Agile methodologies and Redmine

Added by Anton Nepomnyaschih over 16 years ago

Hello, Redmine development team!

What do you think about using Redmine for agile development process? I see, Redmine is very powerfull and nice view. It has many features, such as gantt chart and time scheduling, version control, wikis and forums. The features can be very usefull in development process.

But how, do you think, may be established iterative development process, such as XP, or SCRUM, if development team will use Redmine?

Our firm already some years has been used system that was specially implemented to be used in XP. It is XPlanner. It covers all our needs and our development process is tied with it.

It has some very good things that I don't see in Redmine. Let me, please, compare Redmine with XPlanner. Look at it, as simply on looking on Redmine from agile methodologies point of view.

The first feature of XP is iterative development process. In Redmine there are versions. So, we may use versions, as iterations. It is very good, because the most important requirement for iterations is that when iteration is over, customer must have completed version of product. He may test it or, even, use or sell. It is his choice. But version must be COMPLETED product.

In Xplanner there is problem with iterations. Because iterations are looked as simple "end of week", and our developers can't think of it as about completed product ;) But XP says that iteration gives COMPLETED product. I think, term "version" is most appropriate for it and Redmine's architecture gives more understanding, that we MUST give some completed version of product, when new version is released.

The next important thing is Backlog. In reality it is issues list in Redmine. I.e. it is all issues - bugs and features, that must be implemented, to get completed software version. I.e. all requirements from customer. And I very like it as it is implemented in Redmine.

Now, please, let me describe features that XPlanner has, but Redmine don't have.

Each issue in XPlanner has subtasks. It is very good point. Because developer may estimate issue only if he will split it on subtasks, and each subtask will need maximum 5 hours of work. If subtask need more time - it must be splitted and better estimated. Because in such case customer or teamlead may look at the subtasks list and understand why is the estimation so.

Sum of subtasks estimations - is estimation for the issue. It is very important, because, customer or teamlead may choose issues for next iteration basing on its priority and estimation in such case. For example, we have three issues: 5, 15, 20, 40 hours corrspondingly. Then we may choose for first iteration issues that costs 5, 15, 20 hours. And for second iteration we may leave 40 hours issue.

Also, our developers enter time intervals - when they are working on some subtask. I.e. you may enter to any subtask and enter time, when you have worked on it. So, salary is payed to developer hourly and is calculated by XPlanner data. XPlanner has special statistics, when you may see how much time developer worked in time interval (for example, month), or by specified project.

We realy like Redmine and want to move on it :) But it has no such important features, as time intervals and subtasks :(

Also, there is cool feature in XPlanner called Original Estimation. When next iteration is being planning, it is filled by estimated issues. After that iteration starts and all estimations are fixed. So, if during iteration some estimation changes, for example, if there was mistake in estimation, then there is always stays original estimation. And customer and manager may see the original estimation and get causes of some problems on the project. For example, why developers can't reach deadline as it was planned.

Also, here is some links with video I've made for you. Please, look at working process in xplanner :)
http://screencast.com/t/OxJsAek2 - Backlog 1
http://screencast.com/t/a6zUjMIX - new iteration in xplanner.

Replies (37)

RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by John Garnett almost 16 years ago

If you see an error when accessing Product Backlog and the log file mentions something like:

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid (Mysql::Error: Unknown column 'rank' in 'order clause': SELECT
...
 ORDER BY enumerations.position desc, rank  asc LIMIT 0, 25):

Then you should run the following command in your redmine home directory. This will add the 'rank' field to your issues table.

rake db:migrate_plugins RAILS_ENV="production"

It works by running redmine/vendor/plugins/redmine_backlogs/db/migrate/001_add_rank_to_issues.rb

RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by John Garnett almost 16 years ago

If you try to "Add Story" from the Product Backlog page and you see an error like this:

Page not found

The page you were trying to access doesn't exist or has been removed

then you should add a new tracker named "Story"

You can do this by going to the top-level Administration page and clicking "New ticket type"

Name it "Story" (with a capital S) and copy the workflow from one of the other types.

Now click Projects and choose your project. Click "Settings" and "Information". Check the box next to "Story" in the "Types" section at the bottom. Click Save.

After doing this, you should be able to "Add Story" from the Product Backlog page.

Question:

Is there someone here who knows what the workflow should be for the Story type? Are there any other types that should exist for this ScrumAlliance version of redmine?

RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by Arturo Zambrano almost 16 years ago

Thanks John, I figured out the Story tracker.
I posted a new thread to document the necessary steps for having a working installation of Redmine + SA plugins.
[[http://www.redmine.org/boards/3/topics/show/4014]]

regards.
art

RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by Will Silva almost 16 years ago

Nice post, Arturo. Helped me a lot.

Dan Hodos,
Congratulations for the initiative.

Anyone,
I already try many ways but I couldn't see anything changing in the Burndown Chart or in the Velocity chart of the Sprint Backlog.
I have to create a custom field for Issues called Story Points, right? Yet no success... any idea?

Thanks

RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by Arturo Zambrano almost 16 years ago

Sorry, this is really getting off-topic.

I have to create a custom field for Issues called Story Points, right? Yet no success... any idea?

All you need is a minor edit in the app/views/issues/_form.rhtml, to make it show the field for estimated hours.
Look for this line: <p><%= f.text_field :estimated_hours, :size => 3 > <= l(:field_hours) %></p>
The burndown is working. When issues are closed the curve bends down.

RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by Andre Carlucci over 15 years ago

Hi,

Is it possible to have the one burndown for all projects based on a custom field instead of the version?

My team pick issues from different redmine projects every sprint. Although the projects have different versions, we group the issues within the same sprint using a custom field called 'Sprint'. So the burndown of just one project is not as meaningful to me as a burndown of all of them. Is that possible?

Cheers,

André Carlucci

RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by Olaaf Rossi over 15 years ago

Hi all

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for their contribution. This is an awesome system, and makes our lives so much more productive.

I’m running 8.3 with Ruby 1.8.6, Rails 2.2.2, WEBrick, and MySQL 5.1 on Windows.

I’ve loaded the Burndown plugin mentioned here:

http://www.redmine.org/boards/3/topics/4014#message-5465
and here:
http://www.redmine.org/boards/1/topics/1214#message-4975

however the graph doesn’t change no matter what I do to the issues assigned to a release. I tried this (in 4975)

“
RE: Agile methodologies and Redmine - Added by Arturo Zambrano 2 months ago
Sorry, this is really getting off-topic.

I have to create a custom field for Issues called Story Points, right? Yet no success... any idea?
All you need is a minor edit in the app/views/issues/_form.rhtml, to make it show the field for estimated hours.

Look for this line: <p><%= f.text_field :estimated_hours, :size => 3 > <= l(:field_hours) %></p>
The burndown is working. When issues are closed the curve bends down.
“

But all that happens is a Ruby error when I click “new issue”, and no change in the graph. Is there any documentation that I’m missing? Do I need to be running another plugin to support this (besides the google charts gem, of course)
Thanks