Go Above and Beyond Post-its and Notecards: 5 Tricks (or Treats?)

VersionOne lets you go above and beyond manual post-its and notecards. Here are 5 tricks in VersionOne (or maybe they are really “treats”?) that you can use to quickly enter time tracking, assess the health of your sprint, and evaluate estimation accuracy:

1. Detail Estimate is the original estimate populated on sprint planning day. It is used on sprint planning day to determine total number of hours committed to by a team and compared to team capacity to see if the plan is realistic or needs adjustments. It is also used to evaluate estimation accuracy by comparing to the total effort completed.

Detail Estimate compared to Capacity and Total Done

2. Effort is the actual number of hours of work completed towards a task. It is used to assess total number of hours worked by a team in a given sprint to assess the teams pace (hopefully a pace that is reasonable to sustain). It is also used to evaluate estimation accuracy by comparing to the original Detail Estimate.

3. To Do is updated daily to reflect estimate of hours remaining to do. It is used to generate the burndown chart which is a quick visual to see if the team is tracking according to the ideal burndown rate and will complete the sprint as planned, early or if the sprint is at risk. It is also used to determine which tasks split to a new backlog item or stay with the original (0 To Do = original, >0 To Do = new backlog item).

Updating Effort and To Do hours

Remaining hours to do compared to the ideal line.

4. Member Actuals Report shows total effort tracked by Project by member by day, week or month. This report is used to see who needs to enter time for which date.

Danny forgot to track effort.

5. Effort (w/ Date & Member) field allows an individual to track effort for a task and pick the appropriate date and owner. This field is useful when added to a grid for individuals who forgot to track effort on a daily basis and need to go back and enter time for days in the past. Note, in order to track effort toward a task, the backlog item needs to be open.

Danny entering effort for previous days.