Milestone advice

IanG · Post by **IanG** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 8:36 am

Hi,
We have recently installed Fortress and are generally really happy with it but we are having some trouble deciding exactly how to use milestones.
In our initial setup we have created milestones for the next couple of releasable builds which basically occur monthly, and we have been assigning bugs and features to these milestones, so we can group those work items that will go into the next build ready to go out to customers.
However we would like to be able to group work items together with a more conceptual point of view, so we might have a group of enhancements that all need to be done to make a particular area of functionality complete. So as you can assign a work item to only one milestone we have a bit of a conflict, either we use a milestone to plan what work items go into a release or we can use them to group work items in to a larger conceptual piece of work. We would like to be able to do both.
We have experimented with using the item linking feature to have a bunch of work items reference a ‘Master’ work item to imply grouping but this is all a bit manual and open to user error. Does anyone have any guidance on the best way to use milestones?
Rgrds Ian

lbauer · Post by **lbauer** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 8:51 am

We've had other requests similar to this -- the ability to group bugs or be able to have a primary bug/item that has a number related of sub-items. I'll add your comments to that feature request.

In the meantime, you might consider using one of the custom fields to enter a concept (like "Performance Enhancement") that you can add to all related bugs.

If other users have further suggestions, please post here.

IanG · Post by **IanG** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:27 am

Thanks for your swift reply.
Unfortunately we have used the two custom fields for other purposes.

While we are talking about possible enhancements can I put a request in for more custom fields? It would be really handy to have more than two available especialy if they could be set to be either a text field or a list box of predefined items.
Rgrds Ian.

lbauer · Post by **lbauer** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 10:32 am

While we are talking about possible enhancements can I put a request in for more custom fields?

Sure. We welcome info from our users on how they use Fortress so we can add the features that you need.[/quote]

Marcel · Post by **Marcel** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 3:13 am

Ian, Linda,

We use milestones to group items for planned updates and use categories to group items for functionalities / area. E.g. software/hardware/mechanics, and functional areas within a software product when the project concerns only a software product. How do you use the categories field?

I don't know what you are meaning by "item linking feature"? Is such a feature implemented in Fortress?

Regarding the custom fields, I agree with you. More than two fields would be very nice. And with the ability to predefine items for use in a listbox. I suggest having the possibility to enable/disable those custom fields. Then the field would not be shown when it is not used.

lbauer · Post by **lbauer** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:32 am

I don't know what you are meaning by "item linking feature"? Is such a feature implemented in Fortress?

Fortress supports "Link Notation" which allows you to put a link in the details or comments that links to another item. For instance if you type Item:234, this will create a link to bug/item 234. See Fortress Help for more information.

More than two fields would be very nice. And with the ability to predefine items for use in a listbox. I suggest having the possibility to enable/disable those custom fields. Then the field would not be shown when it is not used

I'll add your comments to the feature request for this.