather than individual projects.

Why sort Undecided before other milestones?

2010-08-09T15:05:07Z

If I order the cases by Milestone, why is Undecided sorted before all other milestones? Technically I can understand this, as Undecided has the lowest numeric value in the database.
But does it make sense?

I think Undecided should be at the bottom instead of the top.

Can I create a Project with no Milestones?

2011-09-28T15:46:18Z

Hello- We are planning to use FB for Customer Support tickets (in addition to software project tracking). My goal is to make the new ticket creation process a quick, easy process with only pertinent info required.

Can I set up a project so that there are no milestones? We can skip over the milestone dropdown when opening a new ticket (or Case) but I'd rather have it nto there at all.

I created a new Project but I can still see all the milestones for the software development projects.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Assign case to multiple releases/milestones?

2010-06-16T21:41:59Z

we use scrum with monthly sprints and we produce a software release every few sprints. we'd like to assign a case to multiple milestones - one for the software release and one for the sprint. for example a case should be done for release "MyProduct-v2.7" AND for "Sprint #28, July 2010".

we have tried to use tags and custom fields but neither worked very well (for several reasons - like no reports, typos, no pre-defined fields,....).

what could we do to get reports, filtering, easy entering of releases/milestones,.. for our software releases and sprints?

right now we either move cases around between milestones or we duplicate them and assign one to the release and one to the sprint and link them together. a whole lot of work that everyone hates. :(

thanks

Force user to pick new milestone when reactivating or reopening a case in an unassignable milestone

2011-10-10T19:51:45Z

When I mark a milestone as 'unassignable', I am no longer monitoring cases in that milestone. New cases cannot be assigned to the milestone as advertised, but old cases that are already assigned can be reopened, and will sit there untouched and lonely until someone notices them.

What if you could force the user to reassign a new milestone when reopening or reactivating a case in an unassignable milestone?

Thanks,

-Steve

Can I search and filter by Milestone completion date?

2010-10-05T21:03:52Z

This is related to this question. Is there a way to also search for a milestone completion date? (pseudo search : -milestone:undecided -milestoneCompletionDate:"now..12/21/2012")

This question is very handy, but I'm not sure I see what I'm looking for.

Case FC2037408

Create plugin to add fields to Milestones

2011-09-19T16:50:40Z

I'd like to add a new field to milestones, to capture a "load factor" for a given milestone (milestones are being used to represent iterations in our process). I want to use this new per-milestone load factor and combine it with another new field on each bug called "complexity", the result of which will update the estimate field on a bug.

Is this possible? I've looked at the docs and can't see an IPluginMilestoneDisplay to implement.

At the moment I'm assuming I'm going to have to create a plugin that allows complete maintenance of the milestones, and have that new page contain my new field. This sounds like a lot of work though...

UPDATE
I did find IPluginFixForCommit, but I'm not sure that helps me, either. I think now I need an IPluginFixForDisplay interface to get at milestones and add my custom field?

Create plugin that adds fields to more than just the case grid

2011-09-12T09:29:03Z

I'd like to write a plugin to enable following:

Users to edit a new field on milestones.
My plugin to be notified when a case is added to a milestone.
My plugin to be able to look at any values (including my new custom milestone field) on the new milestone and update some values on the case accordingly.
My plugin to be notified when this new milestone field changes.
My plugin to be notified when various values on a case change.

Are all of these possible?

Many thanks in advance.

When should I create global milestones?

2009-12-27T12:22:32Z

When global milestones should be used?

How do they affect the EBS?

I think that should be explained in more detail than in current docs. The global milestones report isn't completely clear.

How does EBS handle multiple projects in global milestones (i mean developer multitasking)?

Milestones: Manage your release schedule and coordinate your team

2011-06-17T16:33:00Z

How do I use milestones in FogBugz?

Feature Request: Add a date filter to the burndown chart report

2010-10-21T08:49:43Z

They way I've been using FobBugz is to plan out a bunch of releases (usually one every 2 weeks or so). So, for example, you might have the following releases/milestones in the Inbox project:

Unassigned
Release 10.1 (due date 15 Jan)
Release 10.2 (due date 29 Jan)
Backlog - accepted but not yet scheduled

As change requests come in they generally go into Unassigned.

