TP 2.0 was finally released last week!. We did not celebrate this remarkable event yet, but beer was already purchased and would be used this week for sure :) I should say that TP 2.0 took a lot of effort and we are proud to announce that the final result exceeded our expectations. The journey had just begun!

We’ve gathered as much feedback about TP 1.7 as possible from our customers and eliminated many mistakes and crude points in the new product. We’ve designed user interface with target users in mind and made frequent tasks easy to do. We’ve implemented many productivity features, like TP.Tray, quick actions, drag and drop, saved filters, etc.

If you were to ask about the goal of TP 2.0, the answer is : “To Simplify people’s life”. Yes, TP 2.0 helps individuals who play project manager, product owner, QA engineer or developer role on their daily jobs. This is the real goal and is also just a beginning. We are not inventing new IDE or development platform, we are not inventing yet another methodology to burden people. Instead, we are creating supplementary “glue” for project teams. Why supplementary? Because people in project team are the main glue by themselves. I don’t want to sound like a salesman, but TargetProcess is all about people and their needs to maximize the efficiency of the product development cycle . Therefore, when our customers talk - we listen.

From technical side we’ve built a solid framework based on NHibernate with nice code generation. We’ve implemented over 500 unit tests. We’ve learned a lot about AJAX and made UI as responsive as allowed by latest MS AJAX version (By The Way, Microsoft caused us some pain when completely changed API in their Atlas framework. We’ve spent additional 2-man weeks before the final release refactoring AJAX-based functionality).

It took us 7 months to release TP 2.0, but over the course of that time we generated so many new ideas for the future releases of the TargetProcess that would continue to make it the finest agile project management software on the market. We are going to push out new releases each month! We will also keep you posted on our experience, code and ideas. Stay tuned!

TP 2.0 Usage Patterns Available. Here is the content:

Product Owner
Requirements management
High Level Planning / Backlogs management

Project Manager
Low Level Planning
Daily Planning
Progress Tracking
What Happened Yesterday?

Developer
What Should I Do Today?
Find Comprehensive Requirement Info
Find Bug/Task/Requirement

QA Engineer
Submit Bugs
Bugs List

We've created quick tour for TP 2.0. You may check it at http://www.targetprocess.com/agile_tour_20/agile_tour.asp

We are working on performance improvement and one task is to reduce size of generated HTML pages. For example, user stories list with 20 user stories weight was about 380K, which is too heavy. We've optimized it to 150K using several techniques listed below:

1. Don't use ID in controls in GridView and Repeater if possible. Each ID (especially in named containers) adds several bytes to each row.
2. Use shortest possible names in IDs. For example, "wpm" instead "WebPartsManager1". Here is the difference: before
   ctl00_wpm_gwpUserStoryList1_UserStoryList1_userStoryGrid_ ctl06_actors_lstActors_ctl02_assignedUsersList_pnlReassignments
   after
   ctl00_mainArea_us_ug_ctl26_a_rA_ctl00_aUL_pr
   In fact this is one of the most important thing for reducing HTML size
3. Don't use spaces in ASPX/ASCX code. Use tabs instead (in Visual Studio click Options->Text Editor->HTML->Tabs->Keep Tabs option, then reformat all documents by Ctrl+K Ctrl+D). In fact it is better to remove all tabs in final release at all. Tabs saved us 40K!
4. Don't use Labels in TemplateField if possible, use just plain Eval or Literal. Each label adds <span></span> around value.

   <asp:templatefield headertext="ID"
    sortexpression="UserStoryID" accessibleheadertext="UserStoryID">
   <itemtemplate>
   <%# Eval("UserStoryID") %>
   </itemtemplate>
   </asp:templatefield>

5. Use IMG instead Image. Image adds often unnecessary style="border-width:0px;" to generated img tag
6. Do not use inline styles, use classes instead. For example, class="topMenu" smaller than style="padding: 10px; font: 12px Arial; margin-bottom: 10px"
7. Do not use base.Render() in custom controls that affects states of other controls only. For example, we've used so called Extenders to show/hide other controls based on some input parameters and these extenders rendered as <span></span>, which is just not required.
8. Use WebParts with care. We've added WebPartsManager into master page and it affected all pages in application. We've moved it into customized pages only.

We’ve released TP.Tray tool that supports two things so far:

1. Capture screenshots, add comments and save them as JPEG
2. Post bugs into TargetProcess without web browser with attached screenshot.

Important: You should have .NET 2.0 Framework and WSE 3.0 installed. You may download them from:
.NET 2.0 Framework 22M
WSE 3.0 (1.2M)

Tp.Tray is a free tool, so you may download it and use for screenshots capturing. Process is simple. Install Tp.Tray in few seconds; run Tp.Tray and push Ctrl+B. Screenshots capturing mode will be enabled. You may use small window on the right for precise selection

Select area and push Enter. Simple image editor will appear

You may add comments and draw lines, not too many actions, but enough for 90% cases.

TargetProcess 2.0 users will advance from Sumbit Bug option. You may try it right now with our demo server. First, set login parameters as shown on picture below (login/pwd: admin/admin).

Then after screenshot capturing click Submit Bug button.

Fill required fields and click Submit Bug. You may open web browser and view just added bug. Your comments are welcome!