We've finished first TP 2.4 iteration today and decided to show intermediate results for all who interested. We've implemented quite many nice features during last two weeks and want to get early feedback (yes, we've released TP 2.3 two weeks ago and new release is coming within 3 weeks). TP 2.4 preview available at http://preview.targetprocess.com (admin / admin).

Implemented stories:

• Impediments management
• Task Board
• Paging in Iteration Plan
• Tp.Tray: ToDo component
• Change state action simplified
• Date and RichEdit custom fields
• Filter by custom fields in lists
• Scheduled reports (Bugs Burn Down by State)
• Finish Latest Iteration (automatically split/move user stories to the next iteration)
• Split User Story

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).

So we are releasing TP 2.3 tomorrow. It was quite hard release for several reasons (we even increased release duration from 5 weeks to 6):

• We’ve started Selenium tests creation and it took time. Sure it will save a lot of time in future, but for this release it was additional burden since we created regression tests for old functionality as well as implemented some automation.
• Performance improvements took a lot of time. We’ve removed Ayende generics (major changes in overall architecture) and dramatically decrease CPU usage on server, so scalability improved greatly and TP can work with 100+ concurrent users without problems. I am really happy that we are using code generation, without it such changes in business layer should take several weeks instead several days.
• Many old bugs have been fixed.

If you take into consideration that new functionality still appeared (Web Services API and People Allocation Management) you will understand why the release was not easy. It is quite large achievement for us and TargetProcess becomes more and more enterprise-ready.

Two major additions in TP 2.3 are Web Services API and People Allocation Management. Both features are must have in any serious project management solution. Integration is a key for many companies and now public API enables almost any required integration. API is powerful and you may even create custom queries based on HQL syntax.

Effective people management in large departments is hard without good tool support. The common practice is to use Excel to control load and people availability. You understand that it is hard to maintain the document in actual state. The typical process is:

1. Ask all PMs about
   1. Who will be free and when
   2. Are there any staffing problem and who they need for the project?
2. Put the data from PMs to the spreadsheet(s).

Top manager usually does not have much time for manual updates and for large department it may take up to 2-3 hours to have complete actual data each week. TargetProcess eliminates this burden. The process is simple:

1. Each PM specify allocation for each person in the team as well as allocation end date
2. Each PM submit allocation requests if he needs more people
3. Top Managers just clicks Allocations link and see all the data on one screen. He may filter data, sort data, see details if required and resolve conflicts right there. Then he may click Allocation Requests link and see all requests for people (prioritized and commented).

So the only mandatory thing for PMs is to set correct allocation % and allocation end date for each team member. Not a hard task that will take just a few minutes.

In general TargetProcess became faster, more scalable, more powerful and open for integration in last release. Hope you will enjoy the results!