Feature to Feature Dependencies View

[Tony Soares]

Hi,

I tried to look for a view that shows the predecessor and successor dependencies at the feature level (for feature to feature dependencies) and was not able to find any app that would allow for such a view.  I'm basically looking for a similar view of the current Release dependencies app that exists at the user story level, to be done at a feature level.

The layout is just about perfect where it shows the predecessors at the left, the successors at the right, and in the middle, we would need the dependent feature instead of user stories.

The ideal fields to display would be ID, Name, Release, State, Owner, for each of the three sections.  The purpose is so that during planning for future Program Increments, we want to be able to quickly view the features that have a dependency so that we can ensure the dependencies are also addressed and met as part of the plan.

Does anyone know if this view exists out there anywhere?  If not, how difficult would it be to convert the current Release Dependencies app to select features instead of User Stories?

Thanks,

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi ​Tony,

I picked up this code: https://github.com/RallyTechServices/dependency-grid-by-release and changed the word "HierarchicalRequirement" (1 instance of) to "PortfolioItem/Feature" and it worked. You might want to also change the columns and titles to something sensible too! The quick hack I did, to show you the art of the possible, should be as a text/html file attached ready for pasting into a Custom HTML app.

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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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Attachment(s)

a.html   51 KB 1 version

[Tony Soares]

Hi Nik,

Thank you.  What I don't see is the middle column that indicates the feature for where there are predecessors and successors, like the Release Dependencies app. (see attached). I'm not sure how to read this, so if I have feature X that had a predecessor = Y and/or a successor = Z, I don't see the columns related to feature X.

Is the app you picked up not structured like the Release Dependencies app? 

Thanks,

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Tony, I have no idea what code you originally used. If you could give me a URL to a public repo, I can have a look.

The app I picked up gives you the information you need, but probably arranged differently. It is saying that the 'Give' on the left is a predecessor of the 'Get' on the right. So, it is really showing you the dependencies as the root item of interest rather than your app seems to go through the stories (down the middle column) and puts other stories left or right depending on what the relationship is.

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

Hi Nik,

The Release Dependencies App is one of the standard apps from Rally, and the code is located here: https://github.com/RallyApps/app-catalog/blob/master/src/legacy/ReleaseDependenciesApp.html

Since the Release Dependencies app is based on User Stories, the fields that are being pulled would need to change to be relevant to features.  The fields that I think would be helpful to view are:  ID, Name, Release, State and Owner, for each of the three sections (Predecessors on the left, Main Features on the center, and Successors on the right.
Having the 3 sections is ideal, because as the Product team is reviewing features for PI readiness, they need a view to determine if the features they are planning for next PI have any dependencies that need to be resolved before the feature can be worked on.

Hope this helps and any assistance in getting to a feature dependency view that is similar to the layout of the ReleaseDependencies App is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,



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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Tony, that app is based on technology that is deprecated according to the documentation. It is possible that it could be removed at any time. It is unlikely that anyone in Rally knows much about that code.

The one I sent you was one I happened upon that uses a more recent API and uses a similar tabular format. Most of my apps are targetted to a more graphical representation, e.g. https://github.com/nikantonelli/DependencyGrid

The other app that might be useful for planning is https://github.com/nikantonelli/PortfolioItemTimeLine which can plot your features on a timeline and show you problem dependencies.

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

Hi Nik,

Thanks for the response. For the one you provided to me, are you able to then add the necessary fields to view, ID, Name, Release, State and Owner, for both sections?  That would be helpful to have, since the 3 column option appears not to be doable.  I'm surprised that many of the deprecated  apps that are in use, don't get rebuilt in more recent API, as some of them are really helpful. 

Unfortunately, i am not a developer and struggle even trying to see where field changes, etc. are needed, so any help with this is much appreciated. 

Thanks,
 

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Tony, I haven't looked at this, but I did find one of my other apps by chance that might do what you want - in a different way. It uses the Custom List app to put children based on their dependencies. If the details below are interesting, then the code is here:https://github.com/nikantonelli/CustomList-Dependency/tree/CustomList-Successors​

In the image below US287 is a predecessor of US288 which is a predecesor of US289.

It also shows that DE30,DE25 are part of US99 and US99 is a successor to US7. I.e. US7 should be done before the DE30 and DE25 are worked on.

If you want to limit the list of stories to a particular release, then you can apply a normal filter. If you change the type in the app settings to Features, it should work for those too.

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

OK, so I got a bit carried away with this.....

In the next image, which is TOTALLY confusing:

US7 is a child story of F23, and US7 has a successor in US99, which itself has children defects of DE30 and DE25, but also has a successor of US56.
US5 is a child story of F23 and has US7 as a successor.
US4 is just a plain ol' child story of F23
F24 has child stories of US112,US111,US110 and US109, but has a successor Feature of F20, which has a successor of F49

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

Hi Nik,

I gave the code you suggested a try, as I wanted to see if it worked just for feature to feature dependencies, which is what I need.  I am able to select features, however, when I brought in the "dependencies" field to compare with your dependency hierarchy, I noticed that the dependencies field (when hoovering over it) showed more dependencies in some cases than what your app shows.  I attached an example where F747 shows one dependency, a predecessor F3459, however, it is not showing a dependency on your app (no arrow...). There are various situations such as this one.  Is there anything that's being filtered out or taken into account in the code, that I'm not aware of?

