[Processdash-announce] Process Dashboard 1.14 is Now Available

[<pro...@li...>]

The Process Dashboard development team is pleased to announce the
availability of version 1.14 of the Process Dashboard.  To download version
1.14, visit:
http://www.processdash.com/

Version 1.14 includes these significant new features:

   - Significant changes were made to the earned value support:
      - It is now possible to customize the set of charts that appear on the
      earned value report. In addition, clicking on these charts now
opens a page
      displaying a larger chart with helpful instructions on how the
chart can be
      used and interpreted.
      - The Earned Value report now includes a "More Charts" hyperlink.
      Clicking on this link makes it possible to see all of the EV
charts in the
      web browser. (Previously, many of these charts were only available in the
      "Chart" dialog of the Task & Schedule window.)
      - New charts have been added to display the Earned Value Trend and the
      Direct Time Trend.
      - The earned value report now includes a "Kanban View" of the tasks
      that have been completed recently, the tasks that are in
progress, and the
      tasks that are planned for the near future.
      - By default, the bars on the Gantt charts depict dates from the
      Forecast column of the task list. Now, a configuration button makes it
      possible to depict Plan, Replan, or Baseline dates instead.
      - In the past, the Weekly EV report used generic phrases such as
      "Tasks Completed This Week." This wording was confusing for
views of data in
      the past or the future. These section headings have been altered to be
      clearer and more descriptive.
      - New topics have been added to the online help for each of the earned
      value charts. These topics explain how to interpret the data in
each chart,
      and provide helpful analysis tips for people who are new to earned value
      tracking.
      - A new help topic has been added that explains the difference between
      Plan, Replan, and Forecast dates. This help topic explains these three
      calculations in detail, so users can understand and appreciate the
      differences between the dates that are generated.
   - The WBS now has a special "personal editing mode." When the WBS is
   opened from a personal dashboard instead of the Team Dashboard (and the team
   leader has not disabled edits by team members), the WBS becomes aware of the
   individual who opened it, and changes its behavior:
      - Newly created tasks are automatically assigned to the individual who
      opened the WBS.
      - If the individual makes a change that affects one of their
      coworkers, the WBS will display a warning and offer to undo the change.
      - The individual is only allowed to edit their own row in the Team
      Member List.
      - The individual can disable these features if desired by toggling a
      checkbox in the "Team" menu. (So for example, these new features will not
      prevent a Planning Manager from making changes to their coworker's tasks.)
   - Numerous changes were made to provide better support for the SEI PSP
   courses:
      - A new Student Profile element has been added to the PSP course
      assignment sequence, giving students an opportunity to answer questions
      about their job position, experience, and so on.
      - The Analysis Report exercises now allow the use of the Size
      Estimating Template and PROBE.
      - "To Date" metrics are no longer reset on the first PSP2 project in a
      PSP Fundamentals & Advanced course.
      - During the PSP course, PROBE Method D for Size will require students
      to use their Estimated Proxy Size verbatim; they will not be
allowed to edit
      the number.
      - During the PSP course, the PROBE Wizard will not offer PROBE Method
      C1 for Size as a selectable option.
      - The final page of the PROBE Wizard has always performed a sanity
      check on the planned productivity. If it is unrealistic, the
wizard prints a
      warning message and takes the user back to reevaluate their estimates.
      Unfortunately, that warning message was easy to overlook, resulting in
      confusion when the PROBE wizard looped back to the earlier pages. The
      buttons and messages on the sanity check page have been altered
to make it
      more clear that a planning error may be present.
      - When students are allowed to edit the quality plan and they produce
      phase times that do not sum up properly, an error message is now
displayed
      on the Project Plan Summary.
      - Student data can now be exported to an XML file.
   - When capturing defect data, individuals can now:
      - Make a single entry to represent several related defects that were
      found and fixed simultaneously.
      - Mark a defect as "pending" (i.e. found, but not yet removed).
      - Alter the date associated with the defect entry.
   - Several usability enhancements have been made to the WBS Editor and the
   team project integration features:
      - The Team Project Setup Wizard will now provide suggested default
      values for the team process, the name of the EV schedule, and
the location
      of the Team Project Network Directory.
      - If an individual enters their initials incorrectly when joining a
      team project, the "Sync to WBS" operation will detect this error
and display
      a message, helping them to correct it.
      - Actual Size is now displayed in the WBS Editor for each component in
      the hieararchy.
      - The charts in the Rollup Plan Summary report will now use consistent
      colors to represent the various phases in the standard metrics collection
      frameworks. This makes it easier to correlate data between several charts.
