Live Plan – Additional Fields
In this blog I would like to finish the discussion on fields that have an impact on how items are planned in Polarion’s liveplan.
So let’s have a look at the fields we have not covered yet.
Due Date
The due date field represents the same idea as a timepoint. Due dates can be set additionally to or instead of a timepoint. Setting a due date to an item will highlight the item with a red border in the liveplan once it has slipped over the due date. You can use due dates to control important items within your plan. Maybe all items have to be finished at the end of iteration 1 but some items – those that you consider as critical – should be finished at an earlier date.
Planning Constraint
If you set a planning constraint to an item it will always be planned according to the constraint you have set – independently of its priority or dependencies to other items. That means if you set a planning constraint you should know what you do as you overrule Polarion’s planning algorithm.
In the following example “Feature 1” depends on “Feature 2”. We have set a planning constraint for “Feature 1”. It must start on 15th of August. The planning algorythm has been overruled and the item is planned to the 15th of August. The existing dependency to “Feature 2” is ignored.
So use planning constraints with care. In some situation however planning constraints come quite handy. For example defining holidays or adding fixed events to the plan (exhibition, fair…)
Time Spent/Work Record
This field has only indirect impact on our plan as it updates the “remaining estimate” field. Whenever somebody enters some value either in the time spent field or as a work record the remaining estimate will be reduced by the entered value.
If you want to benefit of the advanced time reporting features of polarion you should use work records instead of time spent field. Work records are user specific compared to time spent which is an anonymous entry.
Planned To
I added this field only for completeness as it can not be changed by the user. The “planned to” field displays the result of Polarion’s replanning. Whenever the liveplan is updated Polarion changes the content of the field to the updated time frame to which the item was scheduled. If you want to visualize this field in the table you have to add “plannedStart” and “plannedEnd” as columns.
Resolution
The resolution field has a simple but important impact on the plan. By default only unresolved items are displayed in the plan. Whenever you resolve an item it will disappear from your plan.
Best Wishes
Tim