Thanks,​

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Tony, there are two variants of the app. The one I sent you the link for works the other way around. If you go to F3459 you should see it has an arrow with F747 underneath.

The way around that you are thinking about them is available on the main branch, but I didn't add any of the recent changes to that. Let me do that a bit later and I will ping you.

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

Hi Nik,

Your latest ​code works from a screen view perspective, showing the predecessors correctly.  Is there any way that when I export to CSV, that it exports the predecessors as shown in the hierarchy, or is that not possible?  Out Product Manager uses these to discuss with the Product Owners and does extracts of these.

Thanks,

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Vince Murphy]

Hi Tony,

Here's an App that I've used in the past to display feature level dependencies.
You can configure it in the Edit App Settings for either Stories or Features, and it also allows you to add additional fields to the display and filter.
I usually put the app on an iteration filtered page for stories, and a release filtered page for features.
The App can be found here: https://github.com/RallyTechServices/story-dependency-schedule

Vince

[Nik Antonelli]

Hi @Vince Murphy,

The view is showing story dependencies. Do you know if it can be altered to show Feature dependencies? If not, I can have a look tomorrow.​

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

@Nik Antonelli Yes, it can be scoped to Features using the "edit App Settings" ​

[Tony Soares]

Hi @Vince Murphy,

Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for, and I can select to show Features or Stories, and add fields as needed - very complete.  However, I did need the ability to export to a CSV file. Is that possible?
Also, I am filtering the entire App on Release, so to gain space, I was going to remove the Release field but noticed it was fixed by default, and I couldn't remove it.  can that be an optional field?

Thanks for sharing,

Regards,​​

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Vince Murphy]

The app doesn't have export capability -- I'm sure someone could add it but I'm not a developer.
The Release field shows up when you scope for Features and can't be removed w/o coding.
The Iterations field will show when the app is scoped for stories.

[Tony Soares]

Thanks Vince. I'm not a developer either. Maybe Nik or someone else can assist with this.  If I can get an export of this, similar to what I would get from an Excel sheet, then this will meet the needs of our Product Managers/Owners.  Thanks for directing me to this.  @Nik Antonelli @Vince Murphy

Regards,
​​​

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Tony, give this a go and see if it does what you want. It was a quick hack to add a bit of my code, so you might want to add/modify what gets saved as CSV in the_getItemCSVString routine.

https://github.com/nikantonelli/story-dependency-schedule-export

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

Hi Nik,

This works with the default fields, however, when I select additional fields, it doesn't export them.  I need to see "blocked", "Blocked Reason", and Owner, in addition to the default fields.  I made an attempt to add to the code you updated, by adding the necessary fields I need in the ​_getItemCSVString routine, however, the owner field is just exporting "object Object" in the owner field.  I'm not a developer, so I would need to know how do I get the Owner field to display the owner in Rally?  Also, I'm assuming that as I add fields to the view, which I can do with this grid, it won't automatically export them - is there an export that takes whatever is selected on the screen and exports it?  That would make this app complete in my view.

Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

Regards,

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Tony,

I had a bit of code from another app that I could paste in and adapt. Try the latest code up on the repo and let me know what it does.

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

Hi Nik,

I tried your latest code, and the CSV output shows the default 3 columns (ID, Name and Details) but any additional column I add to the view, such as Blocked, Blocked Reason and Owner, don't get extracted to the CSV file. See attachments.

Thanks,

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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Nik Antonelli]

Hi Tony, I get this: 

So I'm not sure what is going on there. I have just rebuilt the App.txt and Ugly.txt files and pushed them to the repo again. I don't think that was the issue, but I have done it just in case. If you look at the header of the App.txt file it should say CHECKSUM is 30546706959

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

OK, I just checked - I forgot to push the new version this morning. App writing is only a sideline activity and occassionally I get called off to do other things.

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

Hi Nik,

OK, now it works beautifully!  Thank you for all your help.  I also tried to add and replace different fields and it works in every case, it brings in the new fields.  One thing to note is that if you have selected to only view 25 rows, it will also only export 25 rows, but if you select something larger, like 100, and you have 60 rows of information, it will export all of them.  This definitely works for me now.​  I attached some screen shots of the view in Rally, as well as the export to CSV file, to show what it looks like.  I replaced the names of the owners for anonymity, but feel free to use if needed.

Thanks again,


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Tony Soares
Release Train Engineer
UnitedHealthcare
PA
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[Niveditha (Nivi) Gadamchetty]

Hey @Tony Soares /@Nik Antonelli,

I tried export to excel and all the data is coming only in one row. 

Sample screenshot is attached.

Is there something I'm missing?

​​

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Project Coordinator
John Deere
Cedar Falls, Iowa
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[Niveditha (Nivi) Gadamchetty]

@Tony Soares @Nik Antonelli,

I found another issue with Advanced filters,when using Custom option. When I try using either just one filter or a combination of 'and' & 'or' it isn't working. 
Have you seen this issue too?

Regards,
Nivi
                    ​​​

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Project Coordinator
John Deere
Cedar Falls, Iowa
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