      - When a note is attached to the root node of the project in the WBS
      Editor, that note will now be copied down into the personal plans of each
      individual. This can be used to record helpful project-specific URLs for
      team use.
      - In the past, if a node was deleted from the WBS and a new node was
      created in its place with the same name, the Sync to WBS operation would
      perform a similar delete/recreate operation. Now, the Sync to
WBS attempts
      to detect this scenario and reuse the existing node instead of
      deleting/recreating it. (Note: deleting/recreating nodes in the
WBS is still
      discouraged; but now when the mistake occurs, the consequence
should be less
      severe.)
      - In the past, the WBS editor would display a confirmation prompt
      every time you request to delete a node. Now, the WBS Editor will only
      display this confirmation prompt when the node to be deleted has
actual time
      associated with it - and the warning message has been altered to describe
      this new condition.
      - In the past, when a leaf task in the WBS was subdivided, the next
      "sync to WBS" operation would often result in a
"top-down-bottom-up" error
      in the personal plan of the affected individual. This problem has been
      corrected.
   - Significant changes were made to the installer for the Process
   Dashboard:
      - The installer can now create application shortcuts for many users on
      Unix and Linux platforms.
      - On 64-bit Windows, sometimes the installer would not create Process
      Dashboard shortcuts. This problem has been corrected.
      - If a user has less than 800MB of memory (for example, because they
      are running in a virtual machine), the Process Dashboard shortcuts would
      fail to start the application. The installer has been adjusted to create
      shortcuts that work on systems with limited memory. (Note that
the Process
      Dashboard does not require or use that much memory; the problem
was with the
      shortcut icon itself, not the application.)
   - Several changes have been made to improve compatibility with various
   programs and operating systems:
      - The "Export to Excel" hyperlinks have been tweaked to improve
      compatibility with a variety of web browsers and with newer versions of
      Microsoft Office.
      - On some versions of Unix (for example, Solaris and RedHat), the
      Process Dashboard would sometimes appear to hang at the splash
screen. This
      was occurring when a dialog box was displayed (to prompt for some type of
      input), because the Unix window manager was improperly stacking
the dialog
      box behind the splash screen. This problem has been corrected.
      - If the dashboard data directory was unreachable (for example,
      because it was on a network drive that was unavailable), or if other
      operating-system-specific problems prevented the dashboard from
locking the
      data, the dashboard was incorrectly displaying a message claiming that
      someone on another computer had locked the data. This error
message has been
      corrected and clarified.
      - The "Import Defects from Code Collaborator" feature was not working
      against Code Collaborator version 6. This problem has been corrected.
   - The "Generic" process template now allows the use of the Size
   Estimating Template and PROBE. (This functionality will appear for projects
   created using the Generic process template *after* upgrading to version
   1.14.)
   - The "C > Tools" menu now includes an "Open Dataset" option, giving all
   users the ability to open data backup ZIP files.
   - When users filter the Time Log Editor to display the current week, they
   can now easily select which day of the week to use as the starting point.
   - In the past, when a user made a change to a data value within the
   Process Dashboard, that change might take 30 seconds to appear on the
   Project Plan Summary form in their web browser. Now, these changes will
   appear in the web browser immediately.
   - The LOC counter that is built in to the Process Dashboard will now
   count lines appropriately even when comment indicators appear within string
   literals.
   - When all the tasks in a earned value task list share a common path
   prefix (common for team projects), the Flat View will extract that common
   prefix, making the display easier to read.
   - In the defect log editor, a combo box displays the defect type standard
   that has been set at each level of the hierarchy. In the past, when a defect
   type standard had been set at the team project level, nothing was displayed
   in this combo box for individual, leading people to think that their
   standard had not taken effect. Now, this combo box will display the name of
   the defect type standard that was set by the team project, minimizing
   confusion.


*Upgrade Considerations*

   - Teams are encouraged to upgrade together. Some features may not work
   properly until all team members have upgraded, and exported their data at
   least once.
   - Teams using the built-in metrics collection framework will enjoy this
   functionality simply by upgrading. Teams that have defined their own custom
   metrics collection framework will need to refresh the
definition<http://www.tuma-solutions.com/metricsFrameworkEditor.html#upgrading>of
that framework.

*
Download*

For more information, or to download the Process Dashboard, visit:
http://www.processdash.com/



PSP(SM) is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University. The open source
team that writes the Process Dashboard is not affiliated with Carnegie
Mellon University. Neither Carnegie Mellon University nor the Software
Engineering Institute have reviewed or endorsed the Process Dashboard.