After each release I usually have a conversation with the major stakeholder (who's not really a coder) concerning priorities and we discuss which of the new change requests we actually want to implement and, specifically, what we want to attack most urgently (in the next release).

During a release cycle, sometimes priorities shift a little, some things get prioritised and some things get bumped out to the next iteration to ensure the release is made on time.

This works well, but if you schedule in some milestones/releases 2 months in advance, by the time you actually start working on the milestone there is already quite a bit of history in the burndown chart (typically an almost horizontal line dating back for months). If you only work on the release for 2 weeks (which is typical in our shop) or 1 week (typical in other shops) then by in large the burndown chart is going to be uninteresting noise... a horizontal line for 2 months and then finally 1-2 weeks of actual work where the burndown chart creeps down towards zero.

There are a couple of ways that this could be avoided.

One would be for me, before each release, to create a new milestone and transfer over all the stuff from the old one to the new/real one... then delete the old one. This would work but it's not really how I'd like to work with the software.
A second option would be to have some kind of "Start Date" on the milestone which could perhaps, by default, be when work was first started on one of the cases in the milestone. My thinking is that the burndown chart could only show data from the start date onward.
A third option, similar to the above, might not be to have any particular field but at least allow the user generating burndown charts/reports to specify a date filter for the report... that way I could (knowing we only started work on that milestone on the 5th Oct) say "only show datapoints from Oct 5 onwards.

Does the above make sense?

Cheers, James

Case FC1963797

milestone-dependencies

2011-07-28T14:22:56Z

I just wanted to repeat myself how great it would be to have an overview of the overall milestone-dependencies. It would even be better to be then able to drag milestones to modify the current order. ;-) I would really appreciate it, if you guys could work on such a view!

Feature Request: Ability to Completely Delete a Milestone

2011-05-23T20:20:57Z

So my first day setting up FogBugz. I see the "Undecided" Global Milestone. Wanted to delete it, or rename it.

Got the "You must have at least one assignable milestone for each project..." message.

So I created a new Global Milestone called "None", then I was able to unassign the "Undecided" one, but this pops up.

"Display Deleted and Unassignable Milestones" with a link to undelete the "Undecided" milestone, twats, it's still there...

Would this delete by itself? I have no cases assigned to this milestone... Is there a way to 100% delete a Global Milestone? (I would delete either one at this point)

Thank You.

Edit:

So I think there should be a way to completely undo a milestone creation. While getting started with FogBugz, I hadn't completely figure out how FogBugz integrates with my team yet (Still haven't, but excited to figure it out) and created a couple of Projects & Milestones, then I decided just to Rename the default "Inbox" project into my sole project.

However now I have a bunch of orphaned Milestones throughout my FB... showing up in the "Release Notes" section, and in the "Project Settings: Milestones" area. and that's only two I've found...

Had I known Milestones was really important to the EBS system, and that they are kind of like a "one way street", I would of been more careful about creating them while experimenting with my FB system setup.

Feature Request: Default the milestone start date to the workday following the previous milestone's end date

2011-07-11T19:04:08Z

When clicking "Set Start Date / Add Milestone Dependencies," the Start Date calendar, if clicked, should default to the workday following the previous milestone's end date.

Currently it defaults to the present date, which is not helpful if setting dates for far-out milestones, which is quite common.

(If there is no previous milestone, the current functionality is fine.)

Case FC2094362

Trying to Read DateTime from Milestone

2011-06-16T21:48:45Z

Hey I am having trouble with parsing a DateTime from a milestone. I am currently using the following line of code, and I get String was not recognized as a valid DateTime Error.

 DateTime.Parse(fixforXmlElement.GetElementsByTagName("dtStart")[0].InnerText);

fixforXMLElement is a XmlElement. I was hoping that maybe someone could help me figure out how to grab the start date of a milestone.

Milestone administration tool

2011-06-15T16:14:46Z

After few days after I started using FB first thing I missed is Milestone administration. To start with - "Milestone" link in the administration section or in the dashboard would be usefull.

