Future features

This is a mind map of the main features (current and future) of XPlanner

Planning

Story elaboration/workflow

• Story owner changes during its lifecycle: Customer/BizAnalysist->Dev->Tester->EndUser/UAT). This could be done by attaching a state to the story:

  State	Owner
  Draft	Biz
  Defined	Biz->Dev
  Estimated	Dev->Biz
  Planned	Biz->Dev
  Implemented	Dev->Tester
  Verified	Tester->EndUser
  Accepted

• Story ATs must be better expressed. Most people are using free form text in the description to capture acceptance tests. If ATs were better expressed semantically, we could
  1. Enable linking (from a test tool like Fitnesse),
  2. Extract status from a continuous integration tool that would run the ATs and automatically complete a story that passes all ATs.
  3. Track "scope creep" by bumping back to Defined the state of an Estimated story if the ATs were modified (maybe shooting an email to the tracker/developer).
• Estimation validation through comparaison: using google suggest type async search, provide a popup with stories of similar estimate.

Release planning

• Add the notion of Release
• Allow easy (re)assignment of stories to iterations
• Tracking of iteration budget
• Release big visible charts (burn down, velocity)
• Prioritization (Value+Risk/Cost)

Iteration planning

• Better reordering and re-assignment of stories
• Velocity calculation
• Tracking of iteration/developer budget

References

• Mike Cohn's upcoming Agile Estimating and Planning book
• AgilePlanner

Tracking

• Better iteration tracking

Integration

• Defect tracking system integration