How To Plan a Release
Release planning defines what will be shipped in the next release. Usually the release has a goal, start/end dates, and a set of User Stories with rough estimates.
To plan a new Release
- Click Add → Release. Specify the release name, set the release start and end dates and save it.
- Navigate to Release Plan. This screen shows the project backlog on the left and releases timeline on the right. Use drag-and-drop to assign user stories from the backlog to the release.
Backlog shows the Features, User Stories, and Bugs in all selected projects that are not assigned to any release. You can filter the backlog by project, keyword and tag. You can sort the list by Name, Business Value, Effort or Rank.
To see additional information about every item in the backlog, move your cursor to the required item and click the small [ i ] icon.
On the right side of the Release Plan screen, you can see previous, current, and future releases for the selected projects. You can set a start date, and see releases starting from that date. You can also change the scale from weeks to months, if you have long releases.
Take a look at the Today line in the upper right. All current releases are highlighted with the light blue color. You can drag and drop user stories from one release to another, thus balancing the workload and creating a project road map. You can even move user stories between releases in different projects.
TargetProcess shows progress on the current releases, and forecasts an expected release end date based on the real velocity of the team. For example, this release has 125 hours of effort assigned. However, only 26% of the items are completed, and release is expected to be 72 days late with the current velocity.
You can decide what to do about that. For example, you can move some user stories that are not started to the next release. If you do that TargetProcess automatically recalculates the expected end date and shows the changes right away.
To edit a release, move the cursor to the release and click a small edit icon (a pencil). You can change the release name and the start/end dates in the pop-up screen that opens.