Also I've noticed that there has been a milestone management plugin developed, but is unconfirmed...

basically i think this side of general project management needs attention.

there are a couple of bugs also, like clicking on a milestone, which gets you to the List case`es view, and applies the milestone filter, doesn't work with global milestones that depend on project milestones. or like per user timelines per project lose their colors for some reason. on like undecided milestone tasks, are shown as blocked in the per user timelines..

I guess there will be many more when someone get their hands on to this :)

Can I create a milestone which applies to more than one project, but is not Global?

2010-02-15T15:13:30Z

In FogBugz 7, I had groups setup in FogBugz with several projects assigned to them. I would love to be able to create a milestone that could be used for any project that is associated with a given group. This would prevent me from having to create the same project-level milestone for all my group's projects. I suppose I could use global milestones, but then I'd clutter things up for all the other groups that don't care about my milestones.

Update for FogBugz 8: Because groups have changed and no longer map directly to projects (see this post on bringing back groups OF projects), this multi-project-milestone feature will need to allow you to choose a list of Projects for a milestone.

Case FC1856215

Child Milestones / partial matches

2010-05-04T13:58:41Z

We are managing a few independent products (not even many), but between the products, maintenance of old versions and past milestones, there are quite a lot in filters so that I'm hesitant to assign actual milestones, not just releases.

I want to suggest "child milestones", with the follwing functionality:

Milestone 2.4 may have the child milestones 2.4-I and 2.4-II etc.

Showing cases for milestone 2.4 will show all cases assigned to 2.4 or any of its child milestones. Showing cases for 2.4-I will of course only show cases for this milestone.

Selection of milestones in filters etc. uses a tree rather than a list, similar to the "priority" selection dropdown. However, For a collapsed milestone

  [+] 2.4

clickign the [+] will expand, whereas clicking 2.4 selects that milestone.

Recursion (i.e. child milestones for child milestones) doesn't seem necessary to me.

Alternatively, allow partial matches of the milestone, so that 2.4* will match all three milestones. That doesn't help with the size of the list, though.

Workarounds: One could use tags for the sub milestones a sadditional filter element.

Case FC1896146

Feature Request: Have subcases respect parent milestone by default

2011-01-27T00:48:52Z

When setting the milestone on a parent case, it would be very useful if the subcases automatically respected the parent milestone. The specific behavior I am looking for is:

1) When a parent case is assigned a milestone, there should be an option to (recursively?) set the milestones for all subcases, or at least ones that are still Undecided. I do not want to have to traverse the case tree checking the boxes by hand.

2) When a case is assigned a milestone, it should ensure its milestone completion date is sooner than or equal to the parent's, and later than or equal to any subcases. A simple conflict resolution interface that says "Set all non-compliant cases to this milestone?" would be sufficient.

Value: When you have a parent case with one owner, but the sub-cases have different owners, it is easy to lose track of which-milestone-goes-with-which-subcase for the subcase owner, especially because the parent case is grayed out. This is worsened in the non-hierarchical case list views.

A global milestone for the distant future?

2011-04-08T01:55:27Z

"Undecided" happens before any other milestone, and since it's a global milestone, I can only create dependencies for Undecided that "depend on" other global milestones, not project milestones. If a ticket is assigned to Undecided, EBS by default thinks I will work on it RIGHT NOW, which is not the common case for me at all.

What I'd really like to do is create a "Later" global milestone that lets me assign tickets to the distant future, instead of "Undecided" which always assigns tickets to the immediate present. "Later" could always be the "last milestone" for every project, such that it always depends on every other milestone (both project and global) being completed first within that project.

The best way for me to create a "Later" milestone in FB 8 is to create a separate "Later" for each project and add new dependencies every time I create milestones. That's way too much work so I don't ever do it, and as a result my EBS estimates are always off by a lot.

EBS and interruptions

2011-05-11T20:06:02Z

I've been doing a fair amount of reading on the FogBugz EBS feature, however, I'm still a bit confused with respect to a strategy for handling the way we work.

Our team works on various projects which can be broken down into two categories. The first is your usual software project, work is broken into milestones/sprints which the team tackle sequentially. The second category encompasses support type projects where we expect a certain amount of time each month to be spent on support tasks. Support cases are created as issues arise and the team tackle them when they need to (high priority means dropping what they are doing while lower priority tasks are tackled when a natural break occurs). Time spent on support tasks are billed for and customers expect time sheets.

