Today we've released new version of TargetProcess. This release was SCRUM oriented and many things for better scrum support were added like customizable terminology, Task Board and impediments management. Now TargetProcess fits greatly for SCRUM dev. process and if you use SCRUM you should take a look at it.

The other goal was better reporting. Now you may generate various reports for several projects using simple UI.

As usual, this release contains many usability and productivity improvements. For example, you may select current iteration or release in drop downs with one click, finish iteration with two clicks and split user story with easy.

TargetProcess is available as On-Site or On-Demand version ($25 per user per month). We are receiving more and more very positive feedback from customers. So go ahead and try TP, you will be satisfied :)

We've completed impediments management implementation. The main goal is to make blocking stories, tasks and bugs explicitly visible. They are marked with impediments icon and you may click on the icon to see all impediments. Thus you clearly see what story is blocking and why. The functionality includes:

• Add/Edit/Delete impediments
• Impediments list (sorting, filtering, change impediment state)
• Bind impediments to user stories, tasks and bugs
• See blocked user stories, tasks and bugs and see related impediments in many places (for example, user story list, user story view, task board, todo)
• Private/Public impediments (private impediment available for impediment owner only)

As mentioned in latest post we are working on better SCRUM support in TargetProcess. One of the core feature is TaskBoard that powers daily Scrum meetings.

The usual actions for Scrum Master during Scrum meetings are:

• Change Task state (In Progress or Done for example)
• Assign tasks (or subscribe to task for developer)
• Add new task
• Add impediments and see blocking tasks and stories
• Update remaining time

TargetProcess TaskBoard supports all that things (see screenshot). It is already implemented in fact and requires just some polishing.

Despite the release of TP 2.3 several days ago we've already started TP 2.4 development which will be released in early May. Yeah, project heartbeat is rapid. The TP 2.4 release focuses on two things:

1. Better SCRUM support
2. Better reporting

The reasons behind the first goal are quite simple. SCRUM is the most used agile methodology and TargetProcess lacks several core features from SCRUM:

• Daily SCRUM meetings management
• Different terminology
• Impediments management

While they are not show stoppers for TP usage for SCRUM, they do affect overall impression and product usability.

It is possible to put data about tasks progress nicely into TP if developers do that themselves, but on SCRUM meetings ScrumMaster do that job and he needs more simple way. He needs a single screen where he can do all progress/status updates.

It is possible to learn that sprint is an iteration in TargetProcess, but it is not comfortable and we don't like when you feel any discomfort with TP.

It is possible to manage impediments in Excel, but TP is integrated tool and designed to replace Excelish stuff for agile development in fact.

So all the features above will be implemented in TP 2.4. ScrumMaster will have Task Board where he will be able to change task states, reassign tasks, update remaining effort, add impediments and so on. ScrumMaster will have impediments management functionality, he will be able to create impediments, bind them to user stories, make them private or public, track them and easily see all impediments for user story, task or bug. And all TP users will benefit from customizable terminology and finally you will see Sprints instead Iterations everywhere in TP.

We think that with TP 2.4 release TargetProcess will be SCRUM-ready (i.e. easy to use in scrum environment).