A different take on a Portfolio Timeline

[Nik Antonelli]

We have a phrase in the UK which I am not sure travels across the world. It is "blowing your own trumpet".... Here goes:

I have developed a custom app for those people who want to get a different slant on the timeline of their work. It comes from the angle of the work item hierarchy (Portffolio items down to user stories) rather than showing the work being done by each team.

Those people in a value stream that want to look at the overall picture might find it useful. It also shows all the dependencies that you have at all levels all at the same time, if you wish.

Clicking on the items, or on the timeboxes, will rescale the timeline to that thing. It can also rescale to all the items that you have asked it to find.

If you are interested in seeing whether things are scheduled correctly, it will make things go red, e.g. dependencies that have the wrong scheduling and child items scheduled outside of their parents.

The custom app can be fetched from github with no strings attached here: https://github.com/nikantonelli/PortfolioItemTimeLine
Adding custom apps to your login is described in the online help pages once you have logged in to Rally.

Let me know if you find it useful

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Nik
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[David LeDeaux]

Nice!  Thanks for contributing Nik!

BTW, we have a similar expression over here in the states; "tooting your own horn" :)

[Mitch Goldman]

At first glance it looks great. I can't wait to dig into a bit further. Thanks for posting that!

[Leah Pearlstein]

This app is great. I have had many people ask me if there is a way to see down to the User Story level on the portfolio timeline and now we can! I like how it can look at any portfolio item type and also appreciate how responsive it is. Thank you for sharing!

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Lean Analyst
EBSCO Information Services
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[Nik Antonelli]

I am still working on adding a few useability features. So coming soon will be: selecting to show dependencies based on artefact type (Stories, Features, All portfolio items, etc.) and, I am going to add milestones (global and project based). If those would also be of interest, I will keep up the focus on the work and not let other customers get in the way... :-)

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Nik
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[vtleogal]

Thank you for doing this and sharing!!  Like others, I needed that view down to the stories as well in a timeline view.. this is great!.  Looking forward to playing with it some more!  I wonder if the code can be appended to export this or print like the OOTB one? The OOTB one does not give us access to see the code, so I cannot tell how to do that. Do you think that is possible?

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Lynn
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[Terry Ginzburg]

Hey Nik,

This is really cool!  I love the ability to make proposed changes and then either commit them or cancel them. 

You mentioned Milestones - one of the things we'd really love is to be able to use a custom field to determine which milestones to show - on this timeline and also the new core timeline they are working on.  We are a large organization with milestones being used for a variety of things - team and train level deployment tracking all the way up to large cross-portfolio product roadmapping. We added a custom field called Milestone Type. We'd love to see the big-picture milestones show on the timeline without all the deployment milestones.  In some groups there are so many milestones visible at the train and value stream levels that the Portfolio Timeline is unusable. The new core timeline in beta lets you hide all milestones, which is nice, but what would be really awesome is to show only milestones of selected types.  Just something to add to your list of things to try.  

Keep it up, this is a great app!

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Terry Ginzburg
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[Lukasz Socha]

Hi, 

Looks very great. Nik, would it be possible to querry items to show in the app? The use case is: display Features having the tag X or having Milestone Y. 

Best regards
Lukasz

[Eda Kuchta]

This is very encouraging. Would you please the instructions how to have this app working in Rally. I am failing to see the code.
Thank you very much in advance.

[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Eda,

You have to take the contents of the file called App-uncompressed.html in the deploy directory. Grab the text at this URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nikantonelli/PortfolioItemTimeLine/master/deploy/App-uncompressed.html

Paste that text into the box of a new Custom HTML app that you have added to a page.

Just at this moment, Rally is updating their help pages so I cannot give you the link to the right help item.

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Nik
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Everyone,

I made a couple of updates that might be useful. Eda was asking about how to get all the features and userstories for a Program Increment. This required a little change so that you can now:
1. Get all the features in the project node you are in (and below if you want) with the associated userstories, for a PI, on a timeline rather than a list
by:
a) selecting option 'one type only',
b) selecting option 'show stories'
c) choosing features
d) set a filter to a release (aka PI)

2. Click on the circle at the top of a milestone line to get the QDP to come up for that milestone.

If there are any more bugs with it, please let me know ( I found a couple!).


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Nik
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Pat Cousins]

Hi Nik, I have shared this app with our subscription, and there has been a lot of positive feedback - as well as some requests for additional features, of course!  Like @Lukasz Socha, we would like the ability to include a Query (as in the Custom List app) to select the portfolio items to include.  Users would also like the ability to save and share "views", like in other apps.​  Possibly user error: I can't get Option 2 to work (where you don't select a top level item but instead apply the Filters).  Also, I only see Successors marked on the grid (the blinking dot at the end of a portfolio item) - I never see the dot at the start for Predecessors.  Thank you for creating this, and hope to see it incorporated in the base Rally product!

[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Pat,

I have added code for a query box. Grab the latest from my github and let me know if it works for you.

I can't replicate the problem you are seeing with the dependencies, I see both dots and the line if the dependencies are enabled and nothing, if they are not. Can you send me a screen shot of that (private msg is ok) ?

I am not sure what 'Shared Views" will entail in terms of code change, but I will investigate.

The filters are applied to the lowest level PI only. This was specifically for a customer who wanted these options: 1) Choose top level items, e.g. typed theme or initiative and then find all the features and stories, 2)  for a particular portfolioitem set (1 or more), search for the tree of work, but only find those features that are mine, belong in a particular project, or are in a particular state, 3) find all those features that belong to me, are in a particular state, etc., etc and then get all the stories.

I have made it so that the query box is applied to the top level that you have selected, so this would be the route for you. As an example, you can filter for a particular word in a portfolio item title using the query box, when you get to the bottom level portfolio item (e.g. feature), you can apply different filters using the advanced filters, and then show all the user stories (and defects) associated with that filtered feature set.

This is about as flexible as I can make it.....

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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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[Pat Cousins]

Hi Nik, all I can say is "Wow!"  Thank you for turning that around so quickly.  The Query works perfectly (on top level items), and it also works as expected with the Filter (on bottom level items).  Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get the Expand icon to see the levels below my top level unless I check the box to show User Stories, but we can work around that (by collapsing the lowest level portfolio items).  I'll send you some screenshots of the Predecessors issue.  Thanks again for adding the Query capability: this is going to make my users very happy!