I understand how EBS works for projects in the first category. If the team was only involved in these types of project then they could keep the clock ticking when disruptions occur. The EBS algorithm would naturally project probabilities based on previous evidence and I can see how that could work quite well. The problem is that the team are often interrupted by these support tasks which need to be tracked in terms of time. Team members cannot just leave the clock running on the project work case, they need to switch tasks and track time on the support item.

The issue now becomes that the EBS algorithm will not take these ad-hoc support cases into account when calculating probability for hitting a project milestone. How can we make this work? I have an approach that I think may work and wouldn't mind if someone familiar with FogBugz could comment.

Setup support projects with a workflow that disables EBS tracking.
Configure category 1 projects with a workflow with EBS tracking enabled.
Configure %time allocation for each developer based on previous reports outlining how much time is spent on support items per month on average.

When a support task interrupts a developer, the developer needs to stop the time tracking on the project case. The developer then switches to the support task and tracks their time spent on the support item. If a disruption occurs during a support task, the developer has to treat the interruption differently to a project case item since the customer is paying for time spent on their item. This time has to be allocated back to the project task. As per normal, if a disruption occurs during a project task, the developer can leaving the clock running.

The process is onerous, but I can't think of any other way of handling this process.

EDIT:

I realise that category 2 projects don't require that EBS be turned off since the percentage breakdown of employee focus can be managed, it wouldn't make sense to disable EBS for support tasks that do have an estimate.

Further to my questions above, I need to understand how our team can facilitate planning. Right now, it doesn't look like there is one place to review all upcoming milestones and their expected completion dates. It seems like you need to iterate through each project and review milestones there which is annoying. As far as I can tell, you also cannot create a report which lists all milestones due in an upcoming period (the next month for example). I don't see a search axis for milestone date, this seems a little bit ridiculous?

Also, as a project manager, where can I review my team's estimation history? I see there is an option to review my estimation history, but that doesn't really help. Given that interruptions will always occur, I need to understand the impact on estimation as the overhead in developing software needs to be reflected in the costing process. How can I do this?

Any thoughts?

Rohland

Allow setting milestone dependencies from "Set Milestone" ajax popup

2010-10-08T00:17:05Z

As the subject states, it would be incredibly time-saving to be able to set the Start Date / Milestone Dependencies wherever you are creating a new milestone (i.e. "Set Milestone" button, etc).

Case FC1960473

Schedules: milestone dependencies

2011-04-28T09:31:19Z

1. Implicit dependency

Under "Schedules / Global Milestones", "Upcoming releases", all milestones without a specified release date come before all releases that do.

The result is that, unless I set a release date, my global milestone depends on all other milestones without release date that come before it in "Database AutoID order.

I can fix that by setting a release for the milestone in question. However, I assuem you understand that setting a release date is a highly political issue. In addition, having to set a release date in order to see the data that allows me to choose a release date is kind of strange. (I'm from one of those species that have no control over their temporal coordinate.)

Possible solution: The slider is cool, but not sufficient. You might offer the "this milestone only" for all releases, or

2. Desired dependencies

This is a lesser problem, but related:

Setting explicit dependencies between milestones are end-to-start dependencies, i.e. Milestone Y can't start before milestone X ends. However, most of my dependencies are end-to-end, i.e. Milestone Y isn't finished before Milestone X isn't finished, too".

This information is relevant for using the "Schedules" features.

Now, I don't want EBS to turn into a Microsoft Project with probabilities (shudder). But I can imagien this is not an uncommon need.

Both problems might be solved for me if I some control over the order of milestones (without assigning a release date).

Feature Request: Viewing At-Risk Milestones

2011-05-06T16:08:01Z

How I do view upcoming/late milestones across projects? I don't see a way to do this through the web interface. I can list cases sorted by milestone but this isn't the same thing, I'm hoping for either a calendar view or at least a simple list outlining upcoming milestones and milestones which are late (i.e. milestones in the past with cases unresolved/closed).

Thanks, Rohland