Rally Software

We follow the "Split unfinished stories" process (as described here on the Rally site) at the end of our Iterations. That process includes setting Release=Unscheduled on the "unfinished" stories. As suggested on the page, we also unlink the unfinished stories from their Feature so they don't get double-counted on the Feature. However, these steps seem to result in bad data on the Release Tracking page.

The Release Tracking page, in Iterations view, is useful for seeing how much work you completed (and didn't complete) for each of the past Iterations. However, because these unfinished Stories no longer have either their Feature link or a Release value, they no longer appear on Release Tracking at all. We've addressed this by preserving the Release field on the unfinished story, which results in all of the data being available in Iterations view. (It affects other apps that track progress against a release directly, like Release Burnup, but we have other apps for tracking our progress, so that's acceptable for us.)

However, when we use this workaround of preserving the Release field, if you switch to Burnup view, those unfinished stories are counted toward the "Planned Points" trend of the burnup, which causes the points to be double-counted.

We would like to be able to see the "unfinished" stories in Iteration view but *not* have them contribute to the "Planned Points" trend in Burnup view. Is there a way to do this? (Maybe the "Planned Points" trend in the Burnup chart should omit User Stories containing "[Unfinished]" in the name?)

We currently follow the process mentioned above.  We leave the [unfinished] story in the iteration solely for the purpose of looking at the team's velocity over time, to adjust if they are repeatedly pulling in more stories than can be completed.  Instead of marking it Unscheduled, we move it to a release called Cemetery.  That's always fun to explain in training.

We use the Release Tracking view to look at the overall progress of the release, as well as progress toward completion of the features we committed to delivering in the release. The [continued] portion of the story carries forward all the remaining tasks, and when accepted, will represent progress on the feature, so we don't see the need to see the [unfinished] portion here.  Seeing it in Iteration Tracking, and having it included in the Enhanced Velocity Chart for team development, seems to be sufficient for us.

Is there a reason you want to see it on Release Tracking? It's always interesting to see things from someone else's perspective.

The Release Tracking app (in Iteration view) seems to provide the perfect overall view of multiple Iterations, giving you a snapshot of what you completed against your plan for each iteration, and also letting you drill into the particular stories and defects you worked on. Using that, we can get to the details but also see if there's a trend over time of overcomitting. Iteration Status only gives us one Iteration at a time, and Enhanced Velocity Chart doesn't let you drill in or look at a particular Release.

Release Tracking seems to have the most comprehensive view of iterations and the best burnup chart, and we hoped to be able